The Fount brand of leather bags — known for craft, timelessness and indestructibility — filled a hole in the purse industry, said Jackie Wachter, who founded the company with her now husband, Phillip. She’d visit shoe cobblers to get her own purse straps fixed and see “a graveyard of bags hanging there with broken straps or broken zippers,” she said. “With other bags, if your straps break, they will not do anything for you,” she said. Fount’s bags are designed to last forever. “We want them to be passed on for generations,” she said, and if anything on a bag breaks, Fount will fix it.

In this Q and A, Jackie Wachter talked to ICSC Small Business Center contributing editor Rebecca Meiser about reaching customers through media, forming relationships with them and meeting them at the right locations.

How did you get into leather goods?

When Phillip and I were first dating, we gave each other homemade gifts for Christmas. I made him a laptop case and a pencil case made out of fabric I had left over from design school. He made me a pair of mittens and a cutting board. When I gave him his present, he was like: “These are so beautiful. Wouldn’t they be cool made out of leather?” We went on this journey trying to learn how to sew leather, and we just never stopped.

How did people find you?

I loved fashion since I was little, and I was selling high-end vintage at The Cleveland Flea and before that the Brooklyn Flea when I lived in New York City. We started going to all these [maker and art markets and] shows with our bags, but the job was very part-time. I was a school teacher. Phillip was working at our church and then also at Restoration Hardware. Then in 2014, we got featured in Country Living magazine. As soon as the article was published, we got requests for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of orders. We both quit our jobs and jumped in headfirst. We hired people and ordered all this machinery to make us more efficient. That was the October issue, and we worked night and day fulfilling orders all the way up through Christmas. It was so exciting!

And then Christmas turned into January. Want to guess how many orders we got that month? The answer is three. We got three. We were terrified because at that point, we had nine people on the payroll, including Phillip and I. We panicked, and we were like: “What are we going to do?” So we traveled doing shows all over the Midwest, Atlanta, D.C., Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Columbus and Chicago. We were doing 52 shows a year. It was a big grind.

In 2016, you won LeBron James’ Shark Tank-like CNBC show Cleveland Hustles. You were given a lease in an up-and-coming arts district. How did that change your trajectory?

It was such a blessing to us because honestly, we would have never opened a storefront [without the experience.] It was the era where everyone was saying brick-and-mortar is dead. Everything’s online. We were trying to grow [our business] online, but it’s a big ask to have someone order a $400 leather bag that they’ve never seen, touched or smelled versus seeing it in person, experiencing it and then ordering it. We found that customers loved the in-store experience, partly because people want that high-end customer service when they’re buying something big. It’s a different experience buying something in an outdoor parking lot versus when you walk into a store and they give you a glass of champagne.

And it helped with our recognition. People came from states away to our store, saying: “I saw this on Cleveland Hustles.” We still have people coming in and saying: “We remember you from the show.”

Also, it didn’t hurt that we got to [associate] our name with LeBron. One day, he called me on my cellphone and told us that we were killing it, and I was like that’s all I need. On a hard day, that just keeps me going. LeBron said I’m killing it, so I can do anything.

What are your demographics?

We have a wide demographic. We appeal to women in their 20s up to women in their 70s. We’re excited to add more men to our demographic because we are expanding our men’s line. We just launched our men’s briefcase, and we added men’s wallets last year. A lot of our customers are men shopping for their wives, girlfriends and moms, and they love our leather. They’re always like: “When are you going to make something for us? So we’re tiptoeing into the men’s market.

How do you incorporate customer feedback into your merchandise design? Is that important for you in your design process?

About 10 years ago, I loved Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and they wore these giant bags. I said: “OK, I’m going to make a giant bag.” But our customers were like: “Oh, this is so cool, but it’s huge.” They told us: “If it was smaller, we would buy it in an instant.” So for the next show, we made one that was smaller. It’s still our No. 1 seller to this day. It’s The Classic Bellfield Tote. Then customers said, “We want it even smaller,” so we made the petite. I love listening to [customers] because they’ll tell you everything you need to know. They say, “We want this” and then we make it for them. If one person tells you they want something, that’s one thing, but when you hear it over and over from multiple customers, you have to listen because it’s obviously a viable product. That’s why in our stores and at any show we go to, I have associates record anything a customer requests. They put that in their notes. Then when we’re designing, we are constantly looking at those notes for feedback of what the customer wants us to make next.

How did you decide your sweet spot was open-air centers?

In 2022, we were asked to open in Pinecrest. It’s a really beautiful open-air shopping center [in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland] with lots of great national brands, but the rent was really high because it’s a really highly trafficked area. During COVID, one blessing that happened was that there were a lot of openings. Pinecrest reached out to us and gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse. They said: “Hey, just come and try it for a pop-up. It’s just a one-year commitment.” We did a pop-up and were just overwhelmed with how awesome it went. We just were over the moon. We said: “That went so well on the East Side of Cleveland, let’s try it on the West Side, too, at Crocker Park.

Open-air shopping centers are often more convenient for our customers. They’ve got great parking options, and [potential customers are] already there for other errands. We do well in areas that [have] a lot of affiliate brands that our customer also likes to shop. They love Madewell, Free People, Anthropologie and Lululemon, for instance, and you tend to find those at higher-end, open-air shopping centers.

You now have stores in Dallas, Columbus and Cleveland. How do you choose what cities you want to be in?

We’ve got big followings in most of those cities. We have a big following in Columbus because we’ve done so many shows there. We’re hoping to eventually open in Pittsburgh, and we did very well at shows in Atlanta, so that’s why we’re opening there. Texas was kind of a wild card. People were constantly telling us: “Women would love your stuff in Texas. They love good leather.” It turns out people who ride horses love our leather because it’s the same kind of great leather that their saddles are made out of. Wherever there [are] equestrians and horse lovers, we tend to do really well.

Your first Atlanta location is in the works. Do you have any worries about entering this new market?

It’s a big marketing learning curve that we’re going through right now. We were doing 52 shows a year, and a lot of those were in Cleveland. People knew us from the TV show. They knew us from the shop or from the pop-ups we were doing or from word of mouth from their friends and family. When we go to these new centers, it is really challenging to get the word out. It’s also challenging to get someone to take a chance on an expensive product. I’m going to be a lot more likely to give [a smoothie] a shot for $7 versus taking a chance on a $400 bag. We’re really trying to figure out our marketing right now. The shopping center we will be in is in Alpharetta, Georgia, and is called Avalon. It has the most incredible foot traffic I've ever seen at a shopping center and we got a premium location, so I am hopeful it is going to be a really strong location for Fount.

Where do you want to be in 5 years? In 10 years?

Phillip and I have an amazing mentor. He was [an executive] with L Brands. I met him at a conference. I mustered all my courage to go up and ask if he would mentor me. He said yes, which was great, but he has big plans for us. He really helps us see our potential to grow, gives us really great wisdom and believes in us, so we do have pretty big goals to be a national and international brand.