All Eyes on Mt. Rainier!
We are so excited to share more about our pal, David, over at Mt. Rainier Watch! He is a one-man-show and runs one amazing Instagram account. Check out what he had to say, we know you're going to fall in love with him too!
What’s your idea of a perfect day on the clock?
Well to be totally honest, Rainier Watch is a side hustle right now, a passion project that I do outside of my day job's work hours. So I'll dream for a hot second and pretend that it is my day job (hoping to get to that point eventually! 🤞🏻)... I usually start off my mornings with a few hours of coding and working on my website and doing product research and planning. Around 7 or 8am I'd sneak a social post in there for the RW Instagram and/or twitter. Then I'd get to my favorite part, shipping orders! I love seeing orders from all the different states coming in! In fact, this blows my mind, but RW has shipped RW Gear to all 50 states! I package each order myself, usually write a small personal note, and then sketch a mountain on the box.
Then I'd break for some tasty lunch, ideally it would be fried chicken from my favorite local restaurant, Ezell's! Then in the afternoon I'd work on designing new products and preparing social content. To finish off the day I'd check in on the customer service queue and see what's cracking there.
You're not a retail shop, so we're wondering how long into it did you decide to add merch?
Rainier Watch all started with a tweet. Basically I couldn’t find a way for others to know when The Mountain (Mount Tahoma/Rainier) is out so I started a twitter account on my commute many years ago. After a few years of that I dabbled into selling stickers here and there to pay for the website and people asked for more. So in 2018 I launched the official RW Shop and its all history after that point! Ha! Actually the story you can read on my website: https://rainierwatch.com/about
Why do you like printing on Allmade tees?
I love love love the Allmade mission and goals. With Allmade, its more than just an eco friendly shirt, its a company that’s doing good in the world! On top of that, the shirts are so stinking comfy its shocking that they are made from recycled water bottles. I've gotten rave reviews from customers and I don't know about you, but I eat, sleep, and run around town in mine!
How do you bring greener practices into your shop?
Great question! This is always something in the back of my mind. Just last year I started a transition away from plastics for my packing and now when I’m not reusing boxes for orders, I ship in EcoEnclose earth friendly packaging. Here's my blog post all about it! Their packing is amazing and I’d recommend everything check them out! They have a plethora of amazing packing options. In fact here’s a link to get $20 off your first order of $50. In addition to those eco packaging packaging options, I use ink-free printing on plastic free labels!
Also I ship like 90% of my orders via USPS, so there’s no additional carbon footprint, the post person just picks up RW orders on their regular route! I recently switched to Shopify for many reasons, one main reason is that I love their focus as a company on sustainability - for example, for every order placed via Shop Pay, Shopify offsets all delivery emissions. Oh and very soon I'll be adding the ability for customers to choose carbon offsets on every single order to help make deliveries carbon neutral.
Also at Rainier Watch Basecamp (aka my spare bedroom), I use bamboo toilet paper from Bippy: https://heybippy.com/ and pay for a special recycling service that recycles things that I can't recycle via curbside The startup that is doing this is called Ridwell and they are super cool! This way I can recycle those plastic film bags that apparel often is shipped in for protection and other random things like computer cords. Basically they take pretty much everything, their service has been my favorite thing the last few months.
And that doesn't include the product side of things! Last year I introduced several hats and beanies that used recycled materials like plastics in them and plan on doing more. And this summer I launched my new line of Eco Tees via your wonderful Allmade shirts! https://rainierwatch.com/collections/eco-tees
What's the craziest view/picture of Mt. Rainer have you ever seen?
Oh gosh, too many! I've seen thousands of amazing photos of Rainier/Tahoma via the RW community, especially on Instagram. But one that has really stuck with me is this epic photo of The Mountain and a balloon.
Photo credit: https://www.instagram.com/ryanresatka/
That being said, I'd definitely recommend following the RW Instagram for any mountain lovers out there!
We hope you enjoyed learning more about David and the magic he works. Happy mountain hunting!
