We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sammantha Swanson DeJesus a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Sammantha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
Such a loaded question! Ok…buckle up; it’s a story!
I opened up Mully & Mo’s in September of 2018 – at the time, businesses were just starting to shift from the traditional mall model, and were focusing instead on creating their own unique spaces and enriching small downtown areas. This was the same for us – our town is small, but it’s also a hub, and when I decided to open our shop, only a few businesses were already established in our downtown area, but I knew it was growing. I was fortunate enough to find an excellent space, with an even more excellent landlord, but it was old, and dated – it required a full gut, and with the help of my landlord, we created a space we were both really proud of.
I had never owned a business before, or even worked retail, but I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so the “can do” spirit is in my bones. When I look back at photos of our shop then vs. now, I’m just so incredibly proud of the growth. I remember thinking for our grand opening that the shop was so full and different – don’t get me wrong! – for being brand new, I’m proud of where we started, but holy cow was it EMPTY compared to where we are now! Since then, we have renovated our shop multiple times, tearing down walls to expand our space, bringing in more vendors, artists, creators and brands to truly offer a well rounded gift shop experience, but the road was anything but easy. In our first year of business, our building was broken into, including our space, and product and money were stolen and destroyed. Toward the end of 2019, Covid began to circulate, and by 2020, we were completely shut down…for months; not something you want to see happen in the baby years of business! What followed were freight surcharges, inflation, inventory and product shortages, staff shortages, tourism decreases…you name it, we went through it, and it went on long after the public felt Covid was over. For retail, and small businesses, Covid lingered for years, and truly affected our bottom line. When we were shut down, I applied and won grants to help us stay open – we shifted our business model and created a website to help us manage the lack of cash flow – we evaluated products and adjusted accordingly to help us save as much money as we could – for the entire first year of business, I had no employees, and for a very long time, I operated our space with only one other employee besides myself. People will always comment and say things like, “It must be nice being your own boss!” – it is, for sure, but it’s also not that easy – I always reply with, “Yes it’s great getting to pick my own hours! Like panicking at midnight, and rethinking my entire business strategy at 3 a.m.!” You make sacrifices, owning a business. If you want to go on vacation, there is no PTO – you instead have to pay someone else so you can be off. My husband and I took a vacation in 2024, and it was the first one we’d taken in 5 years…but even then I was answering emails! When you own a business you answer emails at work, at home, on trips, at the doctor…business never stops!
I made sacrifices early on, and still do – I’m thankful to be at a place in my life and business where I make less, but once we decided to open up a second business location, our sister store Shoppe Somewhere in November of 2024, I landed right back in that sacrificial spot, but it’s a spot I wouldn’t ever give up. I have big dreams for our spaces…we are constantly evolving and thinking of how to grow, and I can’t wait to see where the next 8 years take us! Each year, I give everything up to God – I truly believe this is what I was called for – through perseverance and simply never giving up, we’re still standing.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
I used to be a teacher on the South Side of Chicago. Honestly, it was my dream job. It’s where I felt passion and vision and hope for the future – it was a true calling of bringing the change you want to see to the world. It was there that I met my husband, Rob. A born and bred Chi-town man, he loved his home but was ready for a change. When we got married, he felt called to move to my small hometown of Iron Mountain, MI, in the middle of an Upper Peninsula most people don’t even know about. We prayed about it, talked about it, and I said – “Ok, we can move – but you have to find the house”, and he did – a beautiful 1895 home filled with charm and wood floors, and so within the 6 months of our engagement, we bought a house, got married, found new jobs, and moved.
I loved teaching in the inner city – so when we moved back home to my little neighborhood, where teachers stayed until they retired and turnover was small, it was hard to find a position – but I also felt like maybe this wasn’t the demographic I was called to teach in. My creative juices, however, were still flowing, and I still wanted to apply myself in a way that would allow me to connect with people and bring forth the ever empowered “change”. On a shopping trip with my mom, we were lamenting about how we hated having to always go out of town if we wanted to shop – there were so few stores in our area. Our small downtown had quietly started to grow, but it’s an ongoing joke that businesses come and go in Iron Mountain faster than you can say you heard of a new one. Suddenly, with great enthusiasm, my mom looked at me and exclaimed, “Why don’t you open up a shop of your own?!”, and so I did.
It was a huge leap, and one into a world I didn’t really know much about, but I was determined, and once I set my mind to something, I usually tackle it, and so, Mully & Mo’s was born. Mully, for our mini Goldendoodle “Sir Hercules Mulligan” and Mo for “Mr. Mosley”, our ragamuffin cat (one named for a Revolutionary War Spy, and the other for my favorite Downtown Abbey character – can you say English teacher much?).
I have always believed in practicing what you preach, and as a small business we ask our customers to shop local, so I wanted to do the same. At the beginning of the opening, we carried 10 Michigan artists on our floor. Now, we carry over 30 Michigan and US small business artists, with more than 20 being from Michigan, and 28 of them being woman-owned. Our store tagline is “A Hometown Experience” because when you walk through our doors, we want you to feel like you are welcomed, loved, and chosen. We want you to see our character and personality through the decor and gifts we carry, and no matter where you come from, what you believe in, or who you are, be able to picture what you see on our shelves in your home.
Since opening, we have expanded our store multiple times, and have now even opened a sister location, right across the hall, called Shoppe Somewhere, a vintage candy shop with a soda fountain vibe. Shoppe Somewhere is a vintage candy shop with a soda fountain vibe, offering candy, glass soda pop, novelty popcorn and food, vintage and retro toys and games, books, puzzles, souvenirs, and art supplies. In total, our two shops equal more than 4,000 sq. feet of retail space!
Somewhere was named for the Song “Somewhere My Love”, which is a story all in its own, but we wanted Somewhere to be a collective and inviting space, and so we offer classes, workshops, and events frequently. Our tagline is “Somewhere Creative, Somewhere Nostalgic, Somewhere Loved” – our goal is that when you step into Somewhere, you feel inspired and Somewhere Creative – we hope that you’re flooded with memories and feel Somewhere Nostalgic – and like it is for us, we hope you feel that you are Somewhere deeply and continuously Loved.
On the inside of Mully & Mo’s, I painted a mural with large sunflowers and the quote “Do you suppose she is a Wildflower?” – in my life I’ve always stood out, and I’ve always felt different. That carries over into my shops – we want to be different, original, unique – we want to be risk takers – we want to be Wildflowers.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
As I’ve mentioned before, I opened our second business, Shoppe Somewhere in November of 2024. It was a huge undertaking – the space required even more of a gut than my first shop. We basically took the space down to the studs…redid drywall, redid the ceiling, painted, installed new floor, built the checkout and candy counters, put up the shelves, decorated the displays…from start to finish, it was a full and total renovation, but once we opened, the response was incredible. I can remember feeling so empowered…so excited for the future…feeling like we had done it. We’d made it. It was going to work.
Then I found a lump, and in early December, almost exactly one month after opening, I was diagnosed with two rare and aggressive forms of breast cancer. I was 33.
What followed was the hardest 18 months of my life. I had my first surgery the day after Christmas, to implant my chemo port. I started chemo mid January. I lost my taste within days, and 10 lbs in the first week. By my second infusion 3 weeks later, I’d lost all my hair, and by my final session of my first round in May of 2025, my eyelashes and eyebrows were mostly gone, my hemoglobin was so low I had to have two blood transfusions, my legs swelled to the point of barely being able to walk, and my neuropathy from treatment had spread to my feet, hands, and fingers. In June, I underwent my mastectomy, followed a week later by my diep flap tissue reconstruction, which came with a hip to hip incision and an 8+ week recovery time, then followed by a year of maintenance chemo, and another revision surgery in February of 2026…all while owning two businesses.
2025 was the year that pushed me to my absolute limits – physically, emotionally, spiritually – the year where I felt more vulnerable, undesirable, powerful, determined, beautiful, awful, frustrated, angry, joyful, grateful and broken than ever before. I’m not grateful I was diagnosed with cancer, but cancer did show me so much about life, and it made me stronger, because I had to be. When you own businesses in a small town, it’s hard to not try and please everyone, and I’ll be honest…I tried to do that for a long time…but cancer showed me what is truly important in life, and it helped me let go of the pressures that I had put on myself to be perfect. It taught me to let go…to delegate…to trust the people I’d placed in my business to handle the day to day. When we opened Somewhere, I hired my baby sister to be the manager. I didn’t know that I’d be diagnosed with cancer a month later, but hiring her was the best decision I have ever made in regards to my businesses – I give myself credit – I was resilient throughout this last year, but I was able to be because I had her in my life, and in the life of the shops – resilience doesn’t have to mean you do everything alone – it means you show up, you do what you can, you persevere, and you lean on the people around you who are there to love, support, and stand with you. Cancer…owning and running two businesses while navigating cancer…showed me that I can be broken and beautiful at the same time.
I finished my treatment at the beginning of May. My hair is starting to grow back…I’ve regained all my taste…slowly but surely, I’m starting to feel like myself again. The last year and a half wasn’t filled with tons of happy milestones, but it was filled with love. selflessness. encouragement. learning. healing. growth. victories. So…if you have your own battlefield…keep fighting. Keep struggling. Keep overcoming, because the future is bright – not because it will be all rainbows and butterflies – but because you’ll be in it.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
For me, I’ve found that the best way we’ve grown our customer base has been through vulnerability and honesty. When you own a business in a small town, you have to tow a fine line between what you feel comfortable sharing, and what aspects of your life to keep personal. In 2021, my Gram died suddenly and without warning. In 2022, we lost my Papa the same way. Both deaths rocked me to my core…they were two of the most prolific people in my life, and losing them without warning and in tragic ways, was excruciating. I knew I had to keep showing up…but I didn’t know how to act like everything was fine when it wasn’t. So I used social media as an outlet, in a healthy way. I chose to be honest about how and what I was struggling with…I chose to share my grief, in hopes that I and in turn others experiencing loss, would feel less alone. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I did the same. For so many, social media is a place where everything looks picture perfect. It’s often a mirage, and while it is important for me to keep our online presence positive and uplifting, it’s also equally important for it to be a space of authenticity, and I truly feel that our customers, followers, and community feel seen and valued because we do. With my sister now in the fold, we’ve created an entirely new audience within our small community based on the reels that we do together. They’re funny, and humorous, but there’s always some small truth in them, whether it’s an insight into our personalities as sisters, insight into our dynamic working together, or insight into what it’s like to run a business, they’re also authentic and real. No matter what I’m doing in town, running to the grocery or checking in for a doctor’s appointment, someone inevitably stops me to tell me how much they love the reels we do. It’s small. It’s simple. But it matters.
Putting my heart into my businesses…putting myself into our social media…I truly think it matters.
Take the name of Shoppe Somewhere…where it came from…why it resonates with people. The backstory: I started playing the piano at 5, and truly fell in love with it in high school. Both my grandparents loved listening to me play, and I learned the song “Somehwhere My Love” specifically for my Papa, because it was his love song to my Gram. Every time I’d sit down to play, he would ask me to play “his song.” He’d hang back in the hallway or around the corner and as soon as I would play the final notes, he would come up to me, squeeze my arm, and say, “Beautiful. Thank you dear.” When my Gram passed, I stopped playing the song. It was too hard. Until my brother got married, and asked me to play at his wedding.
In a red church in Milwaukee, on the most gorgeous piano I’ve ever touched in the greatest acoustic setting I’ve ever experienced, I played Somewhere My Love, flawlessly, and when I played the final notes, there was Papa – I will be forever grateful to my aunt who captured the moment in film of when he grabbed my arm and with tears in his eyes told me what he always told me – “Beautiful. Thank you dear.” I didn’t know that would be one of the last times I played it for him, but for me that song always represented deep love.
While I contemplated names, I knew I wanted to honor the influence and devotion my grandparents had instilled in my life – I wanted to honor their love for each other, and my love and admiration for them – and over and over I kept saying, “I just want this to be somewhere people can come and feel community. I want it to be somewhere unique. I want it to be somewhere people feel loved.” And then I knew what the name had to be. Words matter. Our memories and histories matter. They help shape who we are and shape the lives of those we meet through the experiences we share. In Shoppe Somewhere, right at the entrance, is a giant picture of my grandparents, and across from it on the opposite wall, is the story of why I chose the name…and the picture of my Papa with his hand on my shoulder, after I finished playing his song.
People resonate with our story. People feel connected when you share pieces of what make you who you are…honestly, we’re asking them to come spend their hard earned money at our establishment…I’ve found that people are not only more likely to support you, but are happy and eager to support you, when you choose to be vulnerable. When you choose to meet them on a human level.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shopmullyandmos.com
- Instagram: @shopmullyandm0s @shoppesomewhere
- Facebook: Mully & Mo’s, Shoppe Somewhere
