Q&A: A brand connected to Maine — and the water
Photo / Tim Greenway
Sea Bags CEO Don Oakes, President Beth Shissler (middle) and Vice President of Operations Sokunthy Yean at the flagship retail shop and headquarters on Custom House Wharf in Portland. Sea Bags, which has 145 employees and 25 stores, produces tote bags from repurposed sail cloth.
Sea Bags, which is based in Portland, makes and retails a variety of tote bags made with repurposed sail cloth. It was founded by Hannah Kubiak in 1999, and incorporated when Beth Shissler became a partner in 2006. She is now president and the CEO is Don Oakes, who was in marketing at L.L.Bean.
In recent years, it has grown significantly and now has 25 East Coast stores, though it still retains its headquarters in a rustic waterfront building on Custom House Wharf in Portland’s Old Port neighborhood. Prices range from $45 for a nautical chart bucket bag to $150 for most totes and up to $225 for more specialized bags. Stores are in waterside towns like Camden, Rockland and Bar Harbor; Provincetown and Oak Bluffs, Mass; Annapolis, Md.; and Vero Beach, Fla. Mainebiz caught up with Oakes and Shissler to ask about where the company is headed today. An edited transcript follows.
Mainebiz: Is being based in Maine important to your brand?
Don Oakes: Our connection to Maine is an incredibly important part of our brand. In fact, when we began our retail expansion out of state in 2014, we were redesigning our logo to incorporate “Maine” as part of it. Maine has a well-known and powerful brand throughout the U.S. and beyond, and we are proud to attach ourselves to it and to associate Sea Bags with Maine in the minds of our customers. Our location in Portland on the working waterfront of Custom House Wharf is a huge part of our history and identity. So much of what we have accomplished is based on the authenticity of our brand and Portland, Maine, speaks to that authenticity to our employees and customers.
Beth Shissler: The company was formed out of a desire to create jobs in Maine and specifically to bring back jobs in the cut-and-sew industry as so many of those jobs had gone offshore. Maine has a rich history of producing amazing products — and a work ethic and culture to go with it. We are dedicated to not only being headquartered here in Maine but to supporting other Maine businesses as well. Last year 55% of our annual spend was deliberately spent in Maine for materials, space and services.
MB: Has the cost of your material (used sailcloth) gone up as the demand for Sea Bags grows?
DO: That’s a great question. We acquire most of our used sails through our Sail Trade Program where we offer product in return for sails. In the earliest days of our company, customers were often happy to have someone take their old sails off their hands and to not see them head to the landfill. As our business has grown and our demand for sails along with it, we decided to create and promote a program whereby customers could receive a product in return for giving us their sails. Often times, the item they receive in trade from us is made from the actual sail they “donated.” If a customer is not interested in a product in trade for their sails, their trade can go towards our scholarship program through Sail Maine where we have sponsored over 80 kids through sailing school in the past dozen years.
In addition to the cost of the products we trade for sails, the other major expense we have is our four employees whose job it is to seek out and acquire these sails. These staff members are based in Maine, New Hampshire, Florida and Seattle, but they collect sails across the entire country. Finally, the cost of transporting sails to our headquarters in Maine continues to grow commensurate with the increased volume and makes up the other major component of our material costs. To me, the more interesting point is when I explain to people that it would be cheaper for us to buy new material that has never been made into a sail or seen the water. The costs of acquiring used sails and readying them to make into product is actually higher than recycling used sails. Because sustainability is so critical to our mission, purpose and brand, we will stick with acquiring used sails that make up an important part of the character of our products.
MB: As the Sea Bags concept attracts more imitators, what’s the best way to deal with the competition?
BS: I like to think we are a pioneer in up-cycling. While other folks do some of what we do, I’ve yet to see anyone who can do it all. Our collection of used sails, our amazing skilled employees who dedicate themselves to our mission, and our processes are hard to replicate in totality. We are innovative in how we do things from how we trade our sails for products, to our ability to auction the rarest of sails and our ability to customize products. It’s all about authenticity and being true to our brand.
We’re now in many of the prime waterfront locales in Maine that you might expect us to be in, but we have only scratched the surface of locations outside of Maine.
— Don Oakes Sea Bags
MB: With 25 stores on the East Coast, what’s next?
DO: We’re now in many of the prime waterfront locales in Maine that you might expect us to be in, but we have only scratched the surface of locations outside of Maine. We’ve proven that we can be successful in small seaport towns as well as busier sailing ports and more urban locations. Given our experience in opening in new markets, we expect to continue to focus our retail expansion in the east before we consider heading to the west coast.
Having said that, we are also known as being opportunistic, and if the right opportunity came to us, we have proven that we can move quickly. In addition to our retail reach, we also continue to grow both our online and wholesale channels. Our website reaches customers throughout the 50 states and internationally, so we can serve those folks who don’t live near or travel to our store locations. As our single largest “store,” our website has the broadest assortment of products and generates more visitors and sales than any of our stores. These two channels complement one another quite well and allow customers to shop with us however they choose.
While much of our growth over the past five years has come from selling direct to customers, our wholesale channel has always allowed us to expand our reach well beyond our own physical or virtual footprint. The 800 plus wholesalers who carry our products (from large national retailers to small local specialty stores), help expand our brand footprint and expose our products to more customers. When people tell us they see us everywhere, it’s really the combined effect of seeing people carrying our products, selling them in our retail stores or others’ as well as seeing our online advertising or social media communications.
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