New shop offers high-quality, custom gifts
Randy Larson is heading up Axehead, a high-end custom merchandise store, on Baker Avenue. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Axehead recently opened on Baker Avenue. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Axehead offers glassware wrapped in high-quality etched leather. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
At Axehead, customization is key.
The new high-quality leatherware and merchandise store on Baker Avenue offers a variety of products, like whiskey or beer-based gift boxes, hand-sewn wallets, hats, shirts and more — all made to fit the customers’ desires.
This is owners Randy and Trina Larson’s second Axehead store, the first having operated in Vancouver, Washington, for the last 10 years. The Whitefish store opened on May 14.
The dream has been to operate in Montana for many years, Randy Larson said, and once the space on Baker Avenue not far from Second Street opened up, they jumped on it.
Within two weeks most of the displays had been built and set up, and in just over a month the store was ready for customers.
The store is “100 percent retail, focusing 100 percent on Montana,” Larson said.
“Whitefish is a quaint little town that oozes Montana, and right now everybody wants Montana. They want that Montana experience,” he said. “[Our products are] very simple, clean, usable. You can’t beat steel, leather and wood. That’s Montana.”
Larson has focused on that sense of Montana in nearly every detail in the shop’s design.
The walls are painted gray to represent the state’s history of mining, he says, and any wood used in displays or furniture are meant to look fresh out of the lumberyard, hearkening back to Whitefish’s Stumptown roots. Even the shelving used to hold the hats are reminiscent of cattle stalls.
While Axehead is 10 years old, Larson says he’s been in the screen printing and embroidery business for 25 years.
While he enjoyed the work, he said the vision was always to open something authentic and more in line with his personality and character.
“We always had this dream of not just being a screen printing shop that had acid rock music bouncing off the walls in the back and guys with earrings and tattoos from the neck to the tip of their toes,” he said. “Clients loved that about us, that we’re a clean operation.”
As a couple, Larson said he and his wife combine their talents to make Axehead work.
“My background is in graphic communications, so I have a design degree and have always just loved inventing packaging and products and things like that,” he said. “Trina is the money manager of the business, she’s the brains. I’m the creative and she’s the money.”
Likewise, any custom steel work is done by their son and daughter Casey and Christine Syth back in Vancouver, Larson said.
Right now, a lot of the customization work requires shipping items back to Vancouver, he said, but the hope is to have full customization available at the Whitefish store within the year.
Working with the customers that come by is the best part of running Axehead, Larson says, and helping them give unique and customized gifts makes it “like Christmas every single day.”
“The people are great. I could sit here and talk to people all day but it wouldn’t make me any money, so that’s why I have to hire employees,” he said with a laugh.
For more information, visit http://axeheadnw.com/shop.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the first Axehead store was in Vancouver, British Columbia rather than Vancouver, Washington.