Dan Davis is one of those guys whose life is made for storytelling. He and his wife, Hillary founded Kin Ship Goods in 2010 and have taken what started as an art gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, to a fast-growing quality of life retailer that sells merchandize around the country. In 2013, the couple relocated back to Hilary’s home in West Virginia, and now have a very successful brick and mortar location in Charleston’s Elk City district.

Dan credits most of their success to being stubborn. But even to a casual observer, Kin Ship has a lot more going for it than just the owners’ persistence. Over the years, Dan and Hillary have created a brand that very few small businesses can replicate. The unique designs of their t-shirts and other products have a quality that is just… well, cool. Walking into their store, customers are instantly drawn in and surrounded by a vibrance and authenticity that you just don’t get at other retailers. To say it’s appealing is an understatement. Kin Ship produces stuff that makes people feel like they are part of a club where only the people who wear the apparel, drink from the mugs, or wear the hats know the secret handshake and get the inside joke. This has won them an amazing amount of recognition and even landed them several product placements in Hollywood shows including The Mindy Project and Roseanne. Having shirts on the stars of those two shows alone produced tens of thousands of dollars in sales. All of this without Kin Ship ever spending a dime in promotion and advertising, or even making a phone call to try and talk someone into wearing their stuff. To this day, Dan says he doesn’t know how his shirts ended-up in the shows’ wardrobes. His designs are just that good. People thousands of miles from West Virginia want to wear it.

So, to see just how he does it, I sat down with Dan in his office at their store.