We were lucky to catch up with Jon Wick recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I consider myself an ‘accidental entrepreneur’ as I had no formal training in graphic design and very little retail experience before starting the business. 5518 Designs really grew organically out of my graduate studies in Technical Communications. I began receiving requests for various creative projects after completing a mountain bike race rebrand for my graduate studies. At its most basic level, I simply enjoyed being creative and helping others through creative solutions and problem solving. Through client work, I learned the process of creating custom apparel and merchandise, which led to and invitation to sell our own items at our community’s farmer’s market. These became such a fun community building event, but also an opportunity to create a small line of our own goods. This provided a more diverse offering besides freelance graphic design, as well as an informal feasibility study. When a customer asked us where they could get our apparel for Christmas gifts, it dawned on my wife and I that we may want to investigate a storefront.
A few weeks later, we made the leap and purchased a building in the historic business core of Butte, expanded our offerings, and began selling our items.
Butte is a historic mining town, with a rich history. When we were discussing the chance to open a store, we realized that rather than waiting of other people and businesses to move into the area, we may be the people that we were waiting for. We wanted to help create a vibrant, community-oriented business that this community could be proud of… and specifically locate it in the heart of our historic uptown district.
This is embodies in the art that we have become known for, that we call Simple Places. It is specifically simple, using vibrant colors celebrating all things that we Montanan’s and visitors to Montana enjoy.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a midwestern kid, growing up in Wisconsin, the youngest of three brothers. I attended the University of Northern Iowa and got a bachelors degree in elementary education. Teaching was the vehicle that brought me to Montana, a fifth grade job in a small, rural town. I fell in love with the mountains, lifestyle, and people in southwest Montana. I eventually met my wife, Cassie, and after traveling and teaching in Asia for a year, we came back to Butte for the next chapter of life.

I was burnt out on teaching and searching for another purpose when my wife pointed to my photography and writing skills hobby as a possible next career. I enrolled in the graduate department at Montana Technological University to hone those skills. Soon I was being asked to create a variety of creative projects; writing, print layouts, video, websites, merchandising, photography, logos and visuals. It was a natural progress when I graduated to continue freelancing as a creative. I realized that even while I was a teacher, I was using creative problem solving, what I started was another extension of that.

At the time and even still today, Butte has a wealth of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop shops that may not have the resources or skills themselves for dedicated branding work. When the word started spreading about services I was providing, there was no shortage of work.

One of the most rewarding part of what I do is seeing the work I do help develop other businesses and being a part of helping other business dreams come true.

When more of my more evolved toward client merchandising, I developed a few pieces to use internally as thank you gifts and adverting. Surprisingly, people offered to buy more of these products and led to a realization that I could produce retail items. This would also be a revenue source that could balance out slow times on the design side.

It was at that time, 2015, when I was diagnosed with rectal cancer. That fight is truly as difficult as anything you’ll go through. Cassie and I were enveloped by the community through fundraisers and meals dropped off at our house. It was,strangely enough, the most challenging and rewarding experience. I am celebrating eight years being cancer free.

I did my best to pick up where I left off once I was able, and created a few products of our own design. With Cassie’s support and hep, we ran a successful farmers market booth in 2016. That gave us enough confidence to start looking at storefronts to house the design studio as well as a small retail space.

The client work, the farmers market experience, the community response to my fight with cancer really provided insight to this special town. We wanted to contribute and give back and recognized that we might be the people to fill one of the many storefronts left vacant from the last boom and bust period. We could then become an agent of change in our community, becoming an example of entrepreneurial success, and investing and building our business in the heart of what makes this place so special.

We opened 5518 Designs in November of 2016 when there were very few businesses like ours investing and opening in that area of town. We’re proud to say that in the last seven years, we have contributed to a steady growth of businesses investing and opening in our neighborhood, as well as several thriving festivals. We also have several programs that support and give back to our community to further our mission, whether that’s our guest Artist Series collaborations, sponsoring events or our Choose your Charity campaign.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Because of the organic growth of the business there isn’t one specific example that sticks out as a reputation building strategy. From my days of teaching, I valued every student in my classroom, and that translated to each client I was trying to help. I focused on transparancy- if I couldn’t do a particular project or figure it out, I would let them know and help find a person who could. I worked directly with clients putting in the time to sit down and listen to their goals and dreams. Even in our digitial age, there is value in giving your time to others and I believe people respond to that. And, of course, i was creating items that others would use and share on my behalf, so it was essential that whatever solution I would create for clients had to be great. All those interactions and experiences what I create add up. There’s nothing more powerful than a word of mouth reference, particularly in a small town.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

We’ve created several ‘branches’ or offshoots of 5518 Designs over the years that could be considered different revenue streams and recently launched a second brand.

Our highest profile entity is our storefront and retail in Butte. We opened a small outlet store in Anaconda, a small town about seventeen miles away in cooperation with a hostel. We do a little wholesale of our 5518 branded apparel around the state and sell through our website. I also continue to do a small amount of client design work. Any of these, if we leaned into them properly could develop into a stand alone business venture.

In 2022, we launched a second brand and retail store in uptown Butte called Dig City Supply. This is our college/school focused retail experience. We have a great working relationship with Montana Tech and the area schools and saw a need to help people more easily support and celebrate their schools.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.5518designs.com
• Instagram: 5518designs
• Facebook: 5518designs
• Other: www.shop5518.com (e-commerce specific site) Dig City Supply: Instagram.com/digcitysupply Facebook.com/digcitysupply