To Our Community of Supporters,
On October 30th, the day before we opened our new store in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, we gathered nearly our entire team to put the finishing touches on the shop. Looking around that room, I was overwhelmed by emotion. I thought to myself, “wow, a lot can change in a year!”
To see the amazing team we’ve assembled in a space we were so proud to unveil was the product of a lot of hard work by a cast of employees and our partners. All of this was made possible by a record-level of support from our customers. And it didn’t happen overnight, it came just as we were celebrating our seventh anniversary as a business. At Pursuit, we like to say “Suitable for Life’s Biggest Moments,” and this was a moment of our own. In that moment, I was leveled by gratitude, and the feeling has remained these past few weeks.
So when it came time to get back to the more routine parts of running a retail business—and as we started planning our holiday season—we had a desire to do something different, and that desire came from this strong feeling of gratitude.
This holiday weekend, both our stores will be open. We’re here if you need us, but this year we are channeling our Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday energy in a different direction. This year, instead of a bargain or a limited-time offer, we want to slow things down a bit and just take the time to say thank you for the overwhelming support we have received, especially these past twelve months. And we thought you may want to join us in sharing gratitude with those you appreciate—more on that later.
There are far too many individuals for me to thank in this letter, and I’ll be doing my best over this holiday weekend to express this directly to as many individuals as possible, but here I’ll speak more broadly:
To the Pursuit team who has grown significantly in number and risen to the occasion as we broke records, pushed our limits and learned some tough lessons this year, thank you! You picked me up and allowed Mel & I to plan a wedding in the midst of a year of growth and surprises, highs and lows. You’ve helped us take massive steps towards our vision. I’m proud to have you at my side. I can’t wait to see how far we can take this. Thank you for putting your whole hearts into Pursuit.
To our amazing customers who have entrusted us with outfitting you for your biggest moments—from the thousands who came through for a suit to the 200 couples who chose to have Pursuit dress their wedding party this year, we have heard some incredible stories of the places your suits will go, and this brings so much meaning to our work. There are millions of places to buy a suit—thank you for trusting us.
To the extended Pursuit team—the collaborators, agencies, consultants and suppliers we work with daily to make our small company run better and grow into the company we dream of becoming, thank you for bringing your expertise and passion to the table and believing as strongly in what we are building as we do. On a personal note, Mel & I were able to plan our wedding working directly with so many of you who we already knew and loved, and it made our day even more special. What a thrill!
To our communities, thank you for embracing something local, something independent, something different. Columbus and the Short North has rallied around us in so many ways that we cannot begin to list, allowing us to work with some of the brightest to make an impact while learning from the best. And now we are feeling the welcoming spirit of our newest community in Over-the-Rhine, where we are committed to being a local business and making an impact with you in the Cincinnati community.
To our partners, who have taken us along on some of the most incredible journeys this year—from winning Olympic gold and celebrating on an international stage, to having an incredible season culminate in preserving the club’s very existence, to touring the country and performing on national television in your Pursuit gear. We are inspired by your dedication and passion. Being around greatness pushes us to continually better ourselves.
To our mentors who help us stay the course and are blazing a trail we aim to follow you down, thank you for your openness and generosity. If we made a list of the folks in the Columbus business community we hope to emulate, it’d be a list of friends and mentors who we can call for help whenever. We hope to build the same list in Cincinnati and every city we go, but we know what we have here at home is special.
To our families and our friends who stand by us when the dream we are describing is not yet the reality you see. You show up for it all, support us when we need encouragement, understand when the days are long and the stress is elevated. Our Pursuit team feels like a family in large part because of those each of us bring into the fold from our personal lives. Thank you for always having our backs and making us feel like a not-so-small business.
At a hectic time of year in our industry, at the end of a dizzying year in our business, we thought it’d be good to slow down and look around with gratitude to the phenomenal cast of characters at our side. Over the following days I’ll do my best to reach out directly to all the individuals included in these amazing groups of supporters I mentioned—but since we won’t be able to say it to every individual, let me say it to everyone reading this. Thank you!
We hope you’re feeling the same amount of gratitude for the people surrounding you. For that reason, we built a simple tool on our website to make it easy for you to share your respect, admiration, and gratitude with those who mean so much to you. We’d be thrilled if you try it out—we’ll share some if you’d like, or it can be just between you and your loved ones.
It’s easy to get caught up in measuring success in our business by revenue, suits sold, stores opened, or employees hired—but we hope this effort shows that those things pale in comparison to the success measured by the gratitude we feel for the people surrounding us.
Wishing you a warm and grateful holiday season!
Nate DeMars
Owner, Pursuit