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

Nicole, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

As an active duty member of the military, I love the idea of honoring veterans and those who have served before me. I never intended on my business becoming more than a little side hustle, but after going viral in December of 2020, I realized that there are a lot of people in this country that also love their military and love to honor them. I love to say that each wreath tells a story. The amount of stories I get to hear from loved ones, family members, and veterans themselves is amazing. I love sharing their stories on my Facebook page and I think it’s great how my wreaths can continue to honor their service.

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

I served in the Marine Corps for four years, and I am coming up on serving four years in the Air Force, so I have a bit of a unique military background. While in the Air Force, the fatigue pattern had switched, and I was thinking of a what to do with the old fatigues I had. While home on leave in July of 2020, my mother and I came up with a way to affix the cut up uniform onto a wreath, and that is how the prototype was born. After I had posted this to my personal Facebook, I had friends and family recommend I try to sell them. After advertising here and there on a few military Facebook pages, I was receiving about 1-2 orders a week. Then, in December of 2020, I was asked by a friend if I’d like to do a “live” (COVID-Zoom) interview with our local news station about the wreaths. I was happy to get the free publicity and jumped at the opportunity. After the interview aired, my friend told me they loved it so much that they sent it to 20 other news affiliates throughout the country. Right away my Facebook began exploding with messages, and I realized very quickly that I needed to create a website and do all the necessary steps to officially become a small business. Immediately after this, People Magazine, Fox News, Late Night with David Muir, CBS in the Morning, and many other smaller news organizations had reached out to me asking to do an interview. In 9 days I had 240 orders on my site, and needed to begin a waitlist, which eventually reached up to 1,800 entires within the next few months. I am proud that I handled those few weeks with such grace and professionalism because I definitely had a handful of trolls, jealous crafters, and cranky customers who believed their orders should skip the line for one reason or another.
Since then, I’ve crafted about 1,400 wreaths, all while on active duty, and my waitlist has dwindled down to about 800 people. I find ways to donate to K9’s for Warriors, as well as local military raffles and fundraisers. I am about to have a child in October and exit the military, while my husband stays active duty, which will allow me to be a mom and work on wreaths full time. My goal is to get through this waitlist!
I think the main thing that has made me successful is my priority to customer service. I have people reach out to me on a daily basis, and I always make sure to answer their questions in a timely manner. Also, I am more than happy to interact with them to make sure they receive the exact product they like. In addition to customers sending their uniforms for me to make wreaths with, I have received enough donations so people without uniforms can also order wreaths. I believe this makes my business more inclusive and allows anyone who wants to honor a veteran do so.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I got married while in the military, and my husband is also active duty. When we discussed the want to have children, we also had to have a hard talk about how we wanted to raise our children. My mother was a stay at home mom with part time jobs and went back to school in her later years to become a teacher. However, my Air Force career was blooming, and I had potential to do really great things. My mother became sick a few years ago and has since passed away, and the one thing that really stuck out to me was how she would always say, “You and your brother were the best thing to happen to me.” This statement really changed the way I think about life and careers, and after her passing, it was a no brainer to get out of the military and raise my children. I have put myself in a great place with my small business to where it won’t financially ruin our family, and I am excited for this new adventure. It was a very hard pill to swallow at first, but remembering why we are put on this planet, in my mind, to raise a family, grounds me and my decisions.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I believe in order for this business to blossom, I’ve had to overcome a lot of emotional and physical boundaries. When my business became popular, in addition to my active duty contract, I was working at a local small business on the weekends for some extra money. Once the wreaths became very popular, I had to drop the second job, but for a few months I was practically working three jobs. It was very mentally and physically demanding. I knew this business had potential, however, so I kept at it. Also, because I was not technically a business when I became viral, I had to learn a lot on the fly. During this journey, I continually found problems and questions that I could not get resolved quickly, and it was becoming increasingly frustrating to find quick solutions and quick answers. I’ve had to quickly rely on friends and personal resources to get me through the initial first hump of owning a business, but I kept my head down and continued to research and do whatever it took to get myself established.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wreathsbynicolep.com
• Instagram: @wreathsbynicolep
• Facebook: Wreaths By Nicole P

Image Credits
Myself or my husband took all the photos.