Patrick Merryman started his clothing line Marlboro.NY just last year, but he’s already made quite a statement. The hero piece of his debut collection, a long-sleeve cotton t-shirt, declares in capital letters: “God Loves Upstate New York.”
On a hooded sweatshirt, a cheeky, winking apple serves as a crest of sorts, presenting a stylish dichotomy: It’s both a satire of New York City and an upstate salute.
“Something clicked where I was like, man, there should be way more pride in where you’re from when you’re from upstate New York. I said to my wife that ‘There’s like way more to New York than the Big Apple’ and I started to just put that on stuff,” he recently said via Zoom.
Well, if Merryman’s right and God does, in fact, love upstate New York, He isn’t the only one.
After 2020’s real estate boom rocked the region, sending a steady stream of city dwellers north to the Hudson Valley, a crop of regionally branded and inspired goods seemed to follow suit.
Merchandise created and sold from Albany all the way south to Brooklyn — which isn’t, in fact, upstate at all for anyone out there challenged in geography — seems to be cashing in on the apparent regional marketing cachet of “upstate.”
But 30-year-old Merryman, who works full-time as the Director of Digital Media at Hawkins International Public Relations, didn’t set out to become the unofficial outfitter of transplants and ex-pats when he launched Marlboro.NY, named for the Ulster County hamlet where he was raised.
Patrick Merryman wearing his Marlboro.NY company’s “Dad Hat” and upstate-branded hoodie.
Courtesy of Cameron Smith“The goal was to make the target audience not a cool person,” Merryman explained. “I wanted to make clothes for my dad ... for people my mom knows. I wanted it to feel like something you might have grabbed at a thrift store or that your dad would have given to you when it didn’t fit him anymore. That’s definitely who’s buying it.”
Despite not targeting the cool set, they came calling anyway. In September, a mention on The Strategist, New York Magazine’s website devoted to online shopping, in which Chloe Anello called the brand “essentially an ode to upstate New York,” resulted in “a hundred” sales of the God Loves Upstate New York t-shirt, according to Merryman.
“I sold a lot to the Brooklynites and people who are in Brooklyn and transplanted [to the Hudson Valley],” he explained.
Trademarking an upstate ethos
A few years before Merryman called upon his hometown for aesthetic inspiration, Kingston boutique Hamilton & Adams tapped into the area’s branding power with a playful spin on “Netflix and Chill,” 2015-era internet slang.
The success of co-owner Andrew Addotta and Clark Chaine’s Upstate & Chill™ merchandise (yes, they’ve trademarked it) proved that the interest in upstate pride had no chill, as the kids say. The shop now sells t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, flags, hats, pint glasses and more printed with Kingston, Hudson Valley and New York State insignia, which is responsible for a whopping 40 percent of total sales, Addotta recently told Times Union: Hudson Valley.
“People across all demographics will buy the t-shirts, the mugs, whatever it may be and … even before we opened, we knew that even though there are plenty of people living and visiting here, we were gonna have to have a broad assortment in order to be able to capture their interest. It was never gonna just be a boutique driven store focusing on one segment of society,” he explained.
Seeing stock with local branding triumph was a “big level up” for Addotta, he explained, causing him to double down. “We focused on expanding the offering there, reducing what we were buying from other brands. It helps us support other local people; our candles are made in Catskill, our t-shirts are printed here in Kingston,” he said.
A sample of just a few of the upstate-branded line of apparel and accessories by Albany-based Compas Life.
Compas LifeGo farther north to Albany and you’ll find a different upstate, but the same old push for retailers to capture and capitalize on regional pride.
After the success of a green t-shirt that read “Upstate of Mind” at a local market, Compas Life co-founders Tim Fealey and John Schildbach switched gears in 2020 to focus their business exclusively on upstate branded apparel and accessories. They, too, have trademarked their collection. (And yes, the brand is spelled with just one s.)
“Once we started to really build around it, everything kind of went up,” Fealey said, noting that in recent years Compas Life has shipped their Upstate of Mind™ merchandise to 30 different states and Europe.
“I feel like there’s been this resurgence of these little towns. People are proud and even if they’re not from there, when they go there, they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I was there. It was cool. Like, I will wear that on a t-shirt. Not ironically,’” Feasley explained.
It seems everyone is cashing in on the selling power of Hudson Valley and points north, even if they’re nowhere near it.
In the wilds of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, upstate-branded merchandise lines the shelves at Upstate Stock, a coffee shop and boutique. Products like Hunter Mountain Red Clover Solid Cologne and Minnewaska Dogwood Flowering Coconut Wax Candle — which is actually made in Brooklyn and then sold in a store located 93.4 miles from Minnewaska State Park — are displayed next to shirts that read “Greenpoint” and “Williamsburg.” It’s a sign that the region’s got a lot more to offer than just real estate.
But for Merryman, the Hudson Valley is more than a business opportunity, it embodies something far too empyreal to fully ever capture on a t-shirt.
“Upstate New York can make you feel like an early settler. Like you’re finding different things for the first time. You park your car in Cold Spring and decide you’re just gonna walk in and out of antique shops all day and suddenly you’re like ‘Wait is this what we’re supposed to do? Should we be antiquers? Should we just quit our jobs?’ It takes like five minutes to turn you into a ‘Portlandia’ character,” he explained with a laugh.
“The whole area is making you feel like ‘I think I’m doing everything wrong,’ and that is the beauty of what upstate New York is.”
More Hudson Valley News
"selling" - Google News
April 15, 2021 at 08:09PM
https://ift.tt/2REb7Dn
Selling upstate New York as a brand - Times Union
"selling" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2QuLHow
https://ift.tt/2VYfp89
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Selling upstate New York as a brand - Times Union"
Post a Comment