Long before there was a workshop full of reclaimed wood, or a single woven bracelet, there was simply a habit I could not shake: making things, and finding ways to be creative no matter what my job title happened to be.

I painted through every season of my professional life. While I was managing families at an assisted-living facility and surgery care during the pandemic, my art kept me balanced.  I painted at night and wrote down my ideas during the day.

My art has been shown in homes, galleries, churches, and public spaces across the East Coast, often while I was working an entirely different full-time job. For many years, I also hosted a radio show, coached CEOs and athletes, and also wrote a book on leadership.

My art wasn’t my career, exactly. It was the thread that ran underneath it, the part of me that needed an outlet no matter how full my calendar got. My creativity spilled out everywhere into my work, into my cooking, and into every aspect of my life.

Rich had his own version of the same thing. He spent his career as a process engineer, building large, complex systems by day. But in the evenings and on weekends, he was in the garage, building furniture and rebuilding cars by hand. Like me, his creativity never sat at the center of his job description: it lived in the margins.

The Gift That Started It All

Neither of us set out to start this business. It began with a Christmas gift. Our son wanted a hitch cover for his new truck and couldn’t find one he liked, so Rich decided to make one himself, carved from mahogany with a maple inlay. Our son loved it, and it wasn’t long before friends, and then strangers, were asking where they could buy one too.

What started as a small, thoughtful gift had sparked something we hadn’t planned for at all, a business built on our creativity.

From Hitch Covers to Our First Bracelet: Maverick

The leap from trailer hitch covers to jewelry took a little longer to find. 

It came together after I took a Nantucket basket weaving class. I came home knowing exactly what I wanted to do with the collection of beautiful wood remnants we had been holding onto for years.

This is where my desire to learn new things paired with my lifelong curiosity to spin into a new direction. It was time to pivot and lean into the creative arena we had been skirting for so long.

Maverick became our very first bracelet, the piece that found wood, shaped and worn on the wrist rather than mounted on a truck, could carry the same craftsmanship and character we had already built our name on. It was the moment our creative life and our woodworking life finally became one thing – a men’s line that branched out from the hitch covers to jewelry.

Looking back, I don’t think it is a coincidence that the thread running through all of it, the painting, the radio show, the book, the furniture in Rich's garage, eventually wove itself into a business. Creativity has a way of finding its form eventually. For us, that first form turned out to be Maverick.

If you love hearing where things started, stay close. There is more of our story still to tell.

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