Newsletter
August 24, 2026
Hi everyone,
Well, we have twenty-two days until the big website launch and so much has happened from the concept, to creation, to our first wax test and thirtieth wax test, to not only one laser but two and now market sales and more before we’re even “open”. If you’ve been following along on Facebook, you should be pretty well looped in already, but I decided this early morning, sitting here enjoying my coffee and the quiet before the kiddos wake up, that it was the perfect time to write our very first, promised newsletter.
I plan at this time for newsletters to come out roughly quarterly, just as a kind of broad overview of all that’s happening, but that could change. We’ll get your feedback and, as with everything so far, adjust as needed.
Who We Are:
I go into this in a little more detail on our Facebook page and you’ll get to see it in the Our Story section of our website and even in our first blog post for From The Workshop. Yup, that’s right. I’m going to attempt to conquer putting out somewhat regular blog posts too. Anyway, we are Brian and Kat. Brian is a medically retired, disabled veteran with 12 ½ years of active-duty service, still working on planes, by the way. I’m his wife of 15 years, a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom who is now apparently part-time web designer and newsletter writer. He’s from Colorado, I’m from the continental United States (Air Force kid) and we have four kids, so why not start a business? We obviously weren’t busy enough. We both love nature, family and our beautiful country. So that’s where we got the mountain logo, some of our scents, our brand identity and all the rustic wood and leather features we’re bringing to you.
What We’re Doing:
As I somewhat alluded to in the introduction, we’re doing a lot. And this being the first newsletter, we haven’t really talked about any of it here. So I’ll try a little recap of everything we’re currently selling at the market.
Candles – okay, I fibbed. No candles at markets yet, but we have melts and the candles have been such a process, such a journey, and they are so close that I just had to start with them first. Our whole brand is based on a masculine approach to both candles and gift giving, so we have 8 wonderful scents that remind us of nature and the Old West, without a floral or fruity top note to be found. There might be a tiny hint in the background, but that’s only because they’re a part of nature. We want these to be candles men can buy, women can buy for men, or that women can buy for themselves. We hope they are loved by everyone who enjoys nature, leather, and woodsy scent styles.
Drinkware – we offer the perfect coffee-drinking tumbler for the moderate coffee drinker (20 oz skinny tumbler), a 6 oz flask and a 12 oz wine tumbler so that you can start and end your day on great notes. We’re working on getting a leakproof 32 oz sports bottle but we aren’t sure if that will happen before Christmas yet or not. Let us know if you’d like to see it in time for gifting!
Bookmarks – Our bookmarks took a little evolving to get to what we wanted. We started with wood, and that warped too easily, and then thought of leather but we wanted to do our own thing, so we came up with a hybrid. We cut and etch the leather and then back it with pre-cut white aluminum so that it is sturdy and still thin. Hint, hint, they are the perfect size to stuff stockings with.
Bottle Openers – We have two kinds of bottle openers and so far, the Bamboo Magnetic Opener has been one of our top sellers at the market.
We also offer two kinds of journals, keychains, slate and pine coasters and a few other goodies, but I’ll leave those to talk about next time. You can always take a closer look and see some photos on Facebook. Facebook
At The Market:
At the beginning of August we walked into a pawn shop for a tool we needed for the business. We bought a Dremel to make sure all our bookmarks had clean lines. At checkout, I started chatting with the man behind the counter (I choose to call it “networking” now) and turns out that he and the other owner had started a farmers market in the parking lot this past spring and we were invited. We were cautious, but decided feedback about these products and money coming in now were both very good things, so we are market vendors!
The plan is to finish out the season at the Millard Farmers Market, do a lot of the local, fall, high-school-sponsored craft fairs, join the Bellevue winter market, and have tables at the medium-sized Christmas fairs around Omaha. We’re working our way up to the Big Omaha Holiday Market next year. Next spring, we hope to be established enough locally to only do one to two markets a month. We’ll see what God’s plan is. We’ll post all our upcoming locations on Facebook so you’ll always know where to find us.
Wholesale:
Yes, our plan from the beginning has been to become a wholesale provider to several of the small book and gift stores around town. Our catalog is almost complete and we hope to approach our first three stores within the next couple of weeks. We plan to be in a few before Christmas shopping really picks up. We’ll keep you posted so if you’re local and want to support two small businesses at a time, you’ll know where our products will be on shelves.
What’s Next:
As I’ve said, we’re going wholesale, we’re going to markets, we’re going live on our website and we’re just going to keep plugging away, figuring out exactly what’s going to work for us and how to make this business work with our family. September will see us with the website live on the 15th and most of our Saturdays spent at the Millard Farmers Market. We’re trying to get into a Sunday Aksarben Market, and we’ll let everyone know when we know if that’s going to happen.
Wrapping Up:
We appreciate each and every one of you more than you know. With your love, support, honesty and kindness, you’re helping us build this into a business we can really be proud of. I hope if you’re on Facebook that you love what you see. If you’re not yet (why not? 😊), I hope you’ll love what you find as you search through our website on September 15th. Please continue to reach out to us with all the good, the bad, and I’d finish that but I’m afraid of copyrights. Thanks for being with us on the journey.
Brian, Kat & family
Whiskey Foxtrot Designs
Handcrafted. American Inspired.
Crafted with Integrity. Proudly Disabled Veteran Owned.
P.S. In case you were curious, Whiskey Foxtrot means “With Family” for us. The other common term was already taken, a lot.
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