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Meet Chris Demakis of Town Wharf General Store in Mattapoisett

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Demakis.

Chris, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I spent the last 27-years working in the branding and marketing services industry, with 23 of those years at the same Boston-based marketing agency. When I started with my agency in 1995 I was living in Boston and then in 1999 my husband and I moved to Mattapoisett, where we bought an old 18th century house, that needed a ton of work, and that was right on the town wharf overlooking the harbor…and which also had its own retail storefront with the house having served as many things over the years from carpenter shop serving the whaling shipyards to post office, bakery, dentist office, lunch counter, and on and on.

At work, my days were growing increasingly stressful and long with an often 2-hour commute from Mattapoisett. And then our founder, who was my mentor and my boss for most of my adult life, told us he was considering selling the firm and then a couple years later in 2012 the agency was purchased by a private equity firm. I stayed on but thought, well, I don’t know where things will go and what the new owner’s intentions will be, so I should have a Plan B in place. Which is when I started to think about opening a business in our house’s storefront.

And as I thought about what I enjoyed, what we could run with minimal staff since both of us had full-time jobs, and what would be an asset to our waterfront neighborhood, this idea of a modern general store started to take shape. In the meantime, while we had renovated our entire residence part of our house over the years, we had never done much work to our storefront because we always had a tenant. So, we hired an architect and used old photos of the way the front of our building looked in the late 1800’s to restore the storefront and facade of the building.

In May 0f 2013 we opened the Town Wharf General Store (TWGS). So, from May 2013 – October 2017 during the week (since we had other careers) we would have staff working in the store, and at night and on the weekend, we would work in the business. I look at photos of what the merchandising looked like when we first opened and compared to what it looks like today I laugh because we had so little when we first opened. With the help of an amazing carpenter/contractor named Tim Costello who has done all our work, today’s TWGS has a significant amount of product fit in to a not very large space. If you visited our general store you’d find a broad mix of products from all kinds of specialty food products from small makers across New England and beyond to fine cheeses, cocktail supplies, kitchenware’s, outdoor gear, kids toys, chocolates and other sweets, all kinds of things for your pets, housewares and gifts and penny candy for the kids — and then we also opened a small coffee counter in the store a couple years ago selling organic coffee drinks and teas.

Coming from the branding world I spent a good deal of time working on our own brand and hired Eymer Design out of Scituate to create the Town Wharf General Store whale-on-the-bike brand identity and it’s something that appeals to a lot of our customers, so our own TWGS merchandise has taken on a life of its own.

In October of 2017 I left my full-time career at the agency in Boston to focus on the general store. And as I look forward we have some ambitious goals. And it’s a never-ending battle of where are a small business’s finite resources best suited for the greatest ROI and so we have a few growth pillars for the next year.

In-Store: Everyone talks about the Amazoning of retail and retail as we’ve known it is dead. But we continue to grow, and I think that’s because we are always looking for ways to make the retail shopping experience personal, welcoming, fun, new and interesting. In addition to always being on the hunt for great new products made in the USA and that align with our store’s merchandising strategy, we just went through the final licensing hurdles in our town and will break ground in the next couple of months to put a small addition on to the store where we’ll also be retailing craft beers and wines. And during that build-out, since our coffee business has grown, we’ll also re-build our coffee counter, so we can get more creative with an expanded coffee/tea drinks and bakery menu.

Online: It’s a classic cobbler’s kids have no shoes kind of situation with our online business. We’ve pretty much built our e-commerce site, and I’ve been strapped for time this last year in terms of getting products loaded in to the Content Management System and launching it. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel and townwharfgeneralstore.com should launch in April of 2018. I’m excited to sell our goods well beyond Mattapoisett, especially our growing Gift Crate business with fun curated crates. We’ve picked up some corporate clients and I know there’s a good deal of opportunity there.

Exponential growth: We literally live above the shop. I always joke with people it’s kind of like the Olsen’s from Little House on the Prairie. And while I no longer have a commute and I’m now able to walk downstairs to go to work, I think I’ll be bored in a year or two. I’d love to see us look to other locations where the Town Wharf General Store concept of coffee/unusual goods/wine + beer is a good fit and plan to peddle our story to developers who are looking for engaging retail concepts in their buildings.

I tend to be an optimist and usually paint a rosy picture but don’t get me wrong, it’s not always rosy and we don’t leave anything to luck. As I write this, it’s January and snowing out and we haven’t had a single customer yet today. The ups and downs of retail are real, and we suffer like everyone else. Anyone in the retail business knows what I mean. You sit and wonder where are our customers? Why haven’t the neighbors down the street patronized our business in the last couple of months? Bust as my old boss used to say, you create your own luck.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Has it been a smooth road? No, not always. When we first opened in 2013 there was a lot of fanfare that we had generated on social media and some good PR, but our pricing approach was way out of whack. Business at first was brisk but then settled off before it picked up again for the busy Summer season. We were disheartened to say the least during that gap. And over time we have had to educate our customers about the value of something that “craftsman woodworker Matt” makes at his wood-shop out in the Berkshires vs. something they could find at a mass-retailer that is probably manufactured at a very different wage level overseas and that they can pay half the price for. (Education plays a huge role in our business) And then there’s the balance of being a business that has a very busy Summer season and appeals to a Summer customer audience vs. a year-round audience. How do you balance out your offering to keep people coming through the door all year round? And then there’s the merchandise strategy from one season to the next, how much do you buy and when, and differentiating yourself from everyone else.

Rather than a struggle, it’s a constant juggle. And I love it.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
When discussing the general store, a creative friend once gave me the line, “Nothing in General and Everything in Particular”. And I stole it. And use it now to describe what we do. It’s a little heady but it sums up our business philosophy perfectly.

“Curate” is an over-used word and I don’t particularly care for it. But we work very hard to find unusual products made by small makers or small family run businesses in the USA. You might find Maudie’s Squash Scoop sitting on a shelf next to Martin’s Tree Farm Black Walnut Hot Socks (crushed walnuts in a sock you heat up in the microwave and put on a sore body part) also sitting next to Little Moon Essentials Tired Old Ass Bath Salts right next to Bone Suckin’ BBQ Sauce. These are three of probably over a thousand examples in our small general store.

When you come in to our shop you are probably going to smile. For a few reasons. I think our store is beautiful and folks tend to agree. Everything in the store has been custom built. We use lots of different species of wood and the store just smells good — it’s a combination of wood, coffee, soaps, fresh Pain D’avignon baked breads and I don’t know what else. If I could bottle it and sell it, I would. (Hmm, maybe I will.) And it takes a while to see everything in the store. I often hear “I have been in here a hundred times and discover something new each time”. That’s music to my ears. It really is the thrill of the hunt.

But what may not be apparent to the customer’s eye is just how far we’ve gone to find everything in our shop. I’m a list maker. I see something that could be a good fit for the shop, and I add it to the season buying list that I think it would be a good fit for. But first, I research the product. See what people have to say online. See who else might be selling it. Etc. I’ve come to instinctively know whether something is going to be a good fit for the Town Wharf General Store and our customers, or not. Sure, every now and then I make a mistake. Something sits for a while and doesn’t sell. Or I order too much of one thing. (I can have hoarding merchandise buying tendencies.)

What I am most proud of is just the connections that we can forge in the general store. This is always a work in progress, but I want people to feel comfortable in our store. In a perfect world our store would be 3x larger than it is now, and we’d have a bunch of space for people to sit and eat and shop all at the same time. (vs. just standing now) Maybe that will be the future design of the next Town Wharf General Store in another town. But for now, when there are a bunch of people in the store who come in for a cup of coffee, or to get some bread or cheese, or to shop because they need some retail therapy or they need a gift for someone, or a new collar for their dog, and then they start talking to each other, or we introduce one customer to another customer, and then they get to know each other. This brings me the most pleasure in running this business. We have met so many people through running the general store that they have gone from customer to friend who we see for dinner or go to a concert or show together. And this repeats itself between our customers as well.

This idea of community building is central to the success of TWGS. And for anyone who hasn’t been in because they think the store may be too fancy for them, let me just say that’s hogwash. We have a little bit of everything for everyone. Or, “Nothing in General and Everything in Particular”.

What were you like growing up?
I grew up in Mattapoisett, the town that my husband and I moved back to in 1999 and then opened our business in 2013. I love this town. It’s a beautiful place. It’s situated on the South Coast of Massachusetts, along the Rte 195 corridor, or the old Rte 6, in between the Cape and Rhode Island. We overlook Buzzards Bay, looking out towards Falmouth and the Elizabeth Islands. Our older neighborhoods, like the Village neighborhood where the Town Wharf General Store is located, are filled with historic homes and pretty gardens. And in the warm months, life revolves around Shipyard Park and the town wharf, which is literally in our backyard. The Inn on Shipyard Park is just across the street from us and it hums with the sound of people enjoying themselves all year round, but especially in the good mood months of May through September. Our population doubles in the Summer with mostly Summer residents vs. tourists. But I see that changing as I talk to people in the general store. Mattapoisett is being discovered. So, I am a small-town guy, despite having lived in a city and travelled all around the world. First and foremost, the sense of community and security a small town has to offer is something that very much appeals to me.

My family is almost entirely in Mattapoisett in one way or another. We’re close knit. We see each other throughout the week to yell at one another or have dinner or visit with cousins or nieces and nephews. And we employ some family members at the general store as well. It’s a comfortable feeling especially since the store is in our home.

Growing up I was always a hard worker. My aunt and uncle owned the then Mattapoisett Inn (now The Inn on Shipyard Park) for nearly 30 years and kept my sisters and I employed throughout our youth. So, whether I was salad boy, bus boy, waiter, bartender or manager, I was always working at The Inn in one way or another. And then I also have a string of businesses throughout my high school years. There was “Promotions Unlimited” where I promoted and ran roller skating dance parties at the local roller skating rink. (this was the 1980’s after all) And then there was “Tootie Fruity Fresh Fruit Salads” which I ran with my friend Erin. We would use the kitchen at my aunt and uncle’s Inn/restaurant between 5am-7am to prep fresh fruit salads that we would then peddle out of an Igloo cooler from my VW rabbit at the town beach or to neighboring businesses. Oh, and we also offered the full watermelon fruit bowl for catering jobs. And then my friend Andy and I had a landscaping business and we mostly took care of some very large estate like properties in a neighboring town, cutting their lawns. And probably spending too much time during the day on Andy’s Boston Whaler.

My father went to Babson College and I used to get their alumni magazine and they are well known for their entrepreneurship programs, so I always wanted to go there. I applied early, to only one school, Babson (a risky strategy) but I got in and loved every second of my time there. Babson was and is an amazing school for entrepreneurship and business in general.

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Image Credit:
Chris Demakis

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