Meet the Staff

We decided we are going to be blogging on a regular basis here at Off The Wagon Shop. It will be fun and a little wacky. I thought I would start with a series introducing you to our staff. We have a fun crew, each with a unique story. There are only a few of us, myself (Michelle), Kyle (you see him in the store the most), Seth (he's new), Jenna (moving from our Hudson store to Kent), and Julia (our book and sanity keeper!). So we will start with me, and follow up in the next couple weeks with more on the rest of the staff.


I'm a mom of 3 kids, and wife of another one! At home I spend my time working mostly. Either I am cooking, cleaning (and that is spotty), taking care of kids, or I am on my computer for work. When I can carve out a few minutes I like to read out on the patio.

I came up with the concept of a quirky toy and gift store after contemplating a move to Kent Main Street for our store called My Little Red Wagon. I had been researching possible areas to move to and looked a bit into Kent, as that is my hometown. I love the concept of "Main Street" for independent locally owned shops like ours. It fits naturally that a unique downtown area, with unique and historic character would be a perfect location for a one of a kind store. My problem with the idea, though, is that I wasn't convinced the Kent was the right place for a younger kids store like My Little Red Wagon. So we made our move to a different location in Stow instead (and a store in Hudson as well). In the meantime, the folks we had talked to in Kent kept calling. They convinced me to reconsider and I then came up with the idea of Off the Wagon. I wanted to cater to an older crowd with a good sense of humor. As I continued to reflect on the idea I got excited about all the quacky products out there that hadn't quite fit into our My Little Red Wagon shop. Now that we have been open for 2 years... I am even more excited. Kent has a lot going on right now and is a super fun place to have a shop.