Empowering Communities: Tim Martin's Entrepreneurial Vision

Hey, how’s it going?

I’m Tim Martin. I’m here in Athens, Ohio. I’m the owner and designer of two businesses, Ohio Home and Red Tail Design Company. We’re kind of a two-fold retail product creation business and a design shop, doing custom fabrication, awards, logos, branding, and all that fun stuff. I’ve been doing this now for almost 10 years with our retail hitting 10 years next year and our design business around six or seven years. We manufacture and create most things ourselves, so as you can see behind me, there’s a bit of a mess of some of the glassware where we etch things. It’s a fun, multifaceted business.

Ohio is home was inspired by our location in a college town. State pride was becoming a bigger thing with larger companies, and nothing really like that was down here in the Athens area, which is Southeast Ohio, a bit rural. Our main employer is the university, Ohio University, home of the Bobcats. At the time, most of the apparel products were just cookie-cutter OU logos or bar streetwear since our main town has nothing but bars. I wanted to create something that people would be proud to show off from the area. I originally made a website, started small, printed stuff one-off, and shipped out of my guest bedroom. Then we eventually moved into a small 200-square-foot retail shop in front of my offices, where I would hop up from the desk of designing a website to have somebody check out with some stuff. Now we’re in a 1000 plus square foot location right in the downtown of Athens, within walking distance with all the students. We created a brand that people love, making people happy about what they love and enjoy in the Athens, Southeast Ohio area, and covering things for the larger cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, just trying to create a niche for things that most people would normally not care about.

Yes, definitely. I stick with the Ohio niche, mainly the southeast Ohio, Athens area. Of course, we’re the hometown of Joe Burrow from the Cincinnati Bengals, so we cover some Cincinnati stuff because tons of fans grew up here. But, all in all, it’s all about Ohio. We try to make everything here in Ohio, doing a lot of woodworking stuff too, like cutting boards, trays, and things shaped like Ohio. That’s kind of my thing, using this geometric shape we came up with for most of our Ohio products.

Ohio is Home will be 10 years old next February. So we just hit year nine, progressing a little bit more every year.

Yes, we do have competition. There are huge stores, like Homage, which is a company I look up to. They’re also Ohio University grads. They started mainly just doing state pride, Ohio state, and local stuff, and now they’re making stuff on the national stage. We have some local competition as well, three or four other t-shirt vendors on the main drag of Athens, but everything we design is our own, nothing’s clip art or cookie cutter. It’s all unique designs, which make us special. We’ve even had people try to rip us off, but our designs are our own. We’re not just taking the OU logo and slapping it on a white t-shirt like many others.

I was just thinking about it the other day. Our designs are selling well, especially from Ohio University or Athens. I’m a trained graphic designer with a big emphasis on typography, so we do a lot of type-based t-shirts, slogans, and things like that. But the illustration shirts sell well. For example, one of our employees designed a t-shirt with a famous cat that lives in the window of the voter registration building, and that shirt sells like crazy. Illustrations of buildings also sell well. It’s the iconic things of the area that seem to sell well and people want to represent them.

Yes, the Huskies, right? One of my first MAC championship games was against Northern Illinois. We got our butts kicked.

Yeah. The Mac has been growing up a lot. I mean, I would say, yeah, we always were like, the Mac schools are just kind of a little bit of a joke in sports, but I mean, they’ve been getting ranked a lot more. Like, I mean, look, I mean, if they have to go undefeated, but you know, some of these small schools are, you know, they get some talent and, you know, it’s fun to see the little guy do well now and then. So yeah.

We leveraged a t-shirt when a big sports announcer joked that there was nobody from Ohio in the Super Bowl one year, and there was an Ohio University kid in it. We made a shirt playing off that joke, showing we’re still on the national stage despite being overlooked.

Yeah, so I mean just trying to keep growing, keeping and increasing our production a little bit, still keeping everything as local as possible. I would say the biggest catalyst we need is awesome to get some more influencers kind of pushing our brands. I mean, people small love us. I mean, my cousin’s boyfriend saw one of our t-shirts when he was walking down the street in San Francisco and ran up and went to the girl and said, oh, I’ve, my, my friend made that shirt, blah, blah. So the fact that he even remembered what the design was and, you know, somebody way off, it’s cool. We’ve really, people seem to comment on our t-shirts, which is something you don’t often normally hear. I mean, I think apparel is growing a lot and it’s becoming more of a statement piece maybe more so than it used to be. But yeah, I would say we could just use the catalyst of trying to get maybe more of an influencer program to help kind of like push everything. I mean, for the most part, everything we do is word of mouth. The design business is our work speaks for itself. And I think that’s kind of the same with our apparel. So just help people to realize that advertising for us helps us a ton.

We sell a little wholesale and could expand that. We were going to be in the local Ohio Hallmark corporate stores, but then the pandemic hit. Our main retail store is downtown on 43 South Court Street, and our website, Ohioishome.com, which I grabbed when I found it was available and built a brand around it.

Yeah, Instagram, and Facebook, our main audience is kind of a lot of the 35 plus, I would say. We’ve been slowly trying to change that a little bit to reach more of the college students because we’re in a college town, but the main spenders are always going to be 35 plus or the parents of students, things like that.

We don’t have anyone. It’s us pushing our brand. People share stuff, but we’ve never had that big catalyst of someone helping push things. We had one viral product that saved me during the pandemic. It was laser etching wine glasses that said “wine with the wine,” because the joke was our governor day at two o’clock would come on and tell us what was closed or what was open, and people were drinking during it.

I sold thousands of wine glasses with everything shut down. It’s just me sitting here with the laser, packaging them up, waiting for boxes to come in.

When Joe Burrow gave his Heisman acceptance speech, he had a great phrase, “just a kid from Southeast Ohio.” I thought it was such an empowering phrase. People overlook us all the time. We get overlooked for business just because, “Oh, you’re in Athens, Ohio. If you’re not in Columbus or a big city, then you probably aren’t doing anything too great.”

That’s been a long-standing product for us. That sold well. We donate a lot back to the community from the sale of those kinds of shirts. So, that’s definitely when Joe Burrow is in the Super Bowl or doing well, business is good in Athens for a lot of people.

Yeah, I wish I could get him. He does t-shirts with a competitor who’s another Ohio University grad, but they’re larger places. I get it. You want your products to have a bigger reach. We hope we can eventually do some more official stuff with them because I think it would be a cool collaboration. It would help us. Our money stays here.

Me and my employees, we’re continuing to support stuff in our area. The thing about a small business is the money you spend here stays here.

Not really sure. At the end of the day, it’s fun to do what you love. While it can be really hard being a small business, you’re creating a long-lasting legacy. Everything we do is helping people to be prideful of the place they call home or through our design business, making stuff that is helping another small business grow because they’ve got a great new logo or a cool new website or a cool new t-shirt. It’s cool to see it.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.