Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Allison Hylant. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Allison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

The company name is dale & blue. It often throws people off when they first meet me because my name Allison, which seemingly has nothing to do with the business name. But in truth, dale & blue is named for my grandfathers. I had a Grandpa Dale (my mother’s father) and a Grandpa Blue (my father’s father) Neither are still here, so naming the company after them felt like a nice tribute, it also made sense for the type of brand I was looking to build. Our brand philosophy is people over things, the idea that you should always be putting people first, and how something is made matters most. The name and company ethos pays tribute to all hard-working women and men who have ever tried to build something for themselves instead of following the status quo. All lessons I learned from my grandfathers through story and example. In truth, Blue was not my grandfathers’ real name. Robert (Bob) Hylant got the nickname because he was just a HUGE University of Michigan fan, which happens to be my alma mater. So in many ways, the name felt layered with meaning and very serendipitous. I knew that I didn’t want to use my name, and I wanted a name that could grow and be interpreted in new ways as the business evolved and felt grounded and established from day one. Naming it after my grandfathers felt like it accomplished all of those things and I visually liked that both names had four letters and using the ampersand symbol helped to make everything feel balanced. The names being lowercase is intentional, it made the name feel causal and approachable it wasn’t just the meaning of the name that was well thought out, it was how it presented to the world and what the brand would convey. The brand is familiar, casual, approachable, and established, there is a history and story that we invite you to be a part of.

Allison, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As mentioned previously, I went to the University of Michigan and received my BFA from the Stamps School of Art and Design in 2o12. After school, I worked for a fair trade company as a textile designer and then at Marimekko as the in-house seamstress for several years. Working for other fabric and commerce brands taught me about production, sourcing, price points, customers, and brand development. It is why dale & blue has such strong values and has maintained them over the years, even when they might not be the most cost-effective. :)

The business is a reflection of who I am at this current moment and I am very proud of that. The company has evolved over time both in reaction to myself and to outside forces. But at this moment it feels the most settled, and the best representation of how I envisioned when it started in 2017. For several years all the products offered were hand-dyed indigo home goods on linen. Recently, I have been able to grow our offerings to include fabric by the yard, original art, and take on custom wall covering and interior design projects. It means I can expand our reach and customer base. The process of taking my own original art and then seeing it made into products that come to life in clients’ homes has been so fascinating. When other people connect to your art and that translates as an upholstery piece or curtains or throw pillows so it is rewarding, having people create their homes and inviting your work to be a part of that never gets old.

I am also proud of how tailored the products have become. I always knew the textile and product lines (as well as a soon-to-be wallpaper line) would be bespoke and customizable. I am proud that we can offer that to our clients now. If you have a project and need a one-of-a-kind pattern, it can be created. If you have a pattern you love from our collection but need a larger scale (or smaller) or colors changed we can work together to achieve that. It is more of a partnership with our customers than it was in the early days and it is the kind of work I also hoped I would be doing. The hope is that our customers find us to be a resource to help solve any home or interior design problem when it comes to fabric and wall coverings.

Along with the more collaborative nature, the quality has remained high. The fabric line we offer for our bespoke line is 100% Belgian Linen and produced by Libeco. It is digitally printed on water-based eco-friendly inks here in the United States. Keeping production in the United States has always been important as well as thinking about the long-term impacts of that production. Currently, all orders are made to order, which means zero-waste production. I have been calling it micro-manufacturing. We only produce was the customer needs. That is not only better for the environment, but allows us to change up our offerings and offer new patterns and colorways without stock that wasn’t popular sitting on shelves and creating waste. We want to create products people love now and can continue to love for generations, and nothing more. The bespoke line can be purchased through our website www.daleandblue.com and you can shop other fabrics and home decor items at our Spoonflower site, https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/daleandblue. The pattern offerings differ and so do the price points, allowing us to reach more people and help them build their perfect home.

Since day one, linen has been the only base fabric dale & blue uses. And it continues to be the only fabric-by-the-yard option. While that could change in the future, we haven’t found any downside to linen. It is durable, hypoallergenic, antibacterial, and fungicidal. Linen is durable and gets softer with every wash. Linen is twice as strong as cotton and much more eco-friendly to produce. We could keep going, but hopefully, you get the point, we are die-hard linen lovers and hope you become one too.

If you are new to dale & blue one thing to know is that all things are considered. We started with a simple philosophy: People over things.

We love things; it’s why we make them. But that should never come at the expense of the people who make them or the environment. With every decision, we consider the deeper impact and make the best choice with those values in mind. Concentrating on craftsmanship and design we create heirloom products to last generations.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

I am sure any business owner has heard this advice before, but it is because it is so true. Start an email list early, and foster it often. When I first started my business I didn’t understand the importance of having my own email list and being able to communicate directly to customers without competing with the noise and algorithms of social media. When a customer chooses to give you their personal email that is an invitation to be welcomed directly into their inbox, don’t underestimate that power. It has been the biggest way I have built trust, community, and direct conversation with customers interested in dale & blue. Email marketing is also one of the few forms of communication that protect both the business and the customer, which also adds to the trust factor. They have to opt in to receive emails from you, and you in return get ownership of your list, it can’t be lost or shut down like Instagram accounts. If I could change one thing from the very early days of launching my business it would be to start my list sooner and leverage it more often. I used to think people didn’t want to hear from me, or I was bugging them, now if I miss a weekly email people wonder where I have gone! It is also a great way to speak in a longer format, to storytell, to offer insights, and to build community.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I don’t know if it is a lesson I had to unlearn, but one I really had to embrace is “You, don’t know what you don’t know.” Starting a business is hard and daunting, and even the most prepared of individuals are going to find themselves facing a problem or situation they could have never accounted for starting out. When that happens, I have to remind myself; that it is okay not to know, it is okay to have to ask for help and it is okay to figure it out (or make it up) as your business progresses. Google became my best friend when I was starting out. No one gets all the pieces before they start, so just start. In the beginning for me, it was a lot of the business stuff. I was an art major in college and had a lot of experience on the creative side of running a business, but the business side of running a business was totally new. The best advice I ever got was to set it up correctly. So I got a lawyer to help set up my LLC legally, I talked to an accountant to help me set up my books correctly, and still use one every year to help file taxes correctly. Just because my day-to-day is still a one-woman operation doesn’t mean I don’t know when to utilize experts and people that specialize in things outside my wheelhouse. So maybe it was the myth of you can do it all yourself I had to unlearn. No one does it all by themselves, so reach out early to people with more experience and build a team of individuals you can trust.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.daleandblue.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daleandblue
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-hylant
• Other: Business email: [email protected] Spoonflower shop: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/daleandblue