Dreams, Dreams, Dreams - How the boutique came about - Gravel Road Mercantile

Dreams, Dreams, Dreams - How the boutique came about

Hello! I just want to start off by saying Hi! I am so glad you are here! Let me introduce myself. I am Haley, wife of Derek, momma of Alli (3) and Harper (1), and owner of the Gravel Road Mercantile Boutique.

I am going to give you some background on myself so you understand where I come from and what got me to where I am today.

I like to think I have always been an entrepreneur. Going wayyy back to third grade, some friends and I found sheets and sheets of blank white stickers. These stickers were in a few different sizes and we had tons of fun coloring them. Other friends in our class liked the stickers that we colored and we started selling them for a penny each. We made colorful stickers, sports stickers, and the most popular…stickers with boys names on them who were also in our class that every girl had a crush on.  We saved the money in a can for a program at my church that donated money to provide food for starving children. Our little sticker selling “business” was eventually shut down by our teacher “because we didn’t have a license to sell” LOL.

I have always been very crafty and creative and all through school I dreamt of making items that I could make to sell and that would be good enough that people would actually spend their money on them. I was always really into scrapbooking and thought maybe I could do custom scrapbooking for people. (That never happened)

Now to what do I owe the beginning of my eventual handmade business? My obsession (possibly addiction) with paper. I LOVE scrapbook paper. Every time we went to the craft store I would check out the scrapbooking paper “stacks” and see if there were any new ones that I just had to have. Well this gets a little expensive for a high school/ college student. I thought if I could just sell a little something I could cover the cost of new paper. (I’m weird I know LOL). So I started making and selling some cards. In 2015 Derek bought me a Cricut so I could cut things for scrapbooking and cards. And really the rest is history. I started making all kinds of things, coffee mugs, flour sack towels, shirts..I started posting things that I had been working on on Facebook and soon people were messaging me ordering the items I had made! It was a dream come true! That year I signed up for my first craft show (the next step up on my list of dreams!) It went amazing and I signed up for more. I couldn’t believe that I was actually making things that people were spending their money on to have! I began selling on Etsy in 2016 and that really took off for me in 2018.

Fast forward to now. Last summer I decided to add Boutique clothing into my business. This is where Gravel Road Mercantile was born. (previously Gravel Road Creations). I made my website and have received a great response. It has been super fun and I have learned (and am learning) a ton! Another dream checked off the list. 

But still…I had an even bigger dream. I have always thought it would awesome to own a physical boutique. But a Brick and Mortar store that I have to be at everyday or worry about finding good employees to help some just does not sound fun to me. I started looking into mobile boutiques and thought, “WOW! This would be absolutely perfect for me”. I was just casually looking at Facebook market place at all sorts of things—trailers, campers, bread trucks, just seeing what was out there. And then… I came across the cutest little trailer for sale that was already being used as a mobile boutique. I messaged the seller just out of curiosity and ended up going to look at it. And then I came home with it.

YOU GUYS! I BOUGHT THE TRAILER!!!

Biggest dream phase 1 checked off the list!!!! There was some work to be done to make it my own, but it was all really fun! I finished it up in May and had my first event Memorial Day weekend which was awesome! I will do a post of the fixing up process here eventually 

It’s funny how things that are big dreams at a point in time end up being small things that you accomplished to get to your REALLY BIG current dreams. I can’t believe where my little dream has taken me and I can’t wait to see where it will continue to take me!

You will really get to know me as you look through my boutique, because everything that I sell is truly a reflection of me.

Thanks for being here,

Haley

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