IN THE BIZ

comfy & co

Kin Ship Goods brings cozy goods to the heart of Charleston, West Virginia

Story Taylor Burnette | Photography Submitted

zy

What began as an art gallery in 2009 and expanded from a spare bedroom to a full-time gig in 2013 grew into what is today Kin Ship Goods in Charleston, West Virginia.

Kin Ship offers a range of “cozy” products, which includes a pretty broad range of things, said owners Hillary Harrison and Dan Davis.

“It can be anything that makes you feel cozy,” Harrison said. “So, for us, a lot of that revolves around our pets, food, music, all different kinds of things.”

living | In the Biz

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Kin Ship is best known for its shirts, designed and screenprinted in house. Designs range from the head of a cat featuring the phrase “Ask me about my cat,” to shirts encouraging voting to an opossum family on a branch titled “Trash Family Tee.” Kin Ship also designs and sells accessories like keychains, coffee mugs, enamel pins and hats.

Their shop features gift items like candles, bath and body items and home goods made by fellow small business owners around the country.

The coziness expands to Kin Ship’s other offerings, including mugs and sweatpants with their signature phrase “Stay Cozy,” socks with a variety of animal themed designs and many other items that allude to a sense of warmth and comfort.

Along with Kin Ship’s cozier items, because of their location in the heart of West Virginia, they also sell West Virginia-themed shirts with a light-hearted tone.

“We’re kind of known for taking a humorous look at everything and not taking it too seriously, which I think has really resonated with people,” Davis said. “Two years ago, for West Virginia day, which is a big day in West Virginia, we made a shirt that said “S****y roads, take me home,” like the “Country Roads” [song] and also, the roads are bad here. We’re willing to take those swings because they’re kind of honest, they’re kind of funny.”

Harrison said they began making the designs because of a lack of non-sports themed West Virginia apparel offered to visitors to the region and residents alike.

“It’s important to us because especially when we fist moved here, it was really hard to fid West Virginia souvenirs that weren’t sports specific” Harrison said.

In 2014, when the duo moved from Louisville,

Kentucky to the capital of West Virginia, they didn’t intend on opening up a storefront for their business. Harrison grew up in the region and was used to seeing the area’s frequently empty storefronts, and remembered back to her childhood when there was little to do in the region.

“We found this building that we were just going to have our studio in, but it also had a storefront,” Harrison said. “We were like, ‘Oh, we’ll try! Maybe we’ll have a store and be open for like, one day a week.’ But it really took off fast, and pretty soon we were open every day.”

Since their opening, they have never had a “zero dollar day,” Davis said. They never expected to have any employees, Harrison said, but before the coronavirus pandemic, they had twelve.

Along with businesses around the country, Kin Ship closed up shop, and has remained closed since, while continuing to sell products online.

“For a while we were just doing the online and shipping, but in the past like, two or three months, we

started doing curbside pickup,” Harrison said. “It’s a totally different thing than it was six months ago, because our storefront also kind of became like a community space, that element of it is missing, like seeing people in our community.”

Having started as an online company, Harrison and Davis were able to revert back to their roots and sell entirely online. They started out “scrappy,” as Davis put it, selling one shirt at a time and using the money they made from that one to make another, a skill they could use in the circumstances of the pandemic to help them out.

Over the years, the pair has found some of their products out and about the world, having some of their stock picked up by bigger brands like Modcloth and many of their customers sharing their love for their products. Their products have been worn by celebrities like Mindy Kaling, Tyler Childers, Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, Reggie Watts and Jennifer Garner, and have appeared on national television broadcasts, such as when a member of

The Strokes wore one of their shirts on Saturday Night Live in November.

“We’ve lucked out in that department without even really trying,” Davis said.

Kin Ship’s items are printed on non-sweatshop shirts. Looking forward to the future, they hope to start printing bolts of fabric and having them cut and sewn into home goods and other clothing. And they plan to expand their offerings to a larger variety of clothing goods.

More than ever, Harrison said, small businesses need all the support they can get.

“Small businesses are also like the real flavor of a community,” Davis said. “If we all just become like, big box stores … every city in America is just going to look like every other city. So supporting small businesses is really how you make sure that the place you live keeps its character and the money stays in your community and creates jobs.” a

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