New Brunswick’s Country Liberty Celebrates the Rural Life (and Looks Good Doing it)
One New Brunswick clothing company wants to be the benchmark brand for rep’n country living.
Country Liberty got its start in 2014 by cousins Sawyer and Tye Hannay, who grew up like brothers just outside for Rexton.
Sawyer, who’s been playing hockey professionally since he was 16, had just moved back to New Brunswick after travelling around the U.S. and Europe training. He had discussed the idea of Country Liberty with Tye while he was in the U.S. playing under the Chicago Wolves, but when he started St. Thomas University in 2013, they started to really get the ball rolling.
“Country Liberty is a country lifestyle clothing brand, but the inspiration for the name in itself being “liberty” is the freedom that the life in the country provides,” Sawyer Hannay says. “I’ve lived in cities, I’ve lived in rural areas and they’re certainly different in terms of your freedom and your ability to experience and figure things out for yourself. The wide-open spaces and the exploring aspect of the country, those are the kind of things we really value about the country and try to base the brand around.”
Country Liberty offers a variety of clothing and accessories for men and women as well as unisex options. They can be purchased online, at the company’s head office in Rexton and the Sub Towne store at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton campus. Sawyer says so far they have shipped orders to every province. Their clothing is geared towards anyone who values the country and rural life.
“We break it down into two types of customers. There’s people that were born and raised country, they bleed country. But we know with the economic conditions, the opportunities are often in the city, so those people who value the country just as much are forced to move into the cities, we class those customers as our “cottagers,” Hannay says. “They are the people who maybe work or live in the city, but their heart lies in the country. They get out of the city when they can.”
Going forward, Country Liberty plans to create a few more retail locations, especially for those in the eastern part of the province.
“In the future we’d like to have retail outlets for those customers who are in Miramichi and who are in Moncton and expand from there,” Hannay says.
Country Liberty has been on tour this summer, setting up shop and local country music festivals– coming right to their target customers. It’s a tactic Hannay says has worked quite well.
“For us, it seems like a no-brainer to be at the festivals and be present and getting exposure for our brand. I don’t think there is any one way to do it. You just have to ask yourself what kind of brand you are and where you fit in.”
Country Liberty isn’t the only clothing company celebrating and capitalizing on regional pride. East Coast Lifestyle is perhaps the most prominent example. But Hannay says what makes Country Liberty stand out is that they’re tapping into a demographic that hasn’t been widely represented until now.
“We pride ourselves on the group of people we serve. We feel, and it’s the reason why we started in the beginning, that our demographic wasn’t being properly accommodated with a country representative in the form of a lifestyle brand. We still feel today that we accommodate that demographic,” he says. “East Coast Lifestyle is a great brand. They have amounted to a ton of success and they apply to a slightly different demographic than us, just like other brands.”
Going forward, they would like to take Country Liberty as far as they can, with their short term goal being to expand more in Atlantic Canada. But just how far they will go is up to their customers.
“As long as the people are proud to be country and proud to be part of a rural communities then we’ll continue to build this thing,” Hannay says. “The most rewarding thing of this entire process is providing a representative for those people who share the same value as we do as individuals. It’s really cool and we’re going to go as far our support system wants to go.”