We were lucky to catch up with Bria Fleming recently and have shared our conversation below.

Bria, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Wildland firefighters’ uniforms are notoriously terrible for fit. Take pants as an example. The sizes you have to choose from are Small through XXXL. Each size is built to the largest parameter, and you control for the extra via a couple of little cinching mechanisms build into the waistband. Best case scenario, you have uniform pants that are a little uncomfortable (chafing, pulling, etc), and feel like you are wearing an oversized duffle bag to work. Worst case scenario, you are tripping over your own “protective” apparel all day, fighting against the parts of the garment that would either restrict your movement or sag to the point they get in your way. All the while, you are also attempting to manage the growing fatigue of performing like an athlete, 16 hours a day, 14 days at a time. To me, this is in no way a safe or acceptable. Our industry is rife with hazards and our uniforms should not be one of them. I remember sitting around the dinner table with my crew one night in 2015, trading complaints and playing the “wouldn’t it be nice if…” game. Better pocket placement. Better feature options. Garments shaped like actual humans. I mentioned that I had some sewing skills and had been altering my own uniform pretty extensively, which lead to a discussion that very much sounded like the beginning of a business model. At the time it felt like blowing off steam. But a year later, Incidental Sewing & Design (now called Incidental Wildland) went live.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’ve been creating things with fabric as long as I can remember. I was an imaginative kid, always wanting to be in costume. Long before I ever had an actual sewing machine, I started making my own costumes with my mom’s iron and Stitch Witchery tape. One day my mom came home from garage-saling with an old Montgomery Ward machine, and things escalated from there. I was that nerd who made Elvish cloaks for all her friends and then dragged them to the Lord of the Rings movie premiers. In college I got a job in the theater department’s costume shop, and it was there that a really learned how to sew clothing. I remember acknowledging how much I enjoyed this trade, and despite generally having no idea what I really wanted to do with my life I think I even applied to a few sewing jobs before graduation. But it was 2009, so there were no jobs to be had. Lacking other ideas, I signed up to be a volunteer with Americorps NCCC. In the introduction packet they sent, there was mention of a wildland fire team, and if you wanted to be on this team you had to pass something called a pack test. I didn’t know what any of this meant but it sounded badass so naturally I signed up, and I found myself doing prescribed burns for The Nature Conservancy in western Iowa. I was hooked from the minute there was fire on the ground, and spent the next several years pursuing work as what is now called a Prescribed Fire Technician. In 2016, I also threw my had in the ring to start going out west to work fire suppression as an AD, or casual hire.

2016 was also the year that Incidental began (see above). My first year in business, I was taking every sewing job I could find and making fire stuff on the side. Sourcing fabric was and continues to be a struggle, as manufacturers generally are not used to working with nano-producers like myself. I think in 2016 I probably made less than a dozen garments, and did a handful of alterations and repairs. I tried paid advertising, but in such a niche industry I didn’t see much of a return on that. It was a full-on struggle for about two years. Fire paychecks from going out west as an AD were pretty much the only thing keeping my head above water. I had the difficult realization that this might never be the full-time self-sustaining business that I wanted it to be, and I went back to pursuing more reliable seasonal work in wildland fire.

It turns out that taking that pressure off myself was one of the best decisions I’ve made since Incidental’s inception. In the intervening years, I’ve watched this business steadily grow, mostly by word of mouth, into a company that produces about 100 garments per year and about twice as many accessories. It has gone from something that felt like a failed attempt to a massive creative outlet that engages the minds of my colleagues as well as my own. As much fun as I have on fire assignments, it makes me look forward to coming home at the end of a roll, being my own boss, and serving my professional community in a different way. The work we do is extremely difficult, and I feel as though the products I make ease that burden sometimes just a little, but sometimes a lot.

I am not a good self-promoter in general, but I think the thing I’d most like my clients to know is that none of my products are priced for profit. Incidental is a job that has the ability to fill in the gaps around fire, and as such I’m happy as long as I can pay myself a fair wage. I don’t do paid advertising, and I don’t ascribe to the wildland mark-up that you see with so many large manufacturers. I only raise my prices when supply inputs go up. When you purchase something from me, you pay for exactly what you get. Nothing more, nothing less.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

I am a bit of a stubborn Do-It-Yourselfer, even when it comes to things I know nothing about like tech and web design. Finding a streamlined way of selling a complex customizable product has been difficult and called for a lot of trial and error. I started with a Squarespace storefront, and quickly realized this was extremely expensive, and cumbersome to create listings with the amount of nuance I needed. I then gave Etsy a try, but their limit of two variables per product wasn’t workable for what I was trying to sell. On the other hand their shipping tools saved me a ton of time when it came to smaller more frequently-sold products, and their inherent marketing was bringing in lots of new business. .
Ultimately I split things up. I still use both Etsy and Squarespace. I sell accessories on Etsy for the expediency, and I use the Squarespace for everything else. I use Google Forms as my platform for ordering garments as these forms are endlessly customizable, and PayPal for sending invoices.

Have you ever had to pivot?

See middle of the “About You” question: pivoting from the attempt at a full-time business to a side-hustle

Contact Info:

• Website: www.incidentalwildland.com
• Instagram: @incidentalwildland
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/incidentalwildland