From a basic bio standpoint, Sightsee is Joel Sadler and Allyson Sutton. Joel is an entrepreneur and designer. Allyson is a writer and PR professional. We’re engaged and live in Charleston, South Carolina with our two pups.
We have a mutual love of travel, craft coffee, SoCal vibes, telling great stories, being a part of our community, and trying new things. Sightsee is a retail store and coffee bar concept that grew out of those combined interests.
As cheesy and cliché as it probably sounds, we want Sightsee to stand for discovery and positivity. We want that spirit to manifest itself in the unique products we carry, and the way we incorporate a coffee program into the experience. Our tagline for Sightsee is a business/life mantra of sorts: “The coast is clear.” The mantra is part mischief, part chill — you might say it to an accomplice as you’re about to pull off some sort of hijinks (like starting a business!), or you might use it to suggest great weather at the beach. Sightsee is kind of the intersection of the two. For us, this is a playful reminder to go for it, whatever ‘it’ is.
Starting a small business — no matter how much you love the idea — is mostly work. Unglamorous, grind-it-out work. For every hour spent designing a cool brand pattern for custom tissue paper, there are ten hours spent troubleshooting emails not being received, cataloguing inventory, or connecting QuickBooks to your checking account. We’ve met with (and continue to meet with) experts and fellow entrepreneurs to ask for advice and feel supported in the journey.
We firmly believe that consistency is the most important quality in any brand. We spent a lot of time narrowing down exactly what we want Sightsee to represent, and we try to hold every branding decision up to that definition. The selection of noissue paper and the particular design we used is a perfect example. We want Sightsee to be full of pleasant surprises, to be fun, light-hearted, and “SoCal.” With every order, our customers get to experience the pleasant surprise of totally unique tissue paper with a carefree, hand-drawn pattern that represents what we’re all about. It helps us get the energy and mission across in a really fun and subtle way. Not to mention, people really respond to it – we even had someone put it on the wall as art!
We would love for Sightsee to grow into an empire of discovery and positivity, including not just a shop with coffee but travel services, a publication, a product line, and – who knows – maybe even a boutique hotel one day!