We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dallas Dellinger Hlatky. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dallas below.
Dallas, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
Merle Works was inspired by the spirit of radical innovation pioneered in the Skunk Works division of Lockheed Martin during the second World War. They were endeavoring to build fighter jets. My Merle Works, (the Merle being inspired by my pandemic puppy with a mottled, tie-dyed like coat), is also a high-flying attempt. I took an honest and faithful leap out of my career in the hospitality industry, and believed, as the saying goes, that the net would appear. It was a risk I would have been hard pressed to take in any other year, but in 2020, it seemed like the only honest choice.
I started my company during the pandemic, on a whim, to make use of all my time at home. As I channeled my anxieties into this creative project, parts of myself I had long ignored came back into focus. At the time I was the COO of a restaurant group and we were at a standstill. Even before the pandemic, I was at a crossroads in my career and ready for a change, even if I wasn’t quite sure what it’d be. I had made some tie-dyed socks and stumbled into a product that friends and family were eager to claim for holiday gifts. I needed to package and tag them, and made tags with a zigzag sharpie on the label – something eye-catching and easily replicable. A zigzag MW seemed like just the fit. It all came together which means I didn’t have the chance to overthink it!
Dallas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
As a young person I always dreamed of being a writer and an artist. I always had an idea of having my own creative, crafty business, whether it was a greeting card company or, as my college roommate remembers me saying, “a shoelace company.” I wanted to put things out in the world that would amuse and delight and not cause harm.
I went to NYU and was a junior living in downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001. School shut down and we were stuck in our dorm rooms watching CNN, worried and arguing about what to do next. I turned to my journals and took out a greeting card I’d been holding on to. When I turned it over, I noticed the company’s address was just a few blocks away. Knowing I needed to get out of my dorm room and into a productive environment, I reached out that company. It would be were I spend the first 11 years of my career, honing my editorial skills, training on how to be a designer, and working hand in hand with young, successful entrepreneurs. It was absolutely formative — a life changing experience.
I left Quotable Cards to try something new and work with family. I went to a growing restaurant and branding company and worked on the business side of things — everything from project management, people operations, and finance. It took another global calamity (the pandemic) for me to change directions and head back to my first love of being on the creative side of things. Because Merle Works was born during the pandemic, which was also a time of major life reevaluation for me, I decided if I was going to finally give my own creative company a go, I wanted to be as true to myself as possible and adhere to my core values.
In this digital world we live in, creating tangible goods with a real, inherent value gave me a clarity of purpose. Working with my hands (with rubber gloves on!) means I spend hours away from screens. That time is so valuable to me. The goods I make are intended to spark joy and human connection — colorful useful items with magic messages that make for inspired giving and receiving. They are made by humans, for humans, on a human scale. There’s no over-production, plastic doohickies or excessive packaging. I want each person who touches Merle Works to feel the human behind it, and feel the lifelong dream behind the project. It should feel special, wonderful, magical.
None of this is rocket science, or especially breakthrough thinking, but it does feel like I’m living a zag when the world is zigging. And I believe my success is because what I am putting out in the world feels different.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
From the beginning, I had a vision that I would primarily be a wholesale business. I had experience from my time at Quotable Cards and I knew that if I could get my product into retail stores and they sold, I’d have a repeat business that would create a cash flow that would make me viable. I’ve always looked at my DTC business channel as gravy and focused most of my energy on growing the wholesale channel. Early on, I asked my good friend Rebecca Biskaduros, owner and curator of the incredible Sea + Green in Cambria, CA (formerly of Asbury Park, NJ, where I’m located), for advice. She immediately pointed me to Faire.com, where shopowners connect with makers and wholesalers. It was probably the best piece of information I could have ever gotten. When I had been in the wholesale gift industry 8 years before, it was still primarily done through networks of sales reps across the country. I was excited to learn about Faire and how a small one-woman business like myself could create an online shop and immediately be connected to the best independent shops around the globe! Faire provides a ton of back end support in terms of invoicing, packing slips, inventory management, marketing tools, and payables. It’s also a platform where stores can find you. The downside is that the commission structure can sometimes feel steep, especially when you are a business like mine where everything is hand-dyed, hand-tied, and time intensive. Still, it’s been incredible worthwhile. I wouldn’t be where I am today without a wholesale platform like Faire.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Having started during the pandemic, it’s been a wild few years. The interesting thing is, as challenging is Covid was to the economy, I have heard from some buyers (who’ve been in business for decades) that Covid was some of the busiest times they’ve ever experienced. People were focused on shopping small and supporting local businesses, they had extra money coming in from government subsidies, and less places to spend it.
I moved into a beautiful studio outside my own in July of 2022 because I knew to grow the business I needed a proper place to work and scale production. When the wholesale market started to contract a bit in 2023 I wasn’t meeting wholesale goals, and now I had rent to make. But I was able to make that space work for me. I’ve started a whole new channel of my business in events. I hosted birthday parties for kids and adults, I teach dye workshops, I have Open Studios were I bring other artists in so our communities can connect and we can share our work. It’s not something I anticipated (I thought I’d be too busy pumping out socks!), but it has bridged the financial gap and at a time when I really needed it, and more than than, it’s been incredibly rewarding. It turns out, I LOVE teaching! And people who sign up for creative workshops are generally really wonderful people. It’s helped me grow a community, meet so many new friends, and feel a level of support that has sustained me through all the inevitable ups and downs of early entrepreneurship. It’s been a gift.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.merle.works
- Instagram: @merle.works
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dallas-dellinger-hlatky-05697495/
Image Credits
Ciara Perrone (photos 2, 3, 4, 5)