We recently connected with Rachel DeCavage and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I was really struggling with coming up with a clever name, whether or not it should be personal, or practical, and how much it should say about my business. But the whole reason I started a business was to do the things I love to do for those 40 hours a week. After a week or two of flip-flopping, I decided that the name should capture a feeling, more than an explanation, of who we were.

cinder + salt is the residue of a weekend well spent; the scent of campfire on your clothes and the taste of saltwater on your skin.

It’s my mission to promote eco-optimism and remind people of happy times spent in nature. I love explaining the name to people and seeing the smile come across their face.

Rachel, 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?

I ‘grew up’ in my dad’s commercial printshop. He started his company in 1984, the year I was born, and the family was all in. I learned to screenprint when I was 10 and continued honing my craft through high school and college. I have always felt a strong connection to small business and I love the hustle.

I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur & that I would have a storefront. After college, and managing the family business for a few years, I was ready to start my own thing. I started cinder + salt, an eco-friendly graphic tee line, to marry my love of style/fashion and my screenprinting practice. But I wanted to be more eco-friendly! I bought my dad’s printing equipment when he was ready to sell his company, and built my own zero-waste printshop.

At cinder + salt we’re very focused on sustainability and what that means for the company holistically. It’s not just about using organic cotton fabrics or reclaim inks, it’s also thinking about efficiency, longevity and timelessness of our products. We aim to create apparel & goods that will last as long as our customers want to use them!

I often ask myself, “What more can I do?” And there’s always something else. We have over a dozen eco-initiatives that are now central to the cinder + salt business strategy. We host beach, street and trail clean-ups all year round; we have clean waste collection bins in our stores; we provide free reusable cotton totes with purchase & we host volunteer eco-retreats to help people really connect with nature. I believe in creating opportunities for people to partake in sustainability easily, and accessibly, because protecting our planet’s resources is a group effort.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

cinder + salt has three revenue streams that we assess every month : retail, wholesale and custom. We have goals for each stream that includes overall sales and a target percentage of revenue for the company as a whole.

Retail is our top priority and it includes Direct-to-Consumer sales online, in-store and at special events. Our retail outlets are where we are most creative, have fun with designing, try new things and really tell the story of the brand, so we invest a lot in this area because it’s the heart of why I started the company. Making cool stuff for cool people.

Wholesale is huge for us; we love working with Business-to-Business clients. I’m proud to say we’ve sold to over 600 independent retailers nationwide. We build relationships with gift shops, boutiques and nonprofits at tradeshows and develop our product line around what they might also be looking for.

Custom has been the lifeblood for the brand for many years and is a part of the company we continue to refine. We offer custom screenprinting and embroidery to other small businesses and individuals. Our niche is doing private label printing for other apparel lines!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

There’s a great book by Bo Burlingham called ‘Small Giants : Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big’. I’ve read it a few times, a few years apart, and it always sparks new ideas for me.

Success, for me, is being excited to go to work every day. In chapters of my life when things aren’t working, or I’m feeling a lot of stress but can’t pinpoint why, I circle back to happiness and what will get me there. Like many examples in Burlingham’s book, it’s about sticking to your values, having a charitable aspect to your work, centering on teamwork and always learning, or growing.

My most recent revisit to this book reminded me of some of my dreams from 20+ years ago, when I was still a college student, and it gave me a burst of excitement and passion I hadn’t had in awhile.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cinderandsalt.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cinderandsalt/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cinderandsalt/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-decavage-1753867/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvoFwMnB6UpBSqkYfZ7edZw