We recently connected with Eric Crowe and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?

At Unusual Company we make sure we show our customers that we appreciate them by performing the following:

-> We welcome each customer as they enter our establishment.
-> We thank each customer as they leave our establishment.
-> Every year we provide free events to our customers including:
– Free Henna Tattoo Art for everyone entering the store
– Free Live Music Events within the store
– Free Book Signing Events by local/National Authors
– Free Theatrical Movie Ticket & Merch Giveaways
– Free Pumpkin Carving Event hosted by Food Network Artists

We will continue to throw these free events as the years come as a way to give back.

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 back background and context?

After the Ellicott City flood of 2018, me and my family wanted to do something to give back to the community. We saw many buildings vacant and hardly any stores or people walking and visiting the small town as we have always known it. All of us visited Old Ellicott City Main Street as kids. There are so many memories of walking up and down Main Street visiting the small shops. We decided to rent a building and develop a retail concept that would be fun and unique for people to visit.

I have always been a fan of fantasy, sci-fi, pop-culture, horror movies and collectibles. After many months of touring buildings and coming up with ideas, we finally landed on a concept that would be a dessert shop serving local artisan-crafted authentic Italian gelato, surrounded by art, collectibles, jewelry and props made by the makers and creators of everything fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. And oh yeah, why not throw in a full book store on the second-level mezzanine and two high-end escape rooms!

After months of the build-out and filing for the permits for everything, we were denied opening the escape rooms by the County which was a real bummer. We still get asked about the escape rooms. We took it down off of our website because it will never be approved due to the egress issues with the building.

So with a full retail shop, selling thousands of items, and our World Famous Italian gelato, the best name for this little store on Main Street, Old Ellicott City was Unusual Company because the concept was so darn unusual and we have not seen it anywhere else in our travels.

This August will be a fifth year in business and we have had three celebrity actors perform signings at the store. We always have any celebrity sign our bank vault walls and Gordon Ramsey actually popped by while in town and signed the wall with a smiley face. What a blast and so much fun! We will continue that tradition by having more celebrities visit our store in the coming years. We always try to do a free events as much as possible, which have included: live music, Pumpkin Carving, by Food Network Star Frank Reaver, and spectacular henna tattooing by artist Ambika. This July she will be back by popular demand where anyone and everyone can come get a free henna tattoo from 12:30pm to 4:30pm.

We love the community of Old Ellicott City and hope to be serving it many more years to come. The goal has always been to give back to our lovely community by introducing them to the wonderful makers and creators of the Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror, and Pop-Culture worlds. There are so many talented artists in those genres and we want to do our best to showcase them. From the small local Etsy artist to renowned special effects talents, you can find it at Unusual Company!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth has by far been our best strategy for growing our business. This August will be our fifth year in business, and believe it or not, we have put almost nothing into outside marketing for our business. The original plan for this unique store concept was to build something with a WOW FACTOR. A store that when people walk into it they would want to go and tell a friend or family member about the experience. Over the years we have seen so many returning customers bringing back someone that they knew would love the gelato and reminisce about the childhood movies that surrounded them. In order to ensure the store does not get stagnant, we make sure to change up the layout often while bringing in new art pieces and props so the experience is different each time a past customer comes back to visit us. You will always see something a little different in the store. We get comments often that our customers see something new each time they come visit us.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

The best advice that I can give is:

-> Make sure, as an owner/manager, you do what you say you are going to do.
-> Never miss payroll even if it comes out of your own pocket.
-> Establish a flexible working environment by providing an APP for team members to communicate
and trade days and shift times. We use an APP called Homebase.
-> Ensure the working atmosphere is fun and inviting. We allow team members to play their own
music playlists on our SONOS system as long as it doesn’t have profanity.
-> And lastly, do not forget you could not do this without your team members. So always respect and
appreciate them for the time that they are investing in your business.    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.unusualcompany.com
• Instagram: @liveunusually
• Facebook: @liveunusually
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/unusual-company-ellicott-city