When Magnolia residents Jamie and Brian Groff opened their business, Home and Ranch Outfitters, in Tomball in 2017, it began as a home goods store with just a small section dedicated to men’s wares, Jamie said.
“I came home one night and told Brian, ‘There’s nothing for men out there. You can’t buy a cap, a wallet, nothing,’” Jamie said. “So when we opened the home store, we had a little area, [and] we brought in three men’s lines—GameGuard, Mission Mercantile and Vineyard Vines. Within a year, it just went crazy.”
The following year, the Groffs opened up a men’s store, Commerce Street Clothiers, next door to Home and Ranch Outfitters but soon closed the home goods store to focus solely on the men’s products, Jamie said.
“It was just too much,” Jamie said. “The men’s [products] was actually carrying, so I thought, ‘Let’s just do [Commerce Street Clothiers].’”
Jamie said she attributes a lot of the business’s growth to word-of-mouth advertising.
“We’re out there also marketing ourself, but our customers do a lot of it for us,” Jamie said.
Commerce Street Clothiers occupied a 1,200-square-foot space at 110 Commerce St. in Tomball for several years until this past spring, when the Groffs rebranded as The Covey Apparel Co. and moved into an almost 4,000-square-foot space at 120 W. Main St., Jamie said.
“We grew by almost 3,000 square feet,” Jamie said. “We still have a lot more growth to do in this building.”
In the new space, The Covey Apparel Co. sells a variety of men’s goods, including apparel, shoes, grilling supplies and bags.
“We try to do a lot of made-in-the-U.S.A. [and] Texas products,” Jamie said. “I’ve always said from day one, I don’t want anything a big-box retailer sells. So we try to stay away from those brands that you can get at big-box stores because I can’t compete with their price, and we want to be something different; we want to be something you don’t see in a mall.”
The business also hosts private events at the store.
“A lot of our customers are [in] construction, oil and gas, finance, and they’ll say, ‘Jamie, is there a night we can bring some friends and keep the store open late?’” Jamie said. “And so we’ve done that a number of times.”
For Jamie, she said her favorite part of the business is meeting new people.
“We joke—my husband will be like, ‘How did we do today?’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, we met 10 new friends,’” Jamie said.
The Covey Apparel Co.
120 W. Main St., Tomball
346-808-5961
www.covey-outdoors.com
Hours: Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. noon-4 p.m.
