Courtesy / Town Pride
The Town Pride website was attracting thousands of views from people who were consumers and not wholesale buyers, prompting the company’s first store.
Updated: December 22, 2023
Wholesaler of ‘town pride’ products opens first retail store in Yarmouth
Courtesy / Town Pride
From left, Dominique Moran, Carl Moran, Tamara Moran, Janice Sisti and Fionna Moran cut the ribbon on Town Pride’s store in Yarmouth.
A wholesale business founded in Yarmouth in May 2021, offering goods produced or finished in the U.S. by woman- and family-owned makers, opened its first brick-and-mortar location last month.
Town Pride USA leased 1,300 square feet of retail space at 756 U.S. Route 1 in the Yarmouth Hannaford Plaza from Hannaford Bros. Co. LLC.
Charlie Craig from the Dunham Group brokered the lease.
Town Pride, founded by Tamara Moran, offers customized merchandise such as knit sweaters, candles, stationery, drink ware, serve ware and jewelry. The goods can be found in specialty stores in every state as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The store will serve as the hub for testing new products and supporting wholesale clients with product review and orders, while also offering retail customers apparel, décor and gifts in the theme of local spirit.
Town Pride started as a wholesale operation that customizes merchandise to reflect a group’s locale or affiliation.
Moran, who lives in Yarmouth, told Mainebiz that she conceived of the idea as a sideline before the pandemic. In 2021, she launched the company into wholesale production.
Today, she has over 3,000 wholesale customers across the country, including independent gift shops, resorts, colleges, Realtors, nonprofits, state and national parks, museums and historical societies.
“We’ve had substantial success in the last two years,” she said.
Earlier this year, Moran realized the website was attracting thousands of views from people who were consumers and not wholesale buyers.
“We decided to open our first store,” she said.
A goal is to franchise Town Pride at the direct-to-consumer level.
According to Moran, her company is the biggest manufacturer of custom-made goods in the U.S. Other companies, she said, offer some customized goods. But hers offers the widest range of goods, because designs can be transferred onto any kind of ware.
“That’s one reason why we’re so successful,” she said.
Moran’s background includes territory sales manager for Northeast Group Representatives, a brand management consultant for kitchen, home and gift products manufacturers.
Manufacturers of her products are woman- or family-owned, most based in the Northeast and a couple in Maine. Town Pride is a multimillion-dollar company with 16 employees. A large part of its business is custom-knit sweaters, blankets and scarves.
“We have produced north of 150,000 items from Jan. 1, 2023, to today,” she said. “We’re already more than double the business last year at this time.”
Courtesy / Town Pride
Town Pride offer goods made or finished in the U.S. by woman- and family-owned makers.
Moran financed the company’s start-up costs herself and tapped into early mentoring from the Maine Small Business Development Centers.
More recently, “We have some very large customers who have placed very large purchase orders, so we got financing for that from a private lender,” she said.
Marketing includes presentations at numerous trade shows. For 2024, she has 13 trade shows across the country lined up so far, along with a presence in five permanent showrooms.
“We’ve done business for the Green Bay Packers,” she said. “The first time I got an email for this, I was like, ‘Is this spam?’”
Other large clients include Yellowstone and other national parks along with the Professional Golfing Association.
The store’s location next to a Hannaford supermarket is ideal as a well-trafficked spot, she said. Renovations included new paint, replacing trim and hardware on the doors, a new floor in the front of the store and new ceiling tiles.
A core part of Town Pride’s mission is to give back to the community by donating a portion of proceeds. To date, the company has donated about $22,000. Most recently, that included a fundraiser, to coincide with the store’s ribbon-cutting, for the Yarmouth Food Pantry.
And “we will expand on those efforts by hosting a variety of events to benefit local nonprofits,” Moran said.
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