Meet Kelly Wright | Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kelly Wright and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kelly, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I’ve always looked at the idea of a hardware store as a space for community and solving problems. Where you can learn how to fix and do things yourself and use that knowledge to help others.

Hardware stores are one of the richest places for us to learn, but not everyone has felt that connection or confidence within them. This is particularly common with younger, more diverse people with little-to-no DIY-experience.

I wanted to create a modern hardware store that is rooted in what makes them special but tailored to this audience.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I’m proud of starting my own business by myself, with no financial support or investment from outside sources. Owning a hardware store has been a dream of mine for a long time, but a brick-and-mortar space was what I had my heart set on. But, the cost to do it was (and is) not something I could afford, especially in a city like New York. So I decided to rethink how I could achieve my goal by approaching it in a different way, so I invested my own savings into launching it as an online shop.

Not only has it given me flexibility and with very minimal overhead, it has also given me the opportunity to do physical pop-ups with other shops I’ve been a huge fan of forever, and establish relationships with business owners I admire and look up to a lot. If I had my own storefront, I wouldn’t get to do that. I still have ambition to have some sort of IRL space, but I am also trying to think differently about what that could be, too.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Temple Canteen for Indian food lunch – it’s a little cafeteria in the basement of a Hindu temple in Queens, followed by an afternoon at Spa Castle – a Korean spa with pools and saunas, then an early evening movie at Metrograph – a tiny movie theatre that plays a range of classic and obscure films, and then a nighttime walk to Magic Jewelry for the aura Photo Booth where you walk out with a beautiful photo of your aura colors. And then Morgenstern’s Ice cream while walking over the Williamsburg Bridge at night.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Definitely my family. My love of tools and how to use them comes from them. My dad and brother in particular have always thought it important for me to know how to be self-sufficient and know how to fix, build and repair things myself. We are a blue-collar family rooted in farming and mechanic work, so this ethos and practical knowledge runs through who we are, in everything we do.

Website: www.helloyuns.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hello.yuns/

Image Credits
Tool image by Amir Sali Berry