The special allure of a small town
Maritime Tartan relocates from Halifax to Amherst
Amherst has a new business and it’s one that has gone against the tide moving to small town Nova Scotia from the big city. Maritime Tartan opened its store, specializing in tartanbased products, recently, several weeks after announcing it was relocating from Halifax to a new storefront on Victoria Street in downtown Amherst.
“This is the best move for our little company,” Sherrie Kearney said. “This is a great little town and it’s good for our business in that it’s close to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.”
Soon after deciding to relocate the business to Amherst, she and her husband, Dale, started looking for a home and were surprised they were able to quickly find one in their price range within walking distance of the store.
“It was a leap of faith, we know. We put everything we have into this location,” said Dale, adding they have signed on to carry East Coast Lifestyle clothing and My Home Apparel.
Sherrie thinks they may be part of a growing trend in Nova Scotia.
“Because the price of things in the city is going up and up that there may be others like us who are looking to get out to smaller towns to run their businesses,” she said. “A lot of people don’t see the opportunity in Halifax because of things like the cost of real estate and how much it costs to rent space to run a business.”
The business got its start online in 2014 as monkeysandmore.com after Sherrie had health issues and had to find a way to work from her home. Starting with sock monkeys, she grew the business and sent more than 6,000 sock monkeys worldwide.
In early 2018, she made a few Nova Scotia and Cape Breton tartan scarves and other products like tablecloth sets, runner sets, skirts and other products. However, on Tartan Day in 2019, she and her husband had an epiphany of sorts and created Maritime Tartan.
“We were doing it out of the lower level of our condo. We had a small cutting room and the fabric was all in the garage,” Dale said. “Then COVID hit and we lost a lot of our business because we were supposed to do some things like the Junos.”
They began creating masks with 25,000 or so being created and donated a lot of money to charity.
“Everyone loves tartans,” Sherrie said. “We made a tartan scarf for the prime minister a couple of years ago and it just went from there. It has evolved over the years from scarves, to ties and skirts, blankets, hats, pants, robes. We have lots of products.”
After starting with an online shop (www.maritimetartancompany.ca), they decided to open a small store out of the Halifax condo and saw orders and business jump. But, Dale said, the cost of doing business was too high so they began looking at their options.
“We knew we needed a bigger space and we couldn’t afford the rent in Halifax so we chose Amherst,” he said. “My relatives lived here when I was younger and I used to come up every summer and I showed her Amherst and she fell in love with it.”
Dale said there has been a lot of talk about the business moving to Amherst. He said they had thousands of hits on their website after they made the announcement and even though Amherst is mostly a Yorkshire town there are Scottish roots, especially in Pugwash which hosts the annual Gathering of the Clans and Highland Games.
“We have a lot of customers from New Brunswick and P.E.I.,” Dale said. “We don’t have to be in the big city to be successful. We’re going to be just fine here.”