Nomadic State of Mind

I mentioned yesterday that we will now be carrying shoes from Nomadic State of Mind, and I couldn't be more thrilled about it. Chris, who started the company, stopped by our store a couple of months ago while he was home visiting family (like I mentioned, he grew up in Culpeper). He started telling me a little bit about his company, and I immediately knew we'd be a perfect fit. 

Here's the Nomadic State of Mind story (from their website):

Many a few years ago a group of planet wanderers temporarily(!!) put up their rafts, snowboards, surfboards, cameras and decided to make some permanence. Not necessarily a home of permanence, but a permanent presence. A social work degree backing the idea, a company of sorts began to formulate. A company at the grass roots level. A company of the common folk, not backed by corporate thugs, just your ordinary folks. The money raised to begin this journey of business was done by Chris who spent many summers camped out along the colorado river working as a raft guide and stashing every pay check . The winters were spent snowboarding, strolling through central america, or writing the greatest story Never told. The company began out of a 69 vw office. that van was home, office, and factory. things got crowded, so moved to different locals and bought a bigger van. todays' world is the "nomadic state of mind", whether it be walking, driving, surfing the web or interplanetary wandering. "nomadic" stems from the latin word "wanderer". keep it real- is our pledge to you. We feel in today's wealth addicted society it is possible to provide consumers with a company whom attempts to function as a business in which all people involved with our company perform an active role and win. our "office", and shipping is based presently out of North Carolina. Although we still spend alot of our time on the road- someone is always around to take your order, death threat, or question. Find our Nomadic family at live events, on the phone, or packing sandals: Chris, Lewis, Big Dave, jeff, Shea, kelly, and some others sometimes...

Currently a lot of our rope sandals are being made in a small out of work coffee farm in Nicaragua (the ones without the soles). In early 2002 Chris taught a small community how to make sandals in hope to produce a job for the community and create a flow of income, and have a lot of fun! Without a lot of fun-who wants a business? All of our artists are paid well, and our hopes are to grow the sandal business offering employment for more of the community. Although the cities are beginning to bustle in often forgot about Nicaragua, many jobs are difficult for people out in the country. Our sandal making process is time consuming, and after extensive training our sandal artists hand craft each sandal to perfection! We have been working with the ame group of people for nearly 8 years, and Nomadic State of Mind has been making sandals for over a decade. We began using VIBRAM soles for the bottoms of our sandals that we put soles on, we chose Vibram due to they years that Vibram has been soling shoes around the world. Our sandals with soles are made here domestically using vintage sandal making equipment. We cut the vibram soles, glue on using low v.o.c glue, this process is time consuming but we like using the abandoned machinery from companies who moved to the east..

In regards to waste and environmental impact. Sandal production produces some waste, in which we recycle a lot of it into our rugs, hand bags, and water bottle carriers, which also produces work/income in the off season.

The JC Sandal

The San Juan Sandal

Pretty cool, right?

Right now, we're going to be carrying two styles. The JC (the original) for both men & women, and the San Juan for women. They should be hitting our shelves in the next couple weeks, so keep an eye on our Facebook page for an announcement.