The Brass Hand in Clintonville is a lifestyle boutique featuring a range of Southwestern-inspired products, from vintage home decor to a build-your-own-plant room where customers can fill a vase with different kinds of cacti, sand and rocks gathered from the deserts of Arizona, Heather McCloud, owner of the store and a fourth-year in human development and family sciences, said. McCloud, an Arizona native, said she wanted a piece of the Southwest with her in Ohio.
“It’s the healing energy of the desert woven in with Midwestern roots,” McCloud said. “It is an experiential desert boutique, highlighting our Midwestern roots with local makers throughout the shop.”
McCloud said she opened the current store Aug. 4 after selling her products through Instagram and running a smaller, appointment-only shop. She said opening her current shop wouldn’t have been possible if not for the brand’s presence on social media.
“There was no way I was going to be able to open a website and then learn marketing on Google,” McCloud said. “And it’s like, how long would that take until I’m generating enough income to have a brick-and-mortar?”
Isaac Navar, a 2005 Ohio State chemical engineering alumnus and vintage curator for his own brand, mercadOH, said he and McCloud connected when she invited him to be a vendor at a pop-up flea market she ran early this year called Sol614.
“As things progressed and she decided she was going to open up a brick-and-mortar, she asked me to be a part of it,” Navar said. “I was all for it.”
Navar said his vintage curation journey started when he and his wife began to furnish their home. Navar began his own online brand on Instagram, and his hobby led him to be a vendor and source items for The Brass Hand.
“We have a very similar aesthetic, you know?” Navar said. “If you have both of our products side by side, you can still go and tell definitely what’s mine and what’s hers, but everything just blends well together.”
Navar said a lot of The Brass Hand’s success has come from McCloud’s marketing efforts on the store’s Instagram and from the items themselves.
“People want to buy items that are ethically sourced, that are not creating a bigger footprint,” Navar said. “So if you can recycle or reuse, especially a vintage piece that’s probably made even better than things you would find currently, people gravitate towards that.”
Kelly Merrill Jr., a fourth-year graduate student and instructor of Communication 3558, “Social Media,” said having a strong presence on social media is something every brand should consider if they want to succeed.
“Research just shows how important it is to have brand influence on social media, that they’d be crazy to not even consider,” Merrill Jr. said.
Keeping in mind how Instagram could help build her brand, McCloud said when she was designing the layout of her shop, she kept “Instagrammable moments” in mind so customers would be encouraged to take pictures in-shop.
“There’s a very large mirror — it was actually a mirror from my house — and we built the whole shop around this big mirror because I wanted people to be able to take pictures right there,” McCloud said. “So, like, everything behind it on the other side, it was very intentional.”
Having a unique aesthetic and sourcing method is a great way for a brand to get attention and business on social media, especially with a younger audience, Merrill Jr. said.
“Bringing things in from some different area is really interesting because around your early 20s is when people love to be trendy and be different and love to express themselves,” Merrill Jr. said.
McCloud said although The Brass Hand is focused on a Southwest aesthetic and transporting customers to a different world, it doesn’t forget its Ohio roots and all of the local support it receives.
“A goal of mine is to do this shop with the community, supporting members of the community,” McCloud said. “It looks like Arizona, but it’s Columbus, folks.”
