From Farmers Market to Downtown Storefront: How Shirstie Gaylord Built Hometana

When Shirstie Gaylord walks through downtown Great Falls now, she sees it differently than she did eight years ago. Back then, she was hauling a six-foot table to the farmers market every weekend, selling Hometana's Montana t-shirts that she'd printed with her last few hundred dollars. She'd look around at the Mighty Mo Brewing crew, the Enbär group, Electric City Coffee (businesses that were saying downtown is cool) and think, I want to be one of them.

Now she is. Today, Hometana occupies a storefront at 112 1st Ave S—just 100 feet from where Shirstie started with that farmers market table. Inside, you'll find Montana-centric gifts that don't look like every other tourist gift. Fresh designs. Hip colors. Things that actually make Montanans want to wear them. In the back, there's a full merchandise printing operation that serves over 100 gift shops through wholesale.

What started as 200 t-shirts and a string of "no's" has become something much bigger. Not overnight. Not easily. But deliberately, methodically, and with Great Falls at the center of it all.

The Montana T-Shirt That Connects

Shirstie grew up in Seattle and studied journalism at the University of Montana. For the next decade, she worked as a news videographer, bouncing from Colorado Springs to Austin to Salt Lake to Denver to San Diego, chasing bigger markets and better paychecks, the way you do in that industry.

But she always wore Montana t-shirts. Everywhere she went.

"People would flag you down in parking lots," she remembers. "They're like, I'm from Montana. Where are you from? The Montana t-shirt thing really connected with me when I was traveling the country."

When she and her husband Eric (also a news videographer she'd met in Denver) decided to move back to Montana in late 2016, there weren't news jobs waiting for them. Eric landed in Billings first. Shirstie needed to figure out what came next.

"I was a graphic designer, I was a photographer, I was pretty good at social media, and I just wanted to make Montana t-shirts," she says. "That's what I wanted to do."

Building from the Ground Up

In January 2017, just two months after moving back, Shirstie printed 200 t-shirts. She started going around to shops asking if they'd buy them wholesale.

The answer was always no.

So she pivoted. Set up a quick online store and started selling them digitally. The first year, her buyers were cousins and friends. Then she started hauling a six-foot table to any farmer's market, craft fair, or winter show that would let her in. By the time Eric got transferred to Great Falls in early 2017, Shirstie was at the Great Falls farmers market every weekend, building her customer base one conversation at a time.

"The biggest challenge is just getting the word out," she explains. "You have no credibility, and you can't get credibility without selling your t-shirts. You literally have to sell one t-shirt a day for years until you reach that first benchmark where people think you're cool."

She was willing to do exactly that.

The Slow Growth Strategy

Here's what makes Shirstie's approach different: she's deliberately low-risk and patient with growth.

"Everything with Hometana has been slow growth," she says. "I don't go out and print 3,000 shirts. I print 50, and I see what works, and then I go and print 50 more. It's been extremely slow, and it's been a grind, but that's the path that I want to take."

The strategy has protected her from catastrophic mistakes—like the time she made a typo on a design and got 200 sweatshirts back, all wrong. At 200 units, it stung. But it would have been devastating at 2,000 units.

"There's potential to make a mistake every single step of the way," she says. "And it really is part of the process. That's why slow growth works."

Homer the T-Shirt Shack

In 2019, Hometana made a significant jump. Shirstie bought a 1959 vintage trailer, nicknamed him Homer, and remodeled him herself, teaching herself as she went, putting up walls, wiring electricity, turning him into a mobile t-shirt shop.

That summer, Homer toured Montana. Nineteen concerts and trade shows in 17 weeks. Big three-day events with tens of thousands of people at Bucking Horse Festival in Miles City, Under the Big Sky concert in Whitefish. And every Saturday morning at 5 a.m., Eric was helping her load Homer, working his full-time news job and being the supportive partner every entrepreneur needs.

It was exhausting. And it worked. Homer became Hometana's calling card across the state.

Taking Control: The Print Shop

In 2021, Hometana invested in screen printing equipment and started printing everything in-house from their back warehouse. It changed everything.

"It's lower risk because now if I just need two shirts, I can go print them," Shirstie explains. "When you use an outside manufacturer, they have minimum order requirements. Now if we end up with 25 mediums and no larges, I can just go print 20 larges."

Better margins. Better control. And a new opportunity—they started printing for other Great Falls companies and sports teams. Minimum order: 25 of the same design, on whatever you want. T-shirts, pillows, totes.

"I love it because I was the one seven years ago going to a printer," she says. "So now when our clients come to us and they're trying to decide if they can afford 25 t-shirts, I know how it feels."

That empathy matters. She remembers what it was like to be the person on the other side of the table.

Planting Roots in Great Falls

Even when Eric got transferred to Missoula in fall 2019 and Shirstie opened a storefront there, she never stopped looking for a space in Great Falls. It mattered to her to be downtown, close to the farmers market, close to the people who supported her from the beginning.

It took four years to find the right space. She opened a tiny 500-square-foot pop-up for Christmas 2021, then remodeled and opened the permanent Great Falls storefront in 2022. When they lost their Missoula lease at the end of 2022, it actually felt right to focus entirely on Great Falls.

"It feels really good to spend all my time in Great Falls," Shirstie says.

Inside the downtown store, you'll find Montana gifts that actually appeal to Montanans. In the back corner, there's Cowboy Slick, Hometana's sister brand launched last September with "witty gifts with grit." Western sayings on everything from coffee mugs to jewelry, now wholesaling across the entire United States.

People come in every day thanking her for existing. Great Falls doesn't have another cute, hip, fresh Montana store downtown like this.

Working for the Community

Ask Shirstie what Hometana is really about, and she'll tell you it's not about her ideas, it's about listening to what Great Falls wants.

"I feel like Hometana belongs to Great Falls," she says. "They're in charge of what they want to see because they can just come in and tell me, and if I get enough votes, I'll go make it."

During COVID, when everything shut down and Hometana didn't qualify for federal relief programs because Shirstie had been reinvesting everything back into the business, she launched Montana Strong, selling shirts and donating all net profits to COVID relief services. Money came in and went right back out to the community.

"I just don't want people to hurt," she says. "I'll do anything I can to help make people happy."

She's not just taking advantage of Great Falls' growth and renaissance. She's been actively contributing to it for eight years. The wholesale operation now serves over 100 Montana gift shops. The custom printing helps local businesses and sports teams.

The Long Game

Shirstie works hard, she'll be honest about that. She thinks about the business constantly. She wishes she could take more time off and probably would be more productive if she did. But she also genuinely loves what she does.

"I always feel like we have so much more to do," Shirstie says. "But I'm not in a hurry."

Eight years of steady, intentional growth looks like this: a downtown storefront that tourists and locals both love. A warehouse operation outgrowing its space. Over 100 wholesale partners across Montana. A sister brand going national. Custom printing services for the community. And room to keep growing.

The woman who once desperately wanted to be part of downtown's cool crowd while selling shirts from the farmers market? She's not just part of it now. She's helping build it, one carefully printed shirt at a time.

"I feel like I work for Great Falls," she says. "I'm doing this for them."

And Great Falls is better for it.

Visit Hometana

Find them downtown at 112 1st Ave S in Great Falls. Open Sunday through Saturday. Shop online at hometana.com and be sure to check out Cowboy Slick for western gifts with attitude.

Looking for custom printing? They work with Great Falls businesses and sports teams—minimum order of 25 items with the same design. Reach out Shirstie at hellohometana@gmail.com.