We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Eastwood a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mike, appreciate you joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
There are plenty of cheese shops. But I don’t know of any other anywhere that exclusively represents American makers. which is what we’ve done from our company’s onset. Our business is 100% American brands – cheeses, cured meats and artisan products all made right here in America, and in the case of our farmer market vendors, local to San Diego.
Our business started in our local, San Diego Farmer’s Markets. In fact, we’re still there every Sunday at the La Jolla Open Aire Market. The markets are where we grew our brand for 5 years before having the confidence to open our first brick and mortar store.
We opened our shop just 4 weeks before the pandemic hit. Great timing, right? With all of the Farmer’s Markets being shut down, we invited our fellow farmer friends to come and set up pop-up tents in front of our store. Our business went full circle from a farmer market stand to a shop with farmers! We did this so that our farmers could continue to sell their fresh produce and maintain a revenue stream during those pretty bleak times all-the-while providing our community with access to farm-fresh produce and farmer market products.
We still do this today but with a variety of market vendors. In our 2 years of brick and mortar existence, we’ve done over 100 popups at no cost to the vendor – that’s our way of giving back.
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
My wife, jenny, and I lived in New York City for close to 20 years. We were ready for a change – a big change. We moved to Byron Bay, Australia (I’m from Australia) which is where we started hatching ideas for a business. We always wanted to do something in cheese, which is my wife’s passion. For a while there, Jenny used to work at Murray’s Cheese shop in NYC which is where her drive for cheese began. One thing led to another and we came back to to the US and started Smallgoods. In Australia, we call small meats/cured meats “Smallgoods” -so that’s where we got the name for our shop.
I’m most product of the fact that we’re doing everything we can to support our US artisans. We have nothing against the European imports, but our hometown guys need the attention and the support. It’s their time to shine. We love working with the makers that we’ve gotten to know, appreciate and enjoy. It’s our unwavering tenacity to support the US makers that I think sets us apart. We are constantly bringing in new products from across the US. Our customers love the diversity of our offerings and that “oh wow” factor of their taste, quality and that they’re are all domestically produced.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
We are pandemic small business survivors.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Yes, when we opened a shop and then 4 weeks later 60% of similar business were shut down due to the pandemic. We didn’t shut down – we became an Essential Service to our community. We didn’t “pivot” which is a term commonly used. during the pandemic – we simply leaned-in to what we already knew in order to surive.
Contact Info:
- Website: smallgoodsusa.com
- Instagram: @smallgoods_
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smallgoodsUSA/
- Linkedin: –
- Twitter: @smallgoodsusa
- Youtube: Smallgoods Cheese Shop & Cafe
- Yelp: smallgoods