Where does inspiration come from? The answer can be different for every person, brand or product. For Jason Hammerberg at Hammer Made custom shirts, part of his inspiration came from a small men’s shirt shop near an ancient bridge in Venice, Italy. The key is giving the design an opportunity to shine. To hear the entire conversation check out So Much More Ep. 67: Hammer Made; An Entrepreneur’s Story.
[00:00:00] The way you merchandise the store, just with the themed colors and everything, it just really showcases the clothing just in a spectacular way. So that's really fun to see.
[00:00:09] Yeah, and I just mentioned to Carrie this morning, I said, it feels like I'm in a small European shop. So I'm glad you said that, because that is the feel you get. It feels boutique, and it's a good feeling.
[00:00:21] The European shirt shop, I have to share two stories that I have not shared before. One is, I used to sit, there's a bridge in Venice that has a little shirt shop on a corner, and I would sit outside and count how many shirts they fit and how they merchandise that store just to like pack it, right? It's like a broom closet, this tiny little store, but there was like 300 and some shirts in it, right?
[00:00:47] And so studying that and understanding like, wow, there's a different way to merchandise than we do it, or than we have done it before in America. At the time it was, I came out of big box world, you know, the bigger the space, the better.
[00:00:58] So that was one. And the second fun story and bouncing around to different locations, we started with the Vikings locker room. We ended up in a couple spots. And one of the spots that we ended up with on the South side was a store called GISS Accessories.
[00:01:13] And they had a beautiful store, and they shifted locations, and the interior of that store was solid black.
[00:01:22] And when we first did the architectural design and the drawings for the Galleria, it was kind of this old world tailoring back to that Venice plaster, wood, you know, this warmth.
[00:01:36] And when I put the shirts in to this GISS Accessories store, it was like, all of a sudden the shirts became the hero.
[00:01:45] And they really jumped off. And that single move of that store shifted all of the design to black and let the shirts win.
[00:01:57] And, you know, so yeah, something fun about the Mall of America that I just thought of in how that store design transpired and other things that we felt with there.
[00:02:06] But start with the shirt.