Posted in General

Excited for the Columbus Food Truck Festival

Columbus Food Truck Festival

The State of Devotion team is excited to be a part once again of the Columbus Food Truck Festival. This year’s festival is August 16 and 17, and we’re happy to join this great event at the Columbus Commons once again.

The Columbus Food Truck Festival features more than 40 of central Ohio’s best food trucks, live music and arts and crafts. The event is friendly to food fans of all ages and offers a great opportunity to taste some of the fantastic foods we have here in truck form.

To us at State of Devotion the Food Truck Festival reminds us of how far downtown has come. From the old days to City Center to the Commons and now to the beautiful apartments, this area has seen an impressive amount of transitions over the years. This great two-day event is another reminder that Columbus is a progressive city that can quickly adapt and grow, which sets it apart from some other Midwest cities.

Food trucks and carts for the most part have formed an entrepreneurial alliance that is moving and shaping the cultural and even political landscape of the city. It’s good for business and it’s good for Columbus.

Join us next weekend August 16 and August 17 to enjoy one of the final weekends of summer with some delicious food and awesome entertainment.

Posted in Community • General

State of Devotion at ComFest

Goodale Park

It’s the eve of our first ComFest so I thought I would post a message about Community and what it stands for at this event. The Community Festival Statement of Principles goes beyond the definition of living in a specific area and sharing a common cultural heritage. It states that “people ought to work for the collective good of all people rather than for personal gain, the basic necessities of life are a right and not a privilege and people should strive to conduct their lives in harmony with the environment. It also goes on to say that “We recognize that there are primary attitudes which divide and oppress people. These attitudes are usually shown by prejudice against people on the basis of age, class, ability, income, race, sex and sexual preference/orientation. We seek to eliminate these attitudes.”

Sometimes people think about people-watching, drinking and partying first but when you step back and look at ComFest it stands for something, something much bigger. I think Columbus is lucky to have an event like this with organizers, vendors and patrons that stand for a cause or a belief. That is part of the fabric of State of Devotion and I try to embody all of the principles mentioned above. I’m proud of that and I’m proud to be a part of this communal event.

Community Festival Statement of Principals

Posted in General

Mother’s Day Ohio Link Necklace

We’ve got the perfect gift for Mom this Mother’s Day, our Ohio Link silver necklace. Celebrate Mom and her favorite state with this one-of-a-kind gift. Necklaces still available while supplies last at our retail locations. Check out Simply Vague at Tuttle Mall, Celebrate Local and Bink Davies for the perfect gift for your Mom this weekend.

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

The idea for the Ohio Link necklaces started life as cut acrylic key chains. We worked with Griffin Hollow Studio to cut samples out of acrylic.

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

I had to add an additional loop to the design and adjust its size and placement to allow for the chain.

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

Ultimately the cutout link design was not strong enough in acrylic so we worked with another local company to prototype stainless steel versions.

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

While these might be sold at a later date, they were used as the basis for molds to begin casting fine jewelry. Once the mold was made by hand, additional pieces could be created using the lost wax casting process over and over again. You can see what the rough blanks look like when they first come out of the mold.

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

Each blank is cast in bronze and then ground and polished by hand before being plated in silver. Sometimes blanks do not come out of the mold right and are melted down to be used again later. Once the necklaces are plated they are ready for assembly and sale.

We also work with Griffin Hollow to make custom jewelry stands from reclaimed wood for our stores.

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

Ohio Link Necklace by State of Devotion

Posted in General

Adaptive Reuse

I’ve been working with one of our retail partners, Celebrate Local, to figure out an easier way to display apparel for all of the vendors. For the most part we vendors fold our shirts and within no time they are a mess creating the need for a full-time Shirt Folder to clean up. It’s not easy for customers to view or test fit the tees without unfolding them. Leading up to the holiday shopping season we wanted to display multiple vendors in an easily accessible fashion as quickly as possible. We determined that racks were the best option but they had to be portable, adjustable, look cool and include signage to separate vendors.

Click the pics below for what I came up with. Details below each photo.

Posted in General

Retail Cart Build Up

I thought I’d create a post detailing the assembly of our cart display at Celebrate Local. The base is a vintage Lineberry Foundry & Furniture Company railroad cart. The story behind it states the cart came from an old furniture store near New Philadelphia, Ohio that opened in 1926. I drafted plans for a metal shelving unit to mount on top of it in Google Sketch-Up and then my dad and I welded it up. I gave it a paint job, added some detachable features and signage to round it off. Check it out…

Posted in General

It’s All in the Details

When I look at something I can instantly tell if it’s off by a pixel one way or another. That’s attention to detail and our shirts are no exception. We take the time to remove the American Apparel label from the necks of our shirts, screen print new neck tags by hand and sew custom tags on the hem of every shirt. It’s all in the details.

State of Devotion T-shirt Hem Tags

New batch of hem tags just arrived.

Posted in General

Found Object – Ohio Brick Builds Curiosity

I found this cool Ohio brick while cleaning out an old garage. Of the 2000+ Ohio brick makers, only a fraction remain in operation such as Belden Brick of Sugarcreek, Ohio. Driving by their factory is almost like stepping back in time. They recently supplied 269,825 bricks for one of the coolest projects I’ve seen in a long time — the first railroad roundhouse built in the United States since the 1950s. Take a look at that project and its attention to detail which is second to none. Finding this old brick and others like it reminds me of Ohio’s manufacturing heritage and the care and quality put into products Made in the USA. Speaking of those days, perhaps we are on the cusp of a return to Midwest manufacturing and pride albeit dramatically different than its glory days?

Vintage Ohio Brick

Vintage Ohio Brick

Posted in General

2011 Video Recap

State of Devotion opened for business June 15, 2011 and wow what a year it’s been! We’ve been fortunate to work with some great talent, meet similar, forward-thinking people and get involved in our community. Here are a few videos from our first six months in business shot and edited by Aaron Spragg; half of State of Devotion and all of Storied Rivals.

Posted in General

First Fall ’11 Design

We recently had another chance to work with our pro photographer and friend Ryan Pavlov who shot the first new shirts in our Fall 2011 line. Shot some great pics and video at an abandoned football stadium and around town. Our models Drew McCulley, Megan Savage and Candice Bumgardner did a great job. Check out some of the pics on our Facebook page.

Fall 2011 Line - The Loyal-Tee - Drew McCulley

Fall 2011 Line - The Loyal-Tee - Drew McCulley

Posted in General

Picking for the Pop-up Store

I’ll be the first to admit I like to collect cool, old stuff. I also like to find great deals on things that can be re-used or re-imagined into something else. I’m like Bob Vila/MacGuyver meets American Pickers. I’ve been wanting to beef up the pop-up store a bit and came across a fixture liquidator and spent the afternoon with my 5-yr-old picking through his warehouse. Talk about a lot of stuff! Anyway, I scored some great deals on quality finds. Here are some pics of a few pieces of my score, click each photo for a larger version.  I’ll post pics of our future events so you can see what I turn this stuff in to.