Adam Singer's Strategy for Growing a Unique Queer Brand

Sure. My name is Adam Singer. I run an e -commerce and brick and mortar business called Adam’s Nest. It is politically engaged, socially conscious, spiritually connected, and a bit naughty. My brick and mortar space is located in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This is my ninth season with the business. We operate in Provincetown, Massachusetts Memorial Day through Halloween, which is Spooky Bear here.

Otherwise the online business operates year round. And the business really, I came up to Provincetown on vacation in 2016, in 2013 actually, and fell in love with Provincetown. And two years later, a space was for sale and I was turning 50 years old. And I’ve spent my entire career in retail and merchandising. And it was a question of, okay, if not now, when? so I bought a retail space in Provincetown. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what the business was going to be. But as far as my intent was to open a queer business on the web, what better place to have the brick and mortar location than Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is the number one LGBTQ destination on the planet.

I opened the business, the summer before Trump was elected four days after the shooting in Orlando at Pulse. And the theme for Carnival that season was back to the 80s. And as a gay man who came out in 1985, I was a little bit shocked that that was going to be the Carnival theme, but it really helped sort of focus on what the shop has become. My biggest concern in 2016, was watching the political environment and being someone who came out in 1985 and seeing so much change in the social environment as far as LGBTQ rights and acceptance. My biggest concern was going backwards and the kids. And that’s really what’s driven the business since 2016.

I don’t have a specific target beyond LGBTQ people and allies.

We’re based in Provincetown. We’re unabashedly queer and we’re a small business and independent business. We don’t use influencers. We, I’m basically aside from help within, from an advertising agency, helping on the email blasts and marketing, through Facebook and Instagram. I’m a one man operation.

So, this is, we’re going into the ninth season. I’m in the process right now of sort of planning, a move of planning to move the web business out of Provincetown. My physical plant in Provincetown is 180 square foot retail space. So I’m, right now you see behind me bins, but I’m basically sitting in a luxury rental in Provincetown, Massachusetts that is filled to the rafters with inventory. So because of housing insecurity in this town, I can’t grow my business in Provincetown, so I need to take the web business elsewhere.

I mean, it’s sort of, depends on if you were to ask me, are you talking P town, queer, political or dirty? You know, we really, I really adjust to what’s happening in the moment. So right now, I mean, right now a big t -shirt is voting Republican is a hate crime.

The best sellers really change depending on the time of year. Obviously when we’re in full high season summer in Provincetown, my Provincetown graphics tend to be in the top sellers, but otherwise it could be anything from shoot loads, not guns, to an AIDS Memorial t -shirt, to queer hats and pins, to bear graphics for the gay bear community. That’s sort of, you know, it really depends on what’s happening in the current events and also what time of the year it is.

My future plan is really just to move the web business out of Provincetown so that I can actually aggressively push and grow the business. I’ve been constrained by 180 square feet. I’ve also been constrained by the fact that I winter in Florida and I summer in Provincetown. You know, logistically, it’s challenging to live in two places and to try to run a business from two places. So it’s really why I’m looking to move the web business out of Provincetown and really work on growing the web business elsewhere during the winter months.

I really work with lots of different queer artists and we support, the business supports lots of different queer organisations and I just think the political environment and being an authentically queer brand that gives back to the queer community has really been what’s captured people’s attention and really built a loyal following amongst my customers in the community.

I mean, the challenge, the biggest challenge I face is just logistics. And so I’m working to overcome that. But other than that, I mean, Challenging, you know, it’s a lot of work running a retail business in Provincetown during high season and a very, you know, although the business and the brick and mortar is open for six months, the majority of the business comes in two months. So, you know, try running this sort of business out of 180 square feet. That’s a challenge. And just really staying on top of the inventory and making sure I’m in stock. You know, all of those are just basic business challenges, but I have a unique product, so, aside from a couple graphics, can’t, and some pins, you can’t buy the product from anyone else. And I would say ultimately it’s, well, we are contacted nonstop that, you know, go on TikTok, open a TikTok shop, open a shop here. Maybe you should be selling through Amazon.

I’ve really stayed away from that. I did accept Amazon Pay for at the very beginning, but I decided to back away from that and stop accepting Amazon Pay because I didn’t want them to have any more of my selling data. And I didn’t want them to know what my best sellers were. And I’d say that’s, you know, that’s one of the biggest, the biggest challenges. The other big challenge is just operating a very queer, very politically engaged, unabashedly sex positive business using social media and complying with terms of service is challenging.

I mean, I’m wearing a queer baseball hat. Well, the word queer is okay on Facebook. TikTok finds it offensive. So as much as TikTok reached out to me to open a shop and push on TikTok and use TikTok as an avenue, I uploaded basically to make my life easy. took my entire assortment that I was selling on Facebook and Meta and Instagram and just uploaded that assortment onto TikTok. And within four days, I had reached the maximum number of violation points and the shop was shut down. So I’m not willing to change my business nor change my product assortment to comply with these terms of service from people. So I guess that is the biggest challenge. But yeah, authenticity is really one of our biggest strengths as well.

I mean, you have to have your own point of view and be true to it. Unique product helps, obviously. But beyond that, I mean, I’ve really, I’ve linked up over eight years, I have the benefit of being in this location that queer people come to from all over the planet. So whether it’s artists or activists or writers, teachers, A lot of people come through Provincetown because of the nature of the activist, nature of the shop, I’ve really met a lot of amazing people and that’s really helped grow the business. And a lot of the collaborations have come through just my keeping an eye open for things on social media and my finding different people to collaborate with that share my values.

You know, entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart and it’s, you know, it’s a hustle. It’s a hustle. You know, this is my ninth summer doing this. So I’ve been doing this for nine years and I would say last year was the first time that the web business exceeded the retail shop. So it just took time, but part of my strategy was one, to be profitable and to be authentic. And I think those are two of the most important things for my business and it’s one of the reasons why I have a strong following and people really love the business. So authenticity and giving back to the community has been really important.

Yeah.