We were lucky to catch up with Michelle Yozzo Drake recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Michelle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Stonington Designs began with a Christmas gift. At that time I was working full time as an executive director at an assisted living community and my husband as an engineering director for a large commercial construction company. Our son was trying to find a beautiful hitch cover of Block Island for his new truck and was having a hard time finding something that he liked. So for Christmas, my husband made him a mahogany with maple inlay hitch cover…and Kevin loved it! His girlfriend (now his wife) asked for a mermaid hitch cover for her birthday and Rich knew he needed an artist’s touch to pull a mermaid off. That is where I came in. My side hustle has always been my painting-a creative outlet for me since my college days. And so Rich asked me to help with the design and Lauren got her mermaid. The kids started getting asked by friends and strangers for the website to buy the hitch covers. Our business was born.

I left the assisted living in late 2020 to help care for my mom. Our new, creative business helped me have flexibility to do that. We began with only hitch covers and called ourselves Hitch-Crafter. And that is how we began. All of this woodworking was creating a large amount of “end cuts” (what you have left over when you cut wood for a project) and we saved it all knowing that someday we would make something beautiful from it.

2023 we figured it out! After taking a class in Nantucket Basket Weaving, I knew that what I wanted to do with our end cuts was make wood, woven jewelry and a new line was launched. We loved the idea of no waste.

With this and other lines it made sense to rebrand from Hitch-Crafter to Stonington Designs. The Jewelry line has taken off in a way we could not have predicted…the wholesale side of our business is booming, so much that we developed a new Military Spouse Weaving Program. So now our success is tied directly to helping military families which, as Air Force Parents (our other son is a pilot), makes us happy.

Michelle, 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?

Stonington Designs was co-founded by my husband Rich and me. We have been together for 40+ years and the keys to our working relationship being successful are respect and communication (much like our marriage). We both have a healthy respect for how our skills compliment each other. Rich as a craftsman and I as an artist. Rich is introverted and I am extroverted…we divide the duties up to reflect each of our strengths. Rich is in charge of production, efficiency and the wood shop/I am in charge of design, marketing, financials and the weaving & jewelry production. We are stronger together than we are apart as a business and personally. This is a passion career shift for both of us and it feels perfect to be doing it together.

Our business creates tomorrow’s heirlooms today. Mahogany with Maple inlay Hitch Covers in over 60 designs (and custom), bracelets and earrings made with traditional weaving techniques but using exotic woods (Purple Heart, Ebony, Holly, Koa, and Rosewood to name a few). We work with wood in new and innovative ways, always trying to push the creative envelope. We always love to hear from our customers that they have never seen anything like this before or how it was a favorite gift this season. It means we are pushing ourselves creatively to become more with this business.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

One of the unique things about our business is that we are truly makers…we make 95% of the componentry that we need to make what we sell and 100% of the wood componentry. In order to do this, we needed to research and then purchase some big machines in the beginning of our business. It was pretty scary, I’m not gonna lie! We started the business with a $17k CNC machine and some steep learning curves. Rich is a process engineer, so he jumped right into this part with both feet…I as a businesswoman and artist had some real studying to do to learn how to design in a language the machine would understand. Then there was the intial financial investment. I am proud that we were both brave and had faith in each other and ourselves.

In the first year we got a custom commission to create large 3D carvings of the Stations of the Cross in 3 ft x 4 ft mahogany slabs for a church in NY (not exactly what we thought we would be creating, but many of my paintings hung in churches and parish centers so we had artistic credibility as well as craftsmanship cred) I had to learn 3D design and Rich 3D carving but the commission was enough to cover the whole investment in our CNC machine…so we learned quick! I am so proud of the beautiful work we did together that people will find comfort in for years to come.

In manufacturing troubleshooting skills and an appetite for learning new things has served us well. We are looking at buying our 3rd CNC machine in 2024 and we have learned a lot about what type of equipment is the right fit for our product lines.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Best advice for navigating a system for effective branding and audience growth on social media is choose one to focus on to begin with and don’t reinvent the wheel. After doing some research we decided on Instagram and found an amazing expert ( @theinstagramexptert ) and started with their base program RSG and then took their advice on how to create a strong presence on Instagram. It saved me so much time in navigating a new platform and has led to some very successful collaborations and press coverage.

The most successful approach in my marketing has been to lead with curiosity. All my communications with a potential collaboration partner or new store has been curiosity about their business and how we might help each other instead of what can they do for me. It feels less aggressive and had yielded some great results. Wonderful stores and resorts on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Cape Cod carrying our lines and even a shop in Italy…all a direct result of engaging on Instagram.

Our feed ( @StoningtonDesigns ) is linked to the bottom of our website, so it keeps the website current with all our new stuff and beautiful images of our products without having to post twice.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.StoningtonDesigns.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/stoningtondesigns
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/stoningtondesigns