Thank you, friends, for all the things you helped us do in 2019
The Stay and Friends Holiday Makers Market crew from Dec. 8, 2019.
The Big Star song, “Thank You Friends,” is the perfect coda to Stay Apparel Co.’s 2019.
It popped into my head after the second edition of our Stay and Friends Holiday Makers Market, as I prepared to share a group photo of that week’s participants on social media. I’ll be honest, the original vision I had for Stay made no accounting for friendships.
But that’s what we’ve garnered in spades: designers, screen printer, market hosts, stockists, fellow makers, and, most important, our customers. Thank you friends, to paraphrase the song, we’re so grateful for all the things you’ve helped us do.
Here are some of the many things for which we are grateful this year:
January: Stay was the topic of the first “Happy Valley Hustle” podcast of the year. Thank you, host Bill Zimmerman, for allowing me to share Stay’s story and to promote Made in the USA.
February: Stay deposited itself at Centric Bank's Hummelstown branch for the whole of February. Our six-foot table display, featuring a sampling of our tees, greeted lobby patrons. In addition, the branch's staff wore our tees on two Fridays. Thank you, Centric, for supporting small business.
March: We were invited to participate in the Trojan Foundation’s Taste of Hershey event, which provides supplemental funding and support to our hometown Derry Township School District.
April: We introduced new tees for Lancaster, Harrisburg, York and Happy Valley. Thank you, Unique Apparel, for your screen printing prowess and commitment to Stay.
May: Michelle Keeler gifted us a quilt comprising every Stay tee to date. How fortunate we are to have her as a friend.
June: We helped kick off another season of the weekly Market on Chocolate in Hershey, which offers one of the finest settings for a pop-up market you’ll find (at Chocolate and Cocoa avenues, of course). We’re grateful for this hometown opportunity and look forward to bigger and better things in 2020.
July: Over Fourth of July weekend, we traveled to Buffalo, where Oxford Pennant co-founder David Horesh showed us the company’s cut-and-sew operation. Oxford made one of our original products, a Hershey felt pennant, before we were even known as Stay. Thanks for the tour and the continued inspiration, Dave.
August: It was bittersweet, but we saw the Stay models head off to college. We appreciate their support of our brand and willingness to work for Stay stuff. In them we see great hope for our nation’s future.
September: We introduced the next great Stay tee, our Pennsylvania Craft Beer design. Thank you to crack designer Tim Baker and to the craft beer industry for making Pennsylvania No. 1 nationally in the number of barrels produced, three years running.
October: The Alliance for American Manufacturing’s blog featured us under the headline, “Made in USA Brand Stay Apparel Co. Celebrates Pennsylvania With a Retro Style.” Thank you for sharing our story.
November: Not only do we sell American-made products, but we try to buy them whenever we can. We encouraged others to do the same with this guest column submission to the news website Pennlive. Thank you, editorial page editor Joyce Davis.
December: This year, we popped up on streets and in parks, in a baseball stadium and on a bridge, in a shopping mall and in a shopping mall parking lot.
And we enjoyed a three-Sunday run at the Cocoa Beanery in Hummelstown (much appreciation to manager Donna Fair for her generous support of makers), hosting the Stay and Friends Holiday Makers Market with four or five other vendors each week.
Don't miss out on the last Holiday Makers Market at Cocoa Beanery on Research Blvd.! Dec. 15, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., join Stay Apparel Co. + 5 more local companies and #shopsmall this #holiday season. Find more details here: https://t.co/DkT1AzpYkM#HersheyPA#ShopLocal#Christmaspic.twitter.com/2IvGe88vgK
— Hershey PA (@HersheyPA) December 15, 2019
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These intimate shows were the perfect embodiment of the maker community: good, talented, hard-working people whose love and support weren’t considerations in my original concept of Stay but now are essential to it.
Thank you, friends. Thank you, again.