We recently connected with Nick + Leanne Polidore and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nick + Leanne thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Adaptability/Transparency. Everything we do we view as an experiment. From our designs, social media to how you can order from us. We try our hardest to allow customers to tell us what it working and what isn’t. It’s important to be able to drop an idea that isn’t succeeding. For a small business like ours we leverage what makes us different than a larger company and that is how quickly we can make changes and implement them. For example. If we do a photoshoot those images can be up the same day or if we want to put out a new design. Our process for that is much shorter. Especially since Leanne prototypes, patterns and produces our bags. We even take this approach when interacting with our customers. We show them a lot of the behind the scene and other kinds of content you just wouldn’t see from a big bag company. We aren’t trying to hide anything and our customers really respond to that.

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

We both went to University of the Arts in Philadelphia for Illustration.

Leanne Art Directed for a small company in Philadelphia called Printfresh. They’ve since pivoted their business to produce patterned pajamas and accessories. She directed a group of artist on fashion trends and they created prints that large fashion companies would purchase for their collection. Having been immersed in fashion she really has a depth of knowledge to pull from and a keen eye for beautiful shapes.

Nick worked as a Assistant General Manager at Whole Foods Market where honed his business skills. A life long learner he has always kept many creative hobbies from cooking, cheesemaking, beer/wine making, gardening, photography, and even taxidermy. He is always reading non-fiction about business, marketing, psychology, branding, and leadership.

By chance a friend of ours gave us some leather that he saved from the landfill. His work was throwing it away and he thought he could find someone that would be able to use it instead of wasting this material. We sat on this leather for a few years before we picked it up and really started to experiment with it. Leanne made a few catch-all bowls lined with shearling and fabric and Nick made himself a wallet and a knife sheath. It was at that point Nick felt we could start a business making leather goods.

Our first sewing machine was a Singer Patcher we purchased off craigslist. We quickly realized this was not ideal for bag making. The bobbin was too small it could only take up to 92 thread and was powered by treadle foot. Armed with this knowledge and after much research we purchased an industrial sewing machine and started designing . We started our small business journey doing shows with Clover Market a local craft/makers market. With the money we made from these shows we reinvested in equipment like our burnisher to speed up our process. We also realized we would need to find a consistent source of leather. As luck would have it Wickett & Craig one of the last vegetable tanned leather tanneries is located in our home state of Pennsylvania. We tried samples of a few different companies but kept coming back to Wickett & Craig. With our raw materials set and shows booked we started to hit a good stride. We had no idea how markets were going to go for us but the feedback and sales we got from them was encouraging. Each interaction taught us something new about our potential customers.

When Covid hit, we lost our revenue source of doing Spring and Fall markets. At that point we began focusing on website sales. Leanne had the idea to try out Instagram’s new feature at the time. Instagram Lives. To our surprise people tuned in to watch us make bags, talk small business and leather craft. We slowly started gaining a following and growing. In March of 2020 we launched 3 new designs and were featured in Philadelphia magazine which we really feel helped kickstart awareness of our small business.

Since then we’ve built up a solid following on our social media, discontinued and released many more designs, are both employed full time by our business and have changed our ordering process completely. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Domestika in Madrid where we filmed a leather working course that will be launching sometime this year. It’s been quite the interesting ride while also raising our 4 year old son. As we look to the future we hope to expand to the place where we can move our operation to a warehouse where we can have a showroom, train others on how to make our bags, and cultivate the creative community we both experienced in college. That way we can maintain small batch production and our high standards while we grow.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We were completely bootstrapped. Leanne and Nick both worked full time when we started Hemlock and Hyde as a side hustle. From the beginning it was our goal to put all profit back into the business. With the birth of our son in 2018 we had a big decision to make about where our new business would go. We decided that Leanne would stay home and we would give it one year to see if it was a feasible to continue. It was a difficult year but we decided to continue pursing Hemlock and Hyde and came up with a plan to push us forward.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

We are very active on social media. We try our best to answer all questions we get via DM and email. It can be difficult to maintain but we strongly feel it goes a long way. Often followers are surprised we give thoughtful answers and that we are willing to share information with them.

We have weekly unstructured Live Streams on Instagram every Thursday at 10:30am EST. Where we answer questions from what our favorite movie is to what kind of tools we use. We also give sneak peeks of new designs, updates, and other Hemolock and Hyde news.

We also share behind the scenes content like prototyping new bags, what’s on our workbench, and what books we are currently enjoying.

We send out a survey at least once a year to get the pulse of customers and potential customers and give them an opportunity to share anything they want with us. We then take this info and make changes to our business. Our new “Pre-Loved” program was pitched to us from a customer and it just fit perfectly with the kind of business we want to be. Instead of getting rid of your old bag you can send it in to us for a percentage off your next purchase and we’ll re-home your old bag after giving it some love by conditioning it and making any necessary repairs.

Lastly, we do our best to communicate any changes as clearly as possible through our newsletter, website, blog, and all social channels. The last thing customers want is to be surprised (in a bad way). We try to align all expectations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hemlockandhyde.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hemlockandhyde/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HemlockandHyde/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hemlock-and-hyde/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hemlockandhyde

Image Credits
Nick Polidore