How a Small Business Creates Big Brand Value
In July 2021, wildfires blazed through the Methow Valley at the edge of North Cascades National Park in Washington. A town named Mazama and its 200 residents found themselves surrounded by a wall of flames. The fire made headlines across the region. But the conflagration also revealed how a small business has built a brand that deeply resonates with its customers.
Built in the early twentieth century as a pit stop for miners, Mazama always stayed small. The surrounding fortress of jagged peaks, which cut the Valley off from the bustling western half of the state, dashed any chance for a future of economic prosperity that the town might have had. In the winter, when blizzards blanket the mountain passes, the road to Seattle closes early and opens late. In the summer, rock climbers and hikers flock to the region to inhale mountain air and touch craggy summits.
But last July, as wildfires engulfed the hillsides and tourists fled from the flames, many locals also evacuated. Weary firefighters crowded into Mazama’s general store, named the Mazama Store, after long shifts in the burning hillsides. They came for food, water, and a place to rest. The locals who chose to ride out the level 3 evacuation came too, eager to exchange information about what was happening. They knew this community hub would be there for them, even as the air grew thick with choking smoke and ash rained down from the sky.
“We wanted to be around for our people,” recalled Missy LeDuc, who owns the store with her husband, Rick DeLuc. “Each day, we tried to keep track of who needed help. We definitely feel like the value of the store is being there for others and [in times of crisis] to ensure that our community is healthy and accounted for.”
Missy and Rick LeDuc, Mazama Store owners since 2007
Among other efforts, the Mazama Store hosted a word-of-mouth pancake breakfast and free dinners for the locals and firefighters. “Those events weren’t money makers but they were community makers,” Missy added.
That sense of commitment to the community has put the Mazama Store on the map. The Mazama Store is there for its customers, even in times of great need. As a result, its customers keep coming back. That kind of brand loyalty extends far beyond the Methow Valley. In outdoor recreation circles, people talk of visiting the Mazama Store as a beacon of post-adventure celebration. Mazama Store’s logo, a bearded mountain goat with a miniature range of peaks running along its spine, has become an in-the-know icon for North Cascades adventurers. Its brand resonates.
The Mazama Store brand exudes a sense of place and purpose. This didn’t just happen. It was intentional. When Missy and Rick bought the Store in 2007, it was in decline. “We purchased it to preserve it as an asset to the community,” Rick says. Their dedication to the community helped turn the business into a brand that is meaningful to its customers.
The Mazama Store’s front entrance in December 2018
“A brand is not your logo or design. A brand is your reputation,” Dave Gerhardt, Chief Brand Officer at Drift, often says. To add to that, a brand is the experience that your customers have when they interact with you. And it's the reputation that your business’s name carries as a result of those customer experiences. A strong brand knows who it can help and helps them, creates work that matters, and delivers on a promise it makes to its customers. The Mazama Store does all of this.
The Mazama Store, which employs 30 people, is a small business with a niche brand. But the LeDuc’s approach to their community-first business offers insights into how other companies, especially small enterprises, can create and evolve a brand that matters. Still, the Store is reconciling with core branding questions that every business leader must think through.
How do you create an experience that means something to your customers?
When customers have a meaningful interaction with a brand, they’re more likely to be brand loyal and spread awareness about your brand. That’s why it is important that the experience you offer your customers is unique and meaningful.
“It’s not just a store,” Missy says. “People come because it makes them feel good. When you live in a rural area you don’t have someone right next to you so the Store is a good place to catch up with everyone.” On a typical morning, customers will fill the porch and courtyard to sip espresso. In the afternoon, they’ll gather again for the beer on tap.
A grocery store isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find community events, but the Store has hosted talks on topics like composting, live music by local bands, and an annual holiday party (called “Christmas at the End of the Road”).
There are competitors, like small grocery stores in neighboring towns further down the Valley and a Walmart an hour away, but the Mazama Store differentiates itself from its competitors because of the experience it offers.
Missy and Rick have positioned their brand around the experience their customers will have at the Store. “We’re trying to be the place where people want to come because it’s about more than just grabbing a gallon of milk. If you poll people about going to Walmart or the Mazama Store, they’ll say that their shopping experience is different—there isn’t a feeling of connection at Walmart like there is at the Mazama Store,” Rick says.
How do you evoke a sense of quality?
It might seem obvious, but a brand’s success is embedded in their ability to offer useful products that delight the customer. When quality suffers, so does a brand’s reputation.
When you step into the Mazama Store, you’re greeted with the smell of fresh baguettes, bagels, and pastries, many of which are baked on-site. As you wander the aisles over wooden floorboards and under high ceilings with big wooden beams, you’ll pass gourmet cheese and wine, labeled with hand written signs, often with the vendor’s name and (local) location. Light from the shop’s large windows stream down over pottery, jewelry, and art pieces from local artists. Even the building feels well made—there’s a sense of pride in its construction.
“We only carry products that are useful and that we would want to have in our own home,” Missy says. If Missy and Rick didn’t believe that their products were good enough to bring home, then customers would likely sense that the quality was only mediocre.
They let their products speak for themselves. The quality brings people back. It makes customers want to also fill their home with items from the Mazama Store.
How do you demonstrate a sense of purpose?
A sense of purpose gives you a point of view. When a brand has an authentic point of view, they differentiate themselves. They stand out. Ideally, their target audience connects with that point of view and sees the brand as admirable and as a positive force.
The Mazama Store doesn’t think about its core values as a marketing exercise but rather as integral to the Store’s existence. “We promote things we believe in like waste reduction. We don’t want to create more issues in the community by not being sustainable,” Rick says.
This approach is reminiscent of Patagonia’s “cause no unnecessary harm” value. The Mazama Store has changed their business practices to be more environmentally responsible, like reducing plastic packaging, eliminating poly-bottles, and selling items in bulk to reduce single-use items. The Store culls products that don’t meet their quality and sustainability standards. They embrace saying “no” to products that don’t align with what their brand stands for.
To support local, organic farmers in the Valley and to promote healthy food, Missy and Rick introduced fresh produce into the store. Before 2007, the store’s shelves had been bare of colorful veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, squash. At first, Missy and Rick’s produce section started as a fruit basket. But now, fresh vegetables and fruits fill an entire section.
“We go to great lengths to connect with local farmers because it’s important to us—we want to support farmers because it’s a tough business and because we want people to eat healthy,” Missy says. Missy and Rick even hired someone as a produce manager. The investment has made a difference. Missy says that many people travel to the Store because it has the best produce in the Valley.
Customers trust and know that the Mazama Store isn’t just saying it cares about sustainability and healthy food. Instead, they see that it’s delivering on its promise.
How can staff make the jump from employee to brand advocate?
Employees are a powerful brand touchpoint in the customer experience. When employees love their brand, they’re likely to spread that brand affinity to customers.
Most people who come through the Store will say that the staff are one of their favorite parts of the experience. The people who work there exude love and enthusiasm for the Valley and the Store itself. They also care about the Store’s mission.
In 2018, staff noticed that the courtyard’s trashcan was filled almost entirely with coffee cups that customers tossed after visiting the Store’s coffee bar. In response, Rick and Missy got together with their staff to figure out how to solve the problem. The staff came up with an idea of creating a visual to show customers the amount of cups thrown out over the course of one day. At the same time, staff encouraged customers to bring in their own cups. Before Covid, staff would even offer to wash people’s cups. If people didn’t have a cup with them, the Store sold them a canning jar for $1. If customers returned the jar, they’d get their dollar back. Employees were so excited about promoting the initiative that only a month later the Store phased out disposable cups. They’ve used a similar approach with plastic water bottles to stop selling bottled water.
The Mazama Store encourages “customers to bring their own reusable mugs or stay here to enjoy their coffee, while also offering a wide variety of reusable mugs for purchase”
“Employees changed people’s behavior because they were so proud of what we stood for. This experience brought our employees into our vision and made them feel that they were part of a brand with a social conscience,” Missy says.
Missy and Rick have also taught their staff about the value of connecting with customers. “People come to the Mazama Store to feel a part of the community,” Rick says. “Sometimes they come in to just talk. We encourage our staff to really get to know people.”
A brand’s employees are its greatest advocates. They live out its values in real-time and in real-life settings. The effort that Missy and Rick have made to hire, empower, and train staff who care about the company’s mission and live out its values have made the brand come alive for its customers.
How can you harness your sense of place?
A location evokes feelings. New York City evokes a certain feeling. The Sahara evokes a very different one. Even if you haven’t been, when you think about a place, you imagine what it’s like. When a business can connect itself to a place, customers associate how that place makes them feel to the brand itself.
The Mazama Store is nestled at the base of soaring peaks and a forest of Douglas-fir and Ponderosa pine. The Pacific Crest Trail runs nearby. The Store has embraced its location, from posting photos of the surrounding mountains on its walls to the building’s rustic, cabin-like ambiance. The staff and customers are clad in hiking clothes in the summer, nordic skiing gear in the winter, and flannel shirts and Carhartt pants all year long.
This sense of place doesn't just matter to the local customers who live in Mazama. It resonates with people who live outside of the Valley who long for a mountain town experience. When people think of the Mazama Store, they think of the mountains, days spent outside, and adventures big and small. The feelings associated with those memories are intertwined with how they think about the Store and how they view the brand.
What the Mazama Store can teach us about great branding
The Mazama’s Store’s approaches offer lessons in how both small businesses and large ones can create a brand that resonates with their customers. The Store has done this by proving to be deeply dedicated to their community and customers, devoted to creating experiences customers love, diligent in selling quality products, values-driven in their business decisions, and focused on creating employee brand advocates and ambassadors.
These commitments have led customers to again and again choose the Mazama Store. They choose it because they want to participate in the experience it offers and the story it tells about itself and the people who shop there. When businesses achieve that, their brand has proven its value.