We recently connected with Simon Holley and have shared our conversation below.

Simon, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Both Greg and I come from corporate retail and together have over 50 years of corporate retail experience. Our last jobs had us traveling all over North America working directly with store teams. Long hours and extensive travel left us feeling disconnected from our community. We had moved to Cambridge, Ontario in 2012 with hopes of a quieter life as well as the anticipation of someday retiring and enjoying all that beautiful historic Cambridge has to offer. Fast forward a few years and we both received packages from our work weeks apart. Now was the time to find new work, work that prioritized what was really important to us: the ability to walk to work, have time to spend with our dogs, have dinners together but most of all be community driven. This led us to open The Witty & Co in fall of 2019. Conceptually we wanted to ensure it felt inclusive, wheel chair accessible (so many historic buildings downtown lacked access), with lots of room to move within the store (not cluttered by merchandise or fixtures), a meeting place that you could pop in and find out what was going on locally (which includes a community board of local events), a place where you would be greeted by name, carrying products you might stock up on weekly or monthly (favourites are fresh artisan cheese, weekly bouquets of fresh flowers, sweets, truffle chips, face masks, cards that make you laugh, plants) as well as a rotation of new emerging brands to inspire or perhaps make you think differently about the world around you (new brands included things like technology, 3d printing and food innovations). We looked for women, 2SLGBTQIA+, BIPOC run companies to fill the store. The windows were left unobstructed so that you could see directly into the store while passing by. Our only window display is a small message to our customers meant to make them smile. We really looked for as many ways possible to engage our community.

We were making great progress, the customer was engaging with us and then covid hit. After only a few months open we were asked to close our doors. We switched to a delivery service right away. The community was incredible, ordering all their new found favourites and we were able to drop them off at their homes. What an incredible way to build community, we got to meet our customers at there home! Often having long conversations from the safety of their porch. As things slowly started to open up we continued to look for ways for people to feel comfortable shopping again. We did delivery, curbside, even after hours shopping.

Now 4 years in and I am on the downtown Cambridge BIA, Greg is on the board of directors Grand River Pride. We continue to look for new ways to engage the community.

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.

Simon & Greg, married and settled in Cambridge in 2012. We had talked for years about one day opening a store. At the time we were thinking it would be much closer to retirement but when opportunity arrived early we knew we had to move on it. The Witty & Co, witty being that quick inventive humour you might share with a friend and company really refers to the company we keep. We have curated a line of our favourite things, things we use for hosting, for self care, and things that just make our lives better.

Being a gay couple in a small town it was important to be visible, we never had that growing up (both of us growing up in small towns in Ontario) and felt it would make a difference not only for us in the community but for others. Our instagram and store marketing reflects our lives. This has help to create a safe place for many.

We love to talk about our products, many of which have great stories about the makers or how we love to use them. We love to talk about what is going on in the community, our dogs, our favourite places to shop, eat and travel. We are passionate about what we do and cant wait to share that with anyone who walks in the store.

We like to be inspired and are always looking for something new.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Greg and I met working in retail 20+ years ago. We were both managing different locations for the same company. Greg had just left the store I had been moved to. Everyone on the team had let me know how much fun Greg was and how much they thought we would get along. Months later we met at a party and couldn’t understand why everyone thought we would get on so well. A few more months passed and we found ourselves working together, we were complete opposites. We were passionate about completely different parts of the business, mine the more creative side and Greg the more operational side. Not only did we have great success working together but we really enjoyed the process. We knew one day we would build our own business together.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson we had moving from corporate to our own business was how to be more fluid with our decision making. In our past lives planning was a large part of our roles, change required multiple sign offs and often quite a while to go through each level of corporate structure. Making decisions on the fly, pivoting when things aren’t working or need tweaking (we did a lot of that during covid), and being fully transparent behind the reason for any changes. We pulled together a website during the first couple months of covid which required a lot of work that we weren’t experienced in. We had to be humble and ask for help, we had to be patient with our results, and we had to be flexible with our approach. We had a lot of learnings, made a lot of changes and really did our best to communicate to our customers the reason behind each change.

Contact Info:

• Website: currently under construction. looking to reintroduce our website later this year
• Instagram: @thewittyandco

Image Credits
all photos have been taken by us at the store