HANDMADE MONTANA RETAIL & PRODUCTION HOUSE
The purchase of the Jackie M. Building at 212 Main Street in downtown Polson is an exciting new venture and necessary expansion for HandMADE Montana and REcreate Designs/Grove Outdoors. We are choosing to relocate established businesses as an opportunity to grow and connect with the Polson community while also providing an anchored port of creative services for our neighboring communities. It will be a great boon to the downtown community by diversifying businesses on Main Street, restoring and revitalizing a historic building, generating foot traffic, creating new jobs and demonstrating a working model of creative and green business practices. HandMADE Montana is an event and community resource organization for artisans and makers. It provides selling opportunities for artists, offers workshops in small business development and continues to increase awareness for the integrity and viability of modern art and craft. It is known most notably for organizing the award-winning MADE fairs, Montana’s largest art & handcrafted markets. REcreate Designs, founded in 2005, is a line of adult & children’s clothing, accessories and home goods made from upcycled materials. Grove Outdoors is its sister brand of outdoor and technical apparel. The HandMADE Montana Retail and Production House at 212 Main Street offers a unique multi-use commercial space for Polson’s Central Business District. It is the combined vision of a regional headquarters for HandMADE Montana, a public storefront for a curated collection of Montana artists, and a fully visible and functioning production studio in back-of-house for REcreate Designs and Grove Outdoors.
We are hopeful for the future of the HandMADE Montana Retail and Production House as an anchor tenancy for the downtown Polson community. HandMADE Montana is excited to have a brick-and-mortar office to host resources and workshops for artists across the state. Specific resources include a designated product photography set-up available for rent and opportunities for selling consignment as a featured artist in the retail space. Future workshops will consist of small business accounting, marketing, display & packaging, and social media. HandMADE Montana has built relationships with over 400 artists across Montana and our neighboring regions. The wildly successful MADE fair has expanded in recent years to summer and holidays shows in Missoula and Helena with this year’s addition of a fall show in Bozeman and the HandMADE Marketplace at the Western Montana Fair. These shows can garner foot traffic of over 7000 attendees and upward of 8500 in Missoula. These are highly competitive juried shows, and we hope to help raise the bar for art and craft produced in our region. If anything the enormous and steady growth of these fairs in their 12 years of activity demonstrates a demand in our state for high-quality artisanal wares. We are excited to fill this niche within the downtown lineup of Polson and to introduce the vibrancy and prosperity that working arts can offer a community. The other half of the HandMADE Montana Retail and Production House will be dedicated to the open floor plan, and publicly visible production facility for the clothing brands REcreate Designs and the forthcoming launch of Grove Outdoors. We like to think of this as farm-to-table of the fashion world — we are introducing the unique opportunity for customers and passers-by to see the full loop of how their clothes are made from raw material to finished garment. Melanzana in Leadville, Colorado is a good working example of what an open retail and production space can look like. REcreate designs has been dedicated to green business practices with positive environmental impacts since its inception. Raw materials are sourced from thrift and second-hand outlets, reclaimed, and repurposed into the finished products—keeping an estimated 3000 lbs of waste out of the landfills every year. REcreate Designs is a proud member of 1% for the Planet, Sustainable Business Council and Made in Montana.
As we move forward on the 212 Main Street space, we will likewise bear green practices in mind as we plan its redesign and renovation. We expect to source materials from local businesses with a majority of fixtures, counters, and work areas upcycled and reimagined from Home Resource, Habitat for Humanity Restore, and Heritage Timbers. This project will be an example of how to use salvaged and reclaimed materials to responsibly renovate while also creating a warm, inviting and aesthetically driven public space. Relocating from a 600 square foot production studio to 2000 square feet of workspace is a much-needed expansion for REcreate Designs and accommodates for the launch of the new clothing brand, Grove Outdoors. REcreate Designs currently employs two full-time sewing technicians and one contract laborer. REcreate Designs is proud to have provided jobs for the rural community of St. Ignatius and neighboring towns for nine years now. The new production house will be looking to hire three full-time and two part-time employees. We believe in downtown Polson as the promising new headquarters for the well-established and thriving businesses of HandMADE Montana and REcreate Designs. We are tenacious in our drive to build a Montana that supports their artists and their makers, and we will continue this work in Polson, building interest, curiosity, and passion for the skill and craft of functional art. As always we see things not as they are but for what they can become.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
HANDMADE MONTANA
RECREATE DESIGNS
406.214.9078
406.214.9078
INFO@HANDMADEMONTANA.COM
INFO@RECREATEDESIGNS.COM
HANDMADEMONTANA.COM
MADEFAIRMT, HANDMADEMONTANALLC HANDMADEMT
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