Open for Business, Eh. #shopehframe
If you have found your way to our site and this blog…thank you. We have never done this before and are learning on the job with the guidance of some very generous folks who have shared their knowledge and most importantly what mistakes to avoid! Let’s hope we are good listeners :)
We have spent the last 3 years dreaming of how and what we would build on our lake front property in the Okanagan Valley. During that time we hosted friends and family almost every day of each summer. It’s a gathering place, a place to create memories, watch our kids grow and explore, but it’s also suited to solitude, a place to simply recharge from the hectic pace of city life, reflect and enjoy the view.
As things tend to happen, we had no plans to turn this lakeside spirit into a shop. But two things happened; we gave our recreational property a name and people fell in love with Todd’s hat.
First, the name. We wanted to call our cabin by a name that we could put on a sign at the top of the driveway but that didn’t just say, “the Talbots”. We like naming things but we were stuck with no good ideas! Until we decided to build an A Frame. And then we Canadianed it up.
Eh FRAME
and the rest as they say…
We got to work building a website with Boleyn Media so that we could share the process of our planning and building of the cabin. Sadly it has taken a long time, (and the cutting of much red tape) to get started on our build. We have grand plans, but three years after purchase, still haven’t broken ground.
But more recently, as we’ve been making plans for our actual cabin, we have also been creating a brand.
And this was kind of because of Todd’s hat.
Todd was regularly wearing a two-toned hat with a simple line-drawn image which had been gifted to him during an interview on the Denny Dumas Podcast. Whenever people saw him wearing it they wanted to know where they could get one. Todd looked into it and it turns out these hats were made by a custom hat manufacturer called Pukka.
And so, the idea of making a hat for Todd and the crew kicked off our Eh frame store.
We had NO IDEA where or how to start. All we knew was that we wanted a cool baseball hat. Thus began our journey to find folks to help us achieve our goal. We have met some new friends and connected with old ones along the way which has been one of the surprising by-products of building a brand as well as a house.
The toughest element for us in creating a design was to be able to articulate our vision…which was still in a very rudimentary stage. There were endless debates and revisions (with a number of designers- thank you all for your patience!)
It’s one thing to buy a blank product and slap a label or word on it to sell but somehow that never felt right for the Eh Frame. We searched for something that we connected with and actually meant something to us, our values and where we are coming from. Honestly it took a while before we found our groove.
What ended up shifting our ‘unspoken’ mandate at the time, was working with small businesses across the country. I think the pandemic helped us in a way, it refocused us on how we might play a small role in helping support these businesses. As we began to create co-branded products it started to feel right. It began to have the heart and soul that was at the core of the Eh Frame brand. Family.
We found like-minded outdoor life enthusiasts at Locomotive Clothing, rustic leather patches at Wheat & Sea made by Leather by Jade, hilarious candles at Arrow It Forward and Rabecca’s favourite teas at Great Wall Tea Co. We’ll share how each of these companies, and others, contributed to an item in our collection in our next post.
