The youngest of three children, Kris (Warfield) Galmarini has always been a bit of a free spirit.
Growing up in Wheeling during the late ’90s, she had a penchant for music and creativity, but also for adventure. Going with the flow and conforming are not in her wheelhouse.
She met young Bob Galmarini at a Young Life retreat while in high school. She felt a strong connection early. Naturally, Bob hailed from Cleveland. Far from ideal, but they managed to stay in contact via letters and phone calls. While her friends gathered at the lunch table, gabbing about the day’s events, Kris stood in the hallway by the pay phones, talking to the man who one day would become her husband.
Why? She had a feeling. And when Kris gets a strong feeling, she runs with it. It’s character trait that’s served her well throughout her life.
She graduated from Cal-State Northridge in 2003 with a double major in business and music. She was soon married, and the two moved to Charleston, S.C., where they still have a home.
After the birth of their second child (of three), both Kris and Bob were yearning for a creative outlet and came up with a clothing line named after their two children (Neve and Shepard Hawk). Neve & Hawk was born.
It’s grown from offering children’s clothing only to multiple lines, two production facilities and a flagship store in the charming town of San Anselmo, California, mere miles from the Bay Area. It does more than $1 million annually in sales. Not bad for running with a feeling.
That same energy and sense of spirit encompasses the Galmarini family. They live free, channeling the parents’ sense of adventure. That same feeling is represented in each piece of clothing they sell.
What inspired you to go into this industry, not only in general, but to also offer the handcrafted, exclusive items that comprise your line? Each piece seems unique; where does the inspiration come from?
In 2010, after I just had my second baby, my husband and I would create together at home when the kids went to sleep. We desperately wanted to find ourselves again in the haze of a newborn and a 3-year-old, yet we didn’t have the finances or the time to get that fulfillment outside of the home. So, we decided to tend to our passions inside of the house by playing music, sipping wine, and creating at night while the kids slept. My husband, Bob, is an artist, and I had a passion for clothing design, and so we combined our arts. What started as a t-shirt line quickly turned into more. And, here we are, 10 years later with a full clothing brand and flagship, all items produced in San Francisco and Peru. I think that at each stage, the concept and design is the focus, and we haven’t strayed from that. The design and ethical ethos behind our brand are what is important to us and what will be most important to us as we continue to grow.
How has the business progressed from inception to where it stands today, not just in location and volume, but in how spread out the customer base is? Do you find you do more business at the flagship store or online? Also, any additional plans for expansion, both in locale or offerings?
Our brand started as a kid’s clothing brand and was solely that for over five years. We only were direct to consumer (online) and in other stores (wholesale). We were doing great, but I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like being behind a desk, chasing money and dealing with stores. The creative part was secondary, and I began to hate my work. So, I started to figure out exactly what I wanted. And, it was a space to both sell and create in a world in which I wasn’t managing accounts. So, I stopped all wholesale immediately and started the search for our first brick & mortar shop. When this happened, I decided to begin women’s clothing, and it quickly grew legs of its own and kind of dictated our direction. That was 2016. We have now had our store for almost four years. And, while our shop carries home, women’s, kids and men’s, our brand is 99 percent women’s. As for the percentages of sales online and in-store, we used to sell more online. But we now are pretty even, doing almost $1 million a year in combined sales. As for expansion, in December we opened a craft coffee shop inside our flagship, partnering with an amazing woman who owned San Francisco-based coffee brand Lady Falcon Coffee Club. It has brought life to our store and has been so much fun. And, ironically, it has kept us alive during this weird time with coronavirus. We are hoping to take this flagship model of store and coffee house and open another location in Charleston, S.C., in the next year as we still consider Charleston home and still have a place there as I didn’t want to fully let go.
As a business owner, how has the pandemic affected you differently from the average citizen? You have a brick and mortar store to contend with and employees? What effect has it had on them, and how difficult was it to make the decisions you had to make?
The past three months have been hard. I am not sure which has been more difficult, the emotional toll or the drop in revenue. The first few weeks were about fighting for my employees, coming up with a plan and doing hours of paperwork to get a PPP loan. We were unable to open at all, and our production was shut down immediately in both countries, so there was a lot of confusion with how to proceed. I am happy to say my full-time employees never missed a paycheck. And, they have been rock stars. It has been a delicate balance of making sure my employees are safe and figuring out how to make money during this time to make sure we survive. A whole lot of pivoting. That coffee shop we added the end of last year? Turns out it is what has saved us in many ways as we were able to open curbside, and we also began a coffee delivery program locally, so people did not have to leave their homes during this time. Those things have kept us alive. We also did a pre-sale for clothing items that were in production when everything shut down and our customers really supported us in that release. We are so incredibly grateful. Now, we are open curbside most days for retail and coffee as well as coffee delivery and subscriptions, just trucking along and learning a lot along the way. We also took the first month off to get our whole flagship online; every brand and artist we carry in our physical location is now on our website too. It’s something we have wanted to do for years but never had the time. There are silver linings in this craziness. I have to focus on that, or I will just cry.
On your website you do a lot to mention and promote other small businesses in your community. On paper, it seems like a nice little town full of a variety and yet close enough to a major metropolitan area like San Francisco. Is it the perfect mix?
I love where we live–San Anselmo, California. It is the best little town and the community is wonderful. So many great restaurants and stores not only in our town but in all the other small surrounding towns in Marin. It is only 15 miles from San Francisco, right over the Golden Gate Bridge. It really is such a great mix and I feel so lucky to live here. As for other small businesses? YES! We must all support one another. The idea of us all being competition is sad to me. We are stronger together. Why feel threatened?
You met your husband in 1996 and you’ve been on this incredible journey together. You work together, play together, have three children. And you’re successful together. Given how other families struggle to make their lives work, do you ever have to sit back and pinch yourself?
I met my husband, Bob, in 1996 at Young Life camp. I used to call him from the pay phones in the North Commons and we wrote letters back and forth and dated on and off until 2001 when my mom passed. It was at her funeral that we reconnected and were married in 2004. We have lived in San Diego, LA, Charleston, and the San Francisco area. We have three kids—Neve (13), Shepard (9) and Sebastian (3). We came to San Francisco for his job, yet my work started to boom once we came. I think the key is that we have always been supportive of one another. I do pinch myself, all of the time. But it isn’t always easy. Trying to navigate his crazy job (he is senior director of brand design at Slack) and my business, as well as the kids and their activities and school isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it is an exhausting struggle. But we are both all in and that means everything. We also both are adventure driven so we are constantly dreaming up scenarios for our lives and then sometimes we just do them, even if it isn’t the smartest investment. We are dreamers and also doers and those things combined can be amazing, and dangerous. I think the hardest thing is to make sure we carve out time for ourselves so Bob can surf, and bike and I can run or pretend I am running and read a book with wine in my hand. Whatever it is, we need to escape to it to fill up to be better for our kids and each other. Do we still want to punch each other sometimes? Of course. That is marriage and parenthood. Anyone that says otherwise is lying.
