Live: I live in an apartment near the shop with my dog, Jasper.
Previous Life: I started out pursuing a career in musical theatre in Chicago – that lasted about a decade. In a way, that brought me to NYC where I ended up working as an event planner. A couple wrong turns landed me in the right place, Bovina. And now here I am, in a life I could’ve never planned.
Activities: Thinking about my hobbies makes me homesick for my pre-Covid life. I spend my life in restaurants, crowded bars, and theatres. Can’t wait to see you there again someday
When did you open Clove and Creek, tell us a little bit about your journey?
My best friend, Michael Cook, and I started Clove and Creek as a series of pop up markets in 2015. We collaborated with And North, Table on Ten, Brushland Eating House and Bushel Collective, primarily representing handmade goods made in Delaware County. We opened our shop in Kingston in 2016 and have expanded our collection to include handmade products from South America and heritage brands from Europe.
How did you come across kingston?
I was living in Bovina at the time and Michael was part time in Halcott Center. Kingston serves as a nexus for a lot of the Catskill region. We were patrons of Hops Petunia, Kingston Wine Co and Brunette Wine Bar which all recently established themselves in the downtown neighbourhood. We just fell in love with architecture, the camaraderie of local business owners and the socioeconomic diversity of the town. My love for Kingston continues to run deep.
As a small business owner in a small town, how has the pandemic affected you?
Well, we closed at the end of March. The majority of our business since then has been online through cloveandcreek.com. We’re hanging in there and are thankful for our greater community from all over America that have sustained us through these difficult times.
What does community mean to you? How has the community shaped your own business?
Community to me really means a shared responsibility for each other. And that has really come into focus in the past few months. How can we lift each other up? How can we care for each other? How can we work for the common good? How can we give voice to the marginalized? I really try to use the platform I have to bring attention to organizations in the community who are working tirelessly to answer these questions.
Over 300 places in Upstate NY with a focus on art, design hospitality and the natural world, curated by Tastemakers who live in and frequent the area.
April 4, 2020 – Letter to Upstate NY merchants featured on Tastemakers Guide.
All small businesses are important, right down to the first lemonade stand many of us had as kids when we discovered we were entrepreneurs.
Your business is one of the 300 small businesses featured in Tastemakers Guide, selected by Tastemakers that live in or frequent the Upstate Region. Upstate New York is the closest thing America has to the European countryside with its inns, restaurants, farms, and shops scattered throughout the region. I built Tastemakers Guide about a year ago because I wanted to promote our beautiful countryside. I was fortunate enough to sell my last company 1stdibs.com and have the resources to open a small hotel in the lower Hudson Valley, Valley Rock Inn, and now to use Tastemakers Guide to help us all stay in business.
Right now we all need a central station where people can search online in one place to find out everyone’s current business status and to discover new businesses and dream about where we can go when it becomes safe to venture out.
We are making it easy and comforting for people to find out who is open and what you are offering: delivery, curbside pick-up, e-commerce, gift certificates, special rates on future bookings, and acts of kindness.
While we would like to cover all small businesses we are focusing on the ones that drive spending and create local good jobs through hospitality, craft, collecting, and community essentials of which you are one.
There is no cost to be included –
The road ahead will not be easy but there is strength in numbers, even though that is counter to how many of us feel in the current moment.
Before developing Valley Rock Inn, I was the founder and CEO of 1stdibs.com for 17 years. I was responsible for developing and supporting a large online community of thousands of small business owners in the art and design field. Together, we survived and prevailed significant hardships, including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis. The entrepreneurs that were on 1stdibs came through those difficult times stronger I believe because of strength in numbers. If we all work together simply by providing and sharing information with existing and potential new customers we can do the same with this platform.
By now we have all begun to hear about the Federal Government’s programs which will give small businesses a very short lifeline to cover about 2.5 months’ worth of expenses mostly in the form of loans. If you include March, we are all on our own come mid-May, so we must act quickly. Tastemakers Guide will evolve as we go, but getting going is the most important thing.
We appreciate your input and are grateful for your participation, please provide your business status information as soon as possible as we plan to update the site the week of April 6.
Our first plan of attack, once we have updated the site with everyone’s information, will be securing media coverage and getting the site in front of New York City’s tens of thousands of employees in the tech industry. They are gainfully employed and therefore excellent consumers, they love a good database of information and they love Upstate NY.
Warm regards, Michael Bruno
Founder 1stdibs.com
Founder TastemakersGuide
Owner Valley Rock Inn