This August, we celebrated a milestone at Outwest - 3 years since opening the doors to our flagship store in the heart of Dingle town.
Back in 2022, everyone was turning to e-commerce. Everyone told us post-COVID that retail was dead, and it's one of the few things I am so glad we didn’t listen to. Shane and I wanted to do something different. We wanted to connect with our customers on a human level, face to face, learn about who they were and what they saw in Outwest.
Retail comes with a lot of risk and a lot of overhead expenses, but we knew this was where we wanted to place all of our chips (to start with, anyway). We wanted to create a space where Outwest could learn and grow, and what better place than in the heart of where the brand was founded.
Business is all about taking risks, and this was a risk we believed in. Don’t get me wrong, with very little retail experience between Shane and I, we often thought “what the hell are we doing?!” So with 3 rails, 8 products, and 2 inexperienced retail staff (Shane and I!), we opened our doors at 10 am on the 1st of August 2022, and we have never looked back.
Over the last 3 years, we have won, learned, and lost in many ways. But if I could tell that couple standing in their store the night before opening what I know now...
I wouldn’t tell them everything - some things only come with time, and you never truly learn until you’ve lost a couple of times. But here are 3 things I would tell them:
Your Customers Will Teach You More Than Any Business Book or Podcast
You can read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, and look at all the data - but nothing will teach you more about your products or your business than the customers standing right in front of you.
Some customers will praise you and tell you exactly what they love, and that’s a great feeling and lovely to hear. Others will point out what could be improved, and sometimes that can be jarring, but with time, you realise both are equally valuable. In fact, the most impactful conversations often come from the people who care enough to give you constructive criticism.
One of the things that makes our shop so unique is that our customers don’t just come from Kerry or even Ireland; they come from all over the world. We’ve had visitors from Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, the U.S., and everywhere in between. Sometimes they’re here on holidays and happen to come across us, sometimes they’ve been following Outwest online and make the store part of their trip. And what’s amazing is that they bring their own stories, cultural experiences, and fresh perspectives with them.
We’ve chatted with the founder of a hugely successful US business about scaling into other markets, and we’ve had quiet, personal moments where someone explained how their sensory needs mean they love our long-sleeve tops, but remove our neck tags because of the texture.
From the biggest, most strategic ideas to the smallest, most thoughtful details, our customers shape what we do. They help us see the business through fresh eyes, challenge us to improve, and remind us that no two people experience our products in the same way.
At the heart of it, we know this: without them, there is no Outwest. So we will always listen, and we will always learn.
Your store is going to do more than sell clothes.
From the beginning, we knew we didn’t just want our Outwest store to be just a retail unit selling things for profit. Of course, sales matter, and without them there’s no business. But we wanted the space to feel like something more than a financial transaction. We wanted somewhere our community could meet, where they could pop in for advice on what to see and do on the Dingle Peninsula, learn about the brand, meet our amazing team, and get a real feel for what drives us as a brand.
Over the past three years, the shop has become exactly that. We’ve had people come in “just for a browse” and end up staying for half an hour chatting about the weather, their journey, or their favourite walking routes from all over the world. We’ve been given tips about places to visit in Colorado, local history we’d never heard, and heard some amazing travel stories featuring Ireland and beyond.
Sometimes we help choose the perfect waterproof jacket or a t-shirt to give as a gift to someone special, other times we’re simply a friendly face on a rainy day. It’s those smaller moments, the chats, the connections, the shared laughter, that have made Outwest so much more than just a store. We are selling more than just clothes; we are selling a feeling.
Details will make the difference
In retail, it’s easy to focus on the big things - your product range, your marketing, your sales targets - but after three years at Outwest, we’ve learned that the smallest details often have the biggest impact.
The rainjacket being placed in the window on a wet day, the playlist that makes people linger just a little longer, or even better, sing along quietly to themselves as they browse, or the famous map where people get to pin where they are visiting from when they purchase in-store.
It’s the same with the personal touches, which we would argue are even more important. Remembering a customer’s name, recalling what they bought last time, or asking how their trip has been. Sometimes it’s simply helping them find their size so they don’t have to keep walking across the shop floor, or giving them tips on where to grab lunch after shopping. None of it takes much effort, but together it creates the kind of atmosphere where people feel valued.
Those small, thoughtful touches aren’t an afterthought; they’re the heart of the experience we want to create here at Outwest. They show customers that we care about more than just the sale, and while it’s impossible to measure the return on a perfectly folded jumper or a good dinner recommendation, we’ve learned that these little things add up to something bigger: a store people want to come back to, again and again.
So looking back, opening our store in Dingle was one of the biggest risks we’ve ever taken and one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. The past three years have taught us more than we could have imagined, not just about retail, but about people, community, and what it takes to grow a brand like Outwest.
My parting words to Shane and Bec would be, it is all going to be ok! Invest in an amazing team, listen to the people that matter, and don’t forget when it all feels too much, get outside, because that is why you started the brand in the first place.
