Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Stamets.
Chris, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My parents, Eric and Linda Stamets, met in Julian teaching 6th grade camp sometime in the 70s. They decided it was a nice place to put down roots. At the time, there wasn’t much tourism in the town, so they opened a hardware store on Mainstreet in what used to be an old wagon repair shop. My aunt actually followed along and started her own business in Julian as well, (you may know Mom’s Pies, to my knowledge the first pie shop in town) but that’s another story.
Tourism to Julian started to pick up in the 80s, not only due to apples and pies, but also the surrounding natural beauty and historic significance as a little changed relic of California’s gold mining days.
As a result, my parent’s business, by this time known as The Warm Hearth, slowly shifted away from selling hardware, lumber, and woodburning stoves, towards selling well… whatever the tourists wanted to buy! So, yes, that means your usual tourist gift store mainstays like keychains and T-shirts, but having the space of a former lumber yard, we always aimed to become something a little more than that.
That about brings us to my tenure as the owner operator. My brother and I worked at “the Hearth” on and off growing up, but I took over full management right after college due to my dad’s cancer diagnosis. I never thought I’d be running the place this long (since 2009 now) but I’ve truly loved it overall. Running a retail store with no corporate overlords really becomes a much more creative, and self-expressive endeavor than you might expect. Plus, I think my dad would be proud she’s still chugging along.
My girlfriend at the time (now wife) Kamry joined me around 2014 to help run the business. For the first time we had a good idea of what young women wanted to buy and that sure helped sales! Despite the disagreements very common among married small business owners, we’ve managed to grow things significantly and stay happily married.
These days I’m focused on creating my own line of products, like toys and home goods, which I prototype out of a shop in the back of our store. It’s good fun. I’ve gotten to learn about CNC machines, laser engravers, importing, and product design while trying to grow our brand – Backwoods Provisions. We also started a new nearby retail location called The Old Julian Garage during Covid.
We always have one too many irons in the fire, but happiness is in the chase.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Has it been a smooth road… ha, no! I can’t say it has.
To begin with we run our business out of what amounts to little more than a barn built in 1912. It’s freezing in the winter and sizzling in the summer. We’ve had bats, skunks, rats, mice, cats, possums, and racoons run amuck in our retail space. The East side of the building floods when there’s heavy rain, the West side was set ablaze by arson, and one time, someone lost control of their van, jumped a hill (Duke’s of Hazard style) to smash through our fence, and land on top of the big propane tank that supplies Mom’s Pies. In short, the building maintenance alone is a full-time job and I’ve had to learn to DIY most of it.
Finding employees in such a small town isn’t always easy. One of the most rewarding parts of running a small business like ours is providing jobs with a relaxed atmosphere and enough flexibility that people don’t actually hate working for us. However, it’s not a very large labor pool in Julian and it’s a challenge to find specific skill sets or compete for employees with bigger businesses in the city.
The fires that swept through San Diego County in the early 2000s were a huge setback for tourism and local residents. Student body size was practically cut in half overnight. It took about 20 years for the town to feel like I remember it as a child.
Besides all that, being family-owned and operated is always tough in any setting. Squabbling over the business is a long held, multigenerational tradition at this point. I like to think of it as a healthy tension between competitive ideas!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m an un-abashed jack-of-all-trades who can’t stick with one hobby or artistic medium for long. I earned a visual arts minor and a history major at UCSD, and maybe it’s a stretch to say, but I like to think I marry the two in my creative projects nowadays.
I started off blacksmithing out of the back of the store to sell hooks and things like that in my teens. Involvement in the store necessitated some graphic design and digital art for products and marketing. I even learned CAD software and CNC programming for help with small scale production and prototyping.
These days I am working on our own product line under the brand “Backwoods Provisions”, which is still finding its niche, but I love the idea of creating beautiful and still very useful home goods, camping supplies, and toys using less plastic and more traditional materials with an old world or pre 1900 aesthetics.
We sell a lot of wooden toy swords and shields, wood home storage boxes with metal lids (instead of the plastic ones that crack after a year), folding cutting boards for camping, leather journals, rustic ceramic mugs… much of it is made or assembled in house, almost all of it comes from my custom designs.
We have a long way to go still, but I’ll be really proud if we can create useful products in the gift and home decor industry that are made from quality materials, things that will stand the test of time or can be repaired, things that won’t just find their way to a landfill in under 5 years.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My father, Eric Stamets. He started the business at great personal expense to his time on this earth and I owe so much to him. He taught me about building things, the tools I would later use, hard work, patience, and kindness to employees.
He did also teach me a lot about what NOT to do, which is often the way between parents and children. He was a textbook workaholic. On top of the retail business, he installed wood burning stoves and swept chimneys. He thought it was absurd that I expected to have two days of per week. In the end, I think his work habits played a role in succumbing to cancer in his 60s.
My mother Linda, obviously you don’t go too far without a good mom to get you started, and my brother, Tyler, who has always been a listening ear and source of sensible advice.
And I can’t forget my wife Kamry with impeccable taste, or the excellent employees over the years who have graciously used their time to help us.
Contact Info:
- Website: warmhearthgifts.com and backwoodsprovisions.com
- Instagram: @warm_hearth_julian @backwoodsprovisions
- Facebook: The Warm Hearth of Julian / Backwoods Provisions
Image Credits
Depicted in photos:
Jennifer Rodriguez
Laurance Alvarado
Dylan Hartung
