Profile of a Hustler | Aaron McLellan of North End Bag Co.

Starting your own business takes way more than curating an attractive Instagram gallery. It takes being honest with yourself about your skillset. It takes recognizing and answering a calling that likely was beckoning way before you heard it. It takes practicing your craft so long your fingers bleed or your mind aches or you’re just about ready to pull all of your hair out. It takes failure, rejection, frustration, impenetrable determination, and then every so often, those moments of pure elation.

Aaron McLellan of North End Bags has been on a nearly lifelong journey during which he has been met with each one of those things. Born into a family of fighters and craftsman, he has pushed through setbacks and unlikely circumstances that somehow established his and his wife’s brand in Virginia Beach and forged an impact on the community that goes way beyond canvas and leather.

In this iteration of my Profile of a Hustler series, I unpack the riveting tale of the brand, the bags, the movement, and the ViBe happening in Virginia Beach, one that for the most part started with a set of hands, a needle, and a vision.

This interview was conducted in their space in the alleyway behind Three Ships Coffee in a mixed-used shop and factory where 6 hands and 4 paws spend their days hammering, sewing, cutting, clutching, and scratching around; their pup Otis (@bag.dog) is an important part of the shop. Please continue reading this piece while imagining the tinking of hammers upon rivets, the intermittent orchestra of sewing machines starting and stopping, the heavy smell of leather, the sighs of machines and workers, the ringing of the dangling bell at the door and greeting of customers and the coo’s at Otis as anyone and everyone entered.

Brooklyn I’m Trying: Let’s start from the beginning of this husband-and-wife operation. How and when did Sarah come into the picture?

Aaron McLellan: I was roommates with her little brother in Virginia Beach. He was going to college down here at Virginia Wesleyan, and I had just moved down here from Newport News after graduating from Christopher Newport. I was looking for a roommate and I had a friend tell me, “Hey, my friend, he wants to live at the beach too,” so it just worked out. And then… well then I met his sister.”

BiT: Why did you guys decide to start your business here? Was there any discussion to go anywhere else?

AM: Actually there was. At the time Sarah was living in Brooklyn and I was doing an internship at a place called Knickerbocker, a brand that makes clothing, a lot of menswear. I was kind of at a point where I had already started doing this, making bags, but it was kind of small. I was making them out of a garage and no one really knew about me at all and at that point I was like, “I think I’m going to move to New York because I want to live in the same place as this girl.” Over time and between visits here and up there, we decided that we were going to get married. So we were trying to plan all of that and still figure out where to live together. I had just started getting involved and selling some bags at the farmers market here, and then somebody had offered for us to put a shop over at this industrial park, then a friend offered us a house to live in and so things just all started to fall into place here instead.

BiT: The community kind of accepted you guys before you accepted it.

AM: Yeah exactly, I mean I was about to move to Brooklyn and try. I was either going to work at Knickerbocker or I was going to try to do my own thing up there eventually but there were so many questions up in the air, like how am I going to afford to live there and keep up the business, how am I going to find a place to sell my bags, how will I find space to make them, all of that; and everything just seemed to fall into place here within a really short amount of time. So she moved down here and then just one thing led to another.

BiT: As they often do.

AM: Right. I basically started making a couple bags and selling them at the farmers’ market and I was posting them on Instagram. I started getting a little recognition in the community and it just kept building. It was really crazy. We never took out a loan, and everything we did was just like, ‘Okay, I got $200 for a few sales, I’m going to get this material,’ and then I was able to make $400 with the bags I made out of that. And it just kept growing and growing until we had enough cash flow to buy in bulk. And that’s kind of how it happened.

BiT: Do you think that you would have had the success you’ve had at this point if you had started the company in Brooklyn, or is it something in particular about the lifestyle and community here in Virginia Beach?

AM: Yeah, I definitely think about that kind of thing. I feel like we do a great thing and I’m really proud of it, but I also think that I kind of fell into this. I’m not some kind of great entrepreneur who was thinking, ‘Oh I’m gonna do this in Virginia Beach because they’re ripe for the pickin,’ but I do think that this place is kind of ripe for the pickin’ for what I wanted to do.

BiT: Whereas in New York, the market is already kind of saturated.

AM: Yeah, I think that first of all the market up there is a factor, there’s a lot of competition. There’s no one doing this here which is to my benefit. But there’s also something about the community that we have here. Virginia Beach is a big city, but living on the oceanfront, there is a specific community of people who all have this love for the ocean and love for the outdoors. I feel like everyone builds their life around this similar love, and it builds community for some reason. You see the same people walking on the beach every morning. We’ve been surfing a lot the past few days with the hurricane coming, and everyone’s walking by like, did you surf this morning? Did you surf last night? There’s this community which I think is really important and that keeps us all connected. There’s also something about our location, behind Three Ships and Igor (of Igor’s Signs and Stripes) and Pat who does Benevolent Design, we’re all in it together. Some others too like Stock Pot and Commune, we all are fighting for each other instead of against. When one is successful, it just makes us all more successful. If I’m in Coastal Living magazine, it’s great for Igor, because I’m getting more notoriety. And the same with all these guys. We can all stand alone and hold our own at this point, but we are all in it together.

BiT: Yeah, here there’s this atmosphere of creative energy instead of it being too competitive the way that it would be in New York, where often people don’t really want to see someone else’s success because that means that their going to be a little bit lower, instead everyone is kind of growing and strengthening together.

AM: Exactly.

BiT: That’s really awesome. When and how did the ViBe district become what it is now, as this creative, colorful art district?

AM: I still think it’s still in its infancy, but I’ve been a part of it for 4ish years, and every year there’s a little more going on. We’re coming up on 3 years in this location, and before that we were just in the farmers market on Saturdays.

BiT: It seems like things have moved pretty fast. Was there ever a moment when you were like, “Holy shit, this is actually happening?”

AM: [Laughing] Yeah, I remember for a while I was not taking a paycheck so I was painting houses on the side or doing handyman work, anything I could find to get through. To keep going, I would always tell myself, “This is going to be a good ride.” I had this feeling that whether or not it ever takes off, I’m going to put everything I have into it because this will be so much fun. I’d rather go for this unknown than just sit back and be a construction worker, just scraping a living. I felt like, you know what, I may never make money but it’s a living worth scraping for; it’s so worth it just to do this. There was a point, pretty much when we moved into this building, that we realized it was actually happening. Now we’re going onto 3 years of feeling like this is actually working, this is happening. So yeah. It’s been really cool.

BiT: I think you’re right about that. If you try and then fail on something that you’re really excited and passionate about, then at least you were able to work in that craft for a little bit and feel it. And if you don’t ever try, where is that excitement? What fun is that?

AM: That’s exactly how it felt.

BiT: What’s been a really memorable moment or something very touching for you in this process?

AM: This isn’t something specific, but I’ve seen our bags in airports. We’ll be like in California and see one of our bags and to me, that’s just unreal.

BiT: Wow yeah, it’s like, “My hands have touched that!”

AM: Yeah, yeah exactly. It’s so cool. That, and another thing that’s memorable is something someone told me the other day and I thought it was ridiculous. They said, “You know, you have a cult following around here.” Virginia Beach is so passionate and supportive of us. And not just this company, but some of the other companies feed off our energy. They’re like, ‘those people love what they’re doing and are putting their life into it and I’m going to support it.’ We have people that will just send me an email and they’ll start off, “I’ve been using this bag…” Which usually when an email starts out like that you’re thinking, oh crap, what’s wrong with it. But the email will be like, “I’ve been using this bag for 3 years and everything with it is perfect, it’s my favorite bag. Everything is great with it and nothing has ripped or come undone.” They’re so proud of it because it’s their hometown. This came from here, it was made here, where they live. And it makes me so proud of it because I’m like, “Hey I made that! And it really does work well!”

BiT: How often are people so excited about a product that they’re moved to actually write an email to the designer and say, “Hey thank you so much! I really like it!” No one ever does that. But it seems this community knows that they’re feedback is going to help give you the confidence to move forward. Everyone can imagine that there are tons of difficulties when you’re starting something like this, especially if you’re a craftsman and not a business owner; you somehow you have to become all of those things. So I’m sure just that little bit of outreach makes a big difference to you.

AM: It definitely does.

BiT: What has been the hardest part or the most difficult thing you’ve had to learn over the past few years?

AM: There are a lot of difficult things. I would say that I’m definitely not, was not a business man. I have always been very unorganized, and so just learning how to be honest about that and navigate around it has been hard. But I’ve also learned my strengths I guess, I know what I’m good at now. I know I’m good at running the shop and being production manager and making sure we have all the products we need, designing the products, figuring out who our audience is and who’s going to buy what we make and marketing all of that; those are my strengths. I figured out that finances aren’t my strong point, so very early I hired an accountant.

BiT: There are a lot of hats that you have to wear but it’s helpful if there are some that you can say, you know what, it’s just not my thing, I need someone else to do that.

AM: Yeah and if you have an expert doing it, it just makes what you’re doing so much better.

BiT: Can you walk us through a typical day for you? Are there certain things that you put in place in order to make sure things run smoothly and you’re constantly inspired?

AM: Well a typical day in the summertime, the waves are kind of flat around here but these storms start happening in August so we’ll all gather on the beach. If you look at my text threads, they’re out of control when there’s waves. That’s definitely a huge joy and something I love to do in my life, so I make it important and make time for it. Like this morning I got up at first light, went surfing with some buddies, then got here at 8am. We had to do some hurricane prep so we filled up 75 bags with sand and then at the end of the day today we’re probably going to just line them up. It kind of floods in here just with a heavy rain, and it might come all the way up so we need to be prepared. But normally, I’m always in here, I’m still on a machine a lot of the time, but it’s becoming more a regular thing where I just have too many small things that I need to do. There are tons of materials that we need to always make sure we have enough of, so ordering takes a lot of time. And we’re making more products per week and every month and selling more and trying to keep everything in the inventory up and so there’s that. We’re constantly working on photography for Instagram and keeping our content on the website updated. We’re also always trying to refine the process a little bit, so we’ll maybe have a little bit in the budget to buy a new piece of equipment that might mke our life a little easier.  When we first started, we were handcutting everything, every bit of leather. Now we have this big, heavy, 25-ton press, it’s around the corner over there, and we have dyes and so you lay the leather out on the table of the machine and you put the dyes down there like cookie cutters and they just stamp the letter out …

BiT: Oh my god, I bet the first time you did that you were like, whoaaaa…

AM: [laughing] Yeah, it saves us days.

BiT: And a lot of hand strength too. Cutting leather is no joke.

AM: Oh yeah for sure. You know, so that’s pretty much a weekly part of our lives is dedicated to figuring out what can we fix and what can we make run smoother. I talked to a guy Monday who is out in Washington and is a really experienced bag maker, so I’m probably going to go out there and see their process and learn some of the things they do. And that’s the thing- we’re always trying to get better at what we’re doing. When I first starting to do this, I would sew sew sew all day long, then I’d get home and I’d do computer work, whatever I needed to do; I need to tweak this on the website, I need to respond to this email or send these three emails, and there was just a point a year and a half ago where I was like, at 5pm I’m going to head home and not do computer work so I could clear my head. Becoming more organized has become super important. And I’m worth so much more the next day if my mind isn’t fatigued.

BiT: I think that’s really important too. Just because you have a process that has kind of been working doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try something different, just twist it around a little just to see if it works. It can save you a ton of mental energy just by making changes with your schedule.

AM: Yeah, for sure.

BiT: How is it working with your wife?

AM: It’s good. It can be a little challenging because I’m very intense at work and I feel the pressure and the weight of it constantly, always feeling like come on, we gotta get this done right now. I think there’s a personality that you see at home and one at work, and I constantly need to check myself and remind myself, it’s ok, just calm down.

BiT: So it seems there’s a balance there, because if she wasn’t here and you didn’t work together, there would be a lot more stress on the table. You have an intensity in the workplace that she kind of counteracts.

AM: Exactly. And we also love working together. We just love spending a lot of time with one another so it works great for us. Our dog comes to work with us too which is great.

BiT: I would imagine that regardless, you guys can surf together the next morning and that kind of washes away a lot of the stresses. That’s a bond and connection that helps to keep you focused.

AM: Yeah exactly. We live just on 66th Street, so we go to the beach every day pretty much. We get up in the morning, get coffee, and just walk to the beach; it’s really nice.

BiT: Where do you see the business in 5 years?

AM: That’s a good question because honestly… I’m content. I have a million ideas, but a lot of them have to do with who I don’t want to be as a business. We want to keep selling direct-to-customer. We have a couple of wholesale accounts but they’re very small; it’s more for the partnering of a couple of small businesses helping each other out. These partnerships aren’t like oh I want to move this product and make all this money, it’s like no, we love who these people are and we want to be a part of them. I don’t want to be in department stores. I think overall we’re going to be selling a ton more on our website. I obviously hope to be here still in 5 years, I just don’t want to get too big I feel like it could become too stressful and disconnected.

BiT: And maybe take you away from the actual craft.

AM: Yeah. We do hope to grow some more and have some more employees. I think we could have something sustainable and successful where people are paid well, people are happy, people want to stay here. Right now there’s only 4 of us, and I could see us being 6 or 8 people and with that we could have a really good product line and we could make a lot of different things. I don’t really want to get any bigger than that.

BiT: What does this tattoo mean?

AM: It says “Pugni Italiani, Oltre Oceano” which means “Fighting Italian, Over The Ocean”. It was the headline of a newspaper article about my great grandpa. He was a professional boxer, and he came over from Italy in 1929 with the Olympic team to do an exhibition-type fight in Boston and he met my great grandmother and ended up staying and marrying her. He was the New England Welter White Champion, and he was the champion of Italy when I was a little kid. We have a lot of family pride for him. I have tons of stuff of his all over the place which I’m still gathering. I have a pair of his leather boxing gloves, and there’s a picture of him up there in that little shelf.

This is him, Werther Arcelli. I kind of joke about it but I think my sisters are like this too- we’re small, he was like 145 pounds, but we’re very feisty; we’re a family of fighters. I take that with me into my business- every day we’re ready to fight, every day is another day to keep going. My grandfather on my dad’s side was a WWII hero and he flew in like 17 missions, and when he got back from the war he went back to school and became a craftsman. He was an awesome woodworker and metalworker too. He made that lamp over there.

BiT: So there’s a lot of family history in the craft.

AM: Yeah a lot of my dad’s side of the family were craftsmen. They built houses, they worked with their hands. So even now I have a lot of family support. They’re all wildly excited about this.  And knowing all of this history builds the idea of where I come. It’s never hard to come to work; I always want to, but it’s even easier and I get more excited with this following of family and friends who are like, just keep going.