We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matt Bramlette a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Matt, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The idea for our gift shop Mid Coast Modern came from my quest for a new job. I was a Graphic Designer / Art Director for many years and got burned out on the industry. There was a lot of “forced” creativity where people were complaining and didn’t really like what they were doing. I knew I wanted to stay with something creative so rather than brainstorming traditional careers, I made a list of things I liked to do. Travel was definitely on top and one of the things I like to do when visiting a new city is find unique local shops to check out. Those shops are filled with cool, creative, independently designed and sometimes handmade goods. My check boxes were adding up. I thought I would be good at curating a shop and I’d get to be creative and work with other creatives that actually loved what they were doing.
The Bear Soap Company was a totally unplanned development. We bought a sample “do it yourself soap kit” that made 4 bars of soap. It was a conversation starter with our friends that make Pickwick & Co candles and they passed off some old soap making supplies and we decided to play around with it. It’s continually grown ever since to be as significant as the gift shop. We wholesale all over the country and locally and all the product is made at Mid Coast.

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

[I think I answered a lot of this question with my long answer to the first question.]

Our shop Mid Coast Modern focuses on small brands, handmade, and about 50% local goods. We aren’t a Kansas City souvenir shop, but we have some cool things made here. We also carry stuff from all over the country so we have a uniquely curated selection that changes out regularly. As a gift shop we carry a wide range of categories. Top selling items include candles, our bath products, greeting cards, jewelry and glassware.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Our bath and body brand, Bear Soap Company is manufactured in the back of our gift shop. I had no experience making bath products or running a retail store. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak and been pretty good at figuring stuff out. It definitely isn’t easy to start a business let alone two at basically the same time. The Bear Soap Co. grew out of us starting a brand just to have more to sell at the shop and because I’m a designer, I enjoy creating brands. So, it was more of a hobby in the beginning. I printed all the labels on our ink jet printer and hand cut them for well over a year. As we added more and more products being able to source supplies at a good price became a challenge. There isn’t just one website for all your needs. I source materials from around 10-15 sites. Once the business had outgrown myself and Rick [who also had another busy full-time job] I knew it was time to hire help. We lucked out with a great team that has been with us for many years. All the team members can also work the shop.
The brand currently has 9 products that include, body soap, solid shampoo, solid cologne, bath soak, bath bombs, shower steamers, beard wash, beard balm, beard oil, shower steamers and toilet bombs [an alternative to room spray]. We have 3 new products that should launch this year. With the soaps alone we have 12 scents.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Like I mentioned before, I made a big career pivot going from advertising to owning a retail shop and soap company. Those two businesses have had a number of pivots.

With Mid Coast I had to pivot on the type of products we carry. Though it’s not completely changed, it’s quite a bit different than when it started. I had to let go of the idea that everything I carried was my own particular taste. Mainly because I don’t usually like popular stuff. That’s not gonna work in a retail shop. So, I paid more attention to what the KC shoppers wanted.
Another big pivot was opening up a second store, called Soap Bar. It was to be an extension of Bear Soap Company and it’s own bath and body store. It was going well until the pandemic hit. With the loss of so many shops on our street, the foot traffic dropped off. During this time Bear Soap Co was asked to have a booth in the Made in Kansas City Marketplace store on the Plaza. That turned out to be a pleasant surprise and A LOT more work. So, after the success of that, and with continual foot traffic issues, we decided to close Soap Bar and merge back to Mid Coast. We did a full remodel of Mid Coast to integrate the brands and moved our production back to it’s original spot. We looked at this as a way to also focus on our satellite locations at Made in KC and focus more on growing wholesale as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bearsoapcompany.com, www.midcoastmodernkc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebearsoapcompany/ , https://www.instagram.com/midcoastkc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/midcoastmodern , https://www.facebook.com/thebearsoapcompany
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbramlette/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mid-coast-modern-kansas-city?osq=mid+coast+modern