Dream Big (and Send Your Husband Canoeing)
Jenna Vanni, Woods + Waters Gear Exchange
It’s our QUARTER CENTURY EPISODE! And our first Guides Gone Wild Wednesday - since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I decided to push ‘publish’ a day early so you don’t miss any GGW goodness while you’re bang out your socially distant virtual Turkey Trot tomorrow morning….
Today my special guest is Jenna Vanni, the founder of Woods + Waters Gear Exchange in Brunswick Maine. Woods + Waters is a specialty consignment shop focused on outdoor gear and clothing. It’s also the kind of small, downtown retailer that has been hammered by the pandemic.
As we talk about more in this interview, the seed of Jenna’s idea was planted during her college years, when she started frequenting the local goodwill and consignment shops out of necessity, and stumbled across one of the OGs of specialty consignment, the Outdoor Gear Exchange.
Fast forward a decade or so and Jenna had a solid, stable career in product development for a notable east coast gear and apparel company, but was feeling less excited by the collateral damage her industry’s constant focus on newer and better was inflicting on the environment and the people who made the products.
Jenna got serious about her entrepreneurial dream, and in January 2019, Woods+Waters opened its door in downtown Brunswick, right up the road from Bowdoin college. Things were going predictably well until she slammed into the headwall of March, 2020.
You’ll have to listen in to hear what happened next - AND get Jenna’s recommendation for the item of outdoor gear that you MUST buy consignment every time!
Connect with Jenna and Woods + Waters Gear Exchange on both Instagram and Facebook @woods.waters.gear, and on the web at wwgearexchange.com.
Other links from our conversation:
Outdoor Gear Exchange - Burlington, VT
IME (International Mountain Equipment) - North Conway, NH
Worn Wear (renewed Patagonia)
The timing of this episode is no coincidence - with so-called ‘Small Business Saturday’ and ‘Giving Tuesday’ coming right up, I wanted to remind everyone to think about where their dollars are headed this holiday season.
Do you want to reward retailers who make their employees work on Black Friday, or worse yet, Thanksgiving? Do you want to favor the big box stores or near-monopoly internet monoliths that have been posting their biggest profits ever this year, or put your money into the pockets of people in your own communities who need it the most?
Obviously I really, really hope you all will frequent your local small businesses as much and as safely as you can this coming holiday season, and consider the huge impact your year-end donations can have on smaller non-profits that are struggling this year.