In 2021, my husband and I started dreaming of a project to work on together. We were feeling like daily work and parenting were swallowing our identities, and we wanted to fill our evenings with something purposeful after putting our kids to bed so we wouldn’t end up in front of the TV every night. We were seeking something to energize us and connect us with more people.

Early in our brainstorming, we gravitated toward ideas that involved our love of our home state of Minnesota. We love being outside in the state parks and forests, going out on the lakes, and just seeing the natural landscapes of the state. From our home near Minneapolis, to the bluffs of the SE, the prairie of the SW, the forests, craggy cliffs, and Lake Superior of the North — with lakes sprinkled across the whole thing and the Mississippi cutting through it — Minnesota is a marvel of variety and beauty.

As we reflected on what makes our home state so special, we couldn’t help but recognize a big factor was the variety of people that call this place home and embrace what it has to offer. There are endless activities to try — from camping to boating, log rolling to ice climbing — and the people in Minnesota have a definite fortitude and pride in their ability and willingness to withstand the state’s harsh weather conditions in order to enjoy these things. It feels like the people living in this state earn their enjoyment of the land and water in a way because they don’t flee the Midwest when the roads are almost impassible and the daylight is scarce for a large portion of the year. And when the weather turns mild, it seems like everyone comes back out in full force to take full advantage of the sun.

We came up with an idea to design and sell products that reflected our love of Minnesota and to give a portion of our profit to causes we care about. Our little business, Formidable Goods, was born from that idea in 2022. We named it for the spirit of endurance and fortitude we’ve seen as a common trait in people living in the Midwest.

I have loved designing every product in our shop: shirts, hats, and stickers; and we now laser engrave our own hat patches, tumblers, can openers, and coasters, with plans to expand our product offerings. It’s been rewarding to create something fully from scratch — taking our seed of an idea and developing it into an online shop with social media accounts and consignment partners — and to work with my hands in our shop developing products.