Finally, on our way out of Mongoose Junction, my wife said, “Let’s have a look at Made-in-St-John,” which is another clothing store, but I quickly replied, “There’s not gonna be anything there for us. The whole point is that their clothes are made in St. John.” Our clothes are made in Pennsylvania—for now.
Something opened up my heart at that moment though, and all of the sudden I had a sense of adventure about heading there, and it wasn’t wrong.
After a few minutes looking around, a store manager asked if he could help us. We told him what we were up to but explained how our items were naturally not going to be a fit being made in Pennsylvania. Then I noticed he was wearing a sweatshirt from a university not so far from Philadelphia, in the Allentown area, where I first went to college myself.
So, I asked him if that was the school he went to and turns out in fact he was from there! Small, not tiny, but small world.
Tiny world though… we got talking about our company and how we print our clothing digitally, which is pretty rare, and turns out that they do as well, on the same exact equipment. Now we’re instant business friends, and we had a great conversation.
The manager here was actually the guy the woman at the first store that was closing was trying to tell me about, but at the time, it wasn’t clear what she was trying to tell me. In the end though, we ended up at the right place at the right time and started a relationship with a cool guy, with a cool story, who happens to be a manager at the company who also owns Big Planet. So cool.
It was a great trip. St. John turned out just awesome for us.