Hey, I'm your host, Mari Wagner, and you're listening to the ever be podcast where faith meets lifestyle. I'm so excited. You're here. Whether you're a new listener or a long time follower, I know there's something here for you. Pull up a chair and listen in for insightful real life conversations and actionable steps on how to claim the Full life God created you for if you're a woman desiring to live a Christ centered life in today's modern world, then this is for you.
Welcome to the ever be podcast. Welcome back to ever be today. We have Trey again on the show. We are going to be talking about a topic that we get asked all the time. About a lot on DMS and other podcasts that we've been guests on. People always want to know how we started our Catholic lifestyle brand, West Coast Catholic. It's a business we started in college. And today we're going to get into all the details of how the Lord put this on our hearts.
How, how we even made it, how it got off the ground, what it is now, and kind of our mission and our heart behind what we do with West Coast Catholic. Absolutely. I'm excited to be here and to share this story with you guys. It's a fun one. And for those of you who don't know what West coast Catholic is, it's a Catholic lifestyle brand that Mara and I started five years ago that sells prayer tools and lifestyle goods to help the modern Catholic woman grow closer to the Lord and grow in faith.
And it really didn't start out to be what it is today. We didn't really plan to have a business or have like a whole lifestyle brand or anything. If you've been following along for a long time, um, you know, we started with rosaries and I would say that's still probably what we're most known for. Still, we've expanded into so much. And so let's just get into it. Let's just start out. From the beginning, um, I would say it kind of ties in a little bit into my conversion and our story together.
And so we thought it was really fitting to go into this story after the first couple episodes dove into my testimony and our love story, because it kind of just intertwines through all of it. I mean, it played a big part in our conversions and back to the faith and our. Like you said, our story and dating and eventually marriage. Yeah so back in 2018, I was kind of going through a whole like change of heart reversion, that's all in my testimony episode.
Uh, but I basically, it all started with an internship that I took with focus fellowship of Catholic university students, um, out here in Colorado, where they're located. And that summer was a big pivotal summer for me because I had this desire to grow closer to the Lord and wanted to just kind of like live a more Christ centered life. But at that point, I didn't really know what that looked like and really didn't have a lot of people around me.
That we're living that way until I met the marketing girls who were on this internship with me at focus and they became really good friends of mine and showed me through their life and through the witness of their life, how to live a Christ centered life. And part of one of the things that they showed me was just like this whole like Instagram Catholic world, which I feel like has grown so much since then.
I mean, like when they first showed me it, I think there was like, Three girls blogging and, and it was much smaller. And so I love how big it's gotten. I love how many more voices we have online evangelizing. And so at the time I started following a few of these girls and these friends that I made over the summer, I don't really know how it. Became a conversation or how the Lord even placed it on my heart, but it just kind of became a conversation of like, Mari, you should start a blog.
Like you should be on Instagram, like sharing your faith. And I was kind of like, really? Like I'd have to really pray about it, but it kept coming back like in prayer. And when we talked about it and it just was something on my heart that I like really wanted to do and looking at. The way my life played out. I think it makes so much sense because I have such a heart for mission and evangelization and, bringing people to Christ and to know him.
And so knowing that this is where young people are at, I see now why the Lord was drawing my heart to this place and not to mention, those are the gifts and talents that God's given you is to. Create content, share your heart. You have a beautiful voice and God use that through social media. And they're calling you to this, this platform in this way. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And it all makes sense to me now, but at the time I was like, this is a big, scary thing.
And I was worried about what people were going to think, especially like people back in school, like in college, like they knew I was into my faith. But if I like started this whole, like. Instagram blog about my faith. Like, what were they going to think of me? But I took a leap and I did it anyways. And I started an Instagram blog called West Coast Catholic. Um, it took me so long, pretty much like all summer to figure out what the blog name was going to be because I couldn't decide.
And in the end, we just went with West Coast Catholic because I was a Catholic girl on the West coast growing up in Seattle. And for most of my life, I felt like I was the only Catholic in, in the West coast. So that was pretty fitting, I guess. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned to me numerous times that the, your experience at this internship with focus really opened your eyes to what a Catholic lifestyle could look like.
And you had never seen that, especially on the West coast and you never had any community or any friends. that lived out their faith in that way. And so what you wanted to do with this blog, West Coast Catholic was to show. The normal everyday girl had to live out their faith in their everyday life. And too, I remember that with those first couple Instagram, like Catholic Instagram girls that I started to follow, none of them were from the West coast.
They were either from the Midwest or the East coast.
And I was like, well, this further proves my point that there are not many Catholics on the West coast, but I now knew that there were other Catholic people, my age, and I knew that I had to like, Step out into this platform and be a voice for all the other women who maybe were in my same Like experiencing my same like issues of feeling like I was the only Catholic feeling like they didn't really have community like they didn't know How to like live a Christ centered life.
I'm sure that there were women and that there are in All the West Coast states. So anyway, so I started my blog to speak to Bella. Just kind of like your everyday normal modern women in today's world. Um, and I would just at the, at that time I was in college, I was starting my junior year of college. And so I would just share kind of what I was doing in my everyday life, like living my faith as a college student, what that looked like practically.
Um, and it was just the start of a beautiful journey to inspire women around the world to live their faith. And then a few months after you started that blog, that was back in August at the summer. Was. It's having this total conversion and reversion into her faith that summer with focus. I was also experiencing a reversion into my faith. I was a missionary with life team down in Georgia and just encountering God in a radical way.
And one of the small parts of my job there was I learned how to make these corded. Paracord rosaries that everybody kind of knows how to make now. Mm-Hmm. And, uh, I would just make these with the campers. And so then after that, a few months after we got back to campus. I wanted to gift Mari a beautiful handmade rosary. Yeah. I think it was like for my birthday or Christmas or something like that. Yeah. And so knowing that I wanted to create this rosary for you, I knew.
I want it to be special and meaningful and have a lot of intentionality behind it. And I didn't want it to be the normal chain link rosary that you've seen. And I want it to be different, unique to match Mari's aesthetic. And so I told her I wanted to do this. I figured what we could do is get some cord from a craft store like Michael's, pick some beads out. I would put the beads on the cord and tie the knots in between to create the rosary.
And so Mari designed this rosary and we went to Michael's together to pick out the beads and that was the first rosary that I made. Yeah. And I thought it was so cute that Trey wanted to do this. I remember being like a little bit confused because I don't know. I'd never had a. Boyfriend want to make me a rosary before, but I'd always prayed for a good Catholic boyfriend. So I guess this is exactly what I was getting and he probably did know I had a very strong devotion to Mary.
I always have my whole life, but even yet I wasn't actually praying the rosary very much at all or regularly at all at this point in my life in college. Um, and so when he said he wanted to make me a rosary, I was like, Oh, that's really cute. I mean, I guess I don't. Like, I don't pray the rosary all the time. I should, you know, I always thought like I should pray the rosary more. You know, every Catholic knows that. with my mom after mass on Sundays. Exactly.
Yeah. My family, after our reversion, when I was in high school, my family started to pray the rosary after mass every single Sunday together. And I mean, when I was in high school and I was a teenager and, I was kind of an angsty teen about it. And all of us kids were, we were just kind of like, Oh, why do we have to pray the rosary? And I don't know if your mom does this. My mom likes to pray a solid, like 40 to 45 minutes style rosary with a long list of intentions and litanies at the end.
And it's beautiful. Okay. It's beautiful. We, yeah, everybody's going to get us to heaven. It's going to get us to heaven. So thank you, mom. Um, but at the time I was not super into it. And so when Trey told me he was gonna make a rosary, I thought it was adorable because he was the Catholic boyfriend I had always wanted. So I was like, this is probably part of that package. This is great. And I love Mary and I know I should pray the rosary more. So let's do it. And so.
Yeah, like Trey said, we went to Michael's, I think, and we picked out cord and beads and I've always been attracted to very like natural textures, organic textures. I get a lot of my inspiration from the Lord's creation, from the earth, from like color combinations that he has in creation. And so I picked out some beads that I felt like were earthy toned and like gemstone. And we used to do like leather cord and it was just like this very natural, beautiful looking rosary.
And what I found was that it was so beautiful. And so intentionally made, and I knew that it was made with great care and love and intention because it was made handmade by Trey for me, um, that I was just constantly drawn to it. I was just constantly drawn to the physical rosary. Like you always wanted to carry it. You just throw it in your purse, in your bag, take it with you when you'd walk to class. Yeah. I just always had it with me, like whether it was in my pocket or in my bag.
I'd put it under my pillow. I'd sleep with it. And I always had it with me and I wasn't quite praying at a time yet, but I was just drawn to it and I just felt like, yeah, like that, like spiritual protection that Mar that Mary gives you, or just like having a little like, um, token or like tool that like reminded me of my faith and kept me grounded in my Catholic faith.
And the more I carried it around with me, the more I thought, like, I should just pray this thing, you know, like it doesn't actually take that long. I don't have to pray my mom's 45 minutes style rosary. I'm like, I know the rosary is like 15 20 minutes. And so I started to add it into my routine. And I remember too, when we, uh, when we were dating, sometimes you would ask after Sunday mass to be like, Hey, do you want to just stay and pray a rosary? And I'd always be like, Oh, okay, sure.
You know? And so we started praying a little bit more together. I started incorporating it more into my prayer routine. And If you don't pray the rosary yet, I highly recommend you do. If you do pray the rosary, you know what I'm talking about. When you experience these like graces of peace that just come into your life and desire for the things of the faith and, um, just the, you just start to see the beauty of the faith more.
Um, the more you start praying the rosary, because truly the rosary is Meditating on the life of Christ through the eyes of his mother. And so you can't, you can't not grow in love for Christ. You can't not grow in love for Mary when you're praying the rosary. So the more I started to incorporate this into my prayer routine, the more I grew in my faith, the more I loved the Lord. The more I loved my faith, the more I loved Mary.
And I saw the true power, both that the rosary has and the power of beauty and how beauty draws us people. Draws us to God. Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately it was a Testament of the product. This rosary was beautifully designed had a lot of intentionality and meaning behind it. And ultimately that led you to prayer and then prayer is what we know leads us to Christ and prayer is our relationship with God and. It is through prayer that we establish communion with God.
And so that's ultimately, it was Mari's experience with the Rosary. And that's ultimately what we long for a lot more people to experience. And so meanwhile, all that was going on, and I was having this experience with the rosary in prayer. I was still, working on West Coast Catholic, working on this Instagram blog, and it was growing a lot. The platform was getting traction and a ton more people were tuning in, and it was just became this beautiful outlet of sharing my faith.
And people were just sharing how helpful it was for them to grow in their faith. And so, around a year into me having the blog, we sat down at the cafeteria one day. I remember, apparently we have a lot of big moments at the cafeteria. Um, and we sat down for lunch or something like that. And I was like, Hey, Trey, like a lot of people are tuning into this platform and ask me questions about prayer and their faith.
And people are seeming to, people seem to be getting a lot of value out of what I'm sharing. Like, what if we shared this Beautiful experience I'm having with the rosary with them. You know, what if we maybe created a few of these rosaries to serve the community that's starting to follow along. Yeah. And use this concept of creating a beautiful product that would then. Using that beauty, draw people into prayer and ultimately communion with God. Yeah. And we wanted them to be different.
Like Trey said, like, we don't want them to be like your average chain link one, or like those free ones that you get at like a retreat or something that are like the plastic beads. We wanted it to be really beautiful and different and have a little bit of a modern take while still like holding all the beauty of the tradition of the Rosary in it. Um, but have it be a product that someone like you, a modern young.
Catholic woman would want to carry around and hopefully by then just wanting to hold it, wanting them to care, having them want to carry it around. They would end up praying it just like you, exactly. And so we started talking about it and simultaneously while those ideas were brewing in our mind, we were like, Our relationship was getting really serious and we had started to discern engagement and when the Lord was calling us to do that.
And at that point in our lives, we were also really broke college students. We had just spent two summers serving as missionaries. And so we weren't making money during the school year or during the summers. And so, Both of our parents were like, okay, you want to get engaged. How are you going to pay for all that? Right. There's a wedding. There's life after. Yeah. Life after marriage. And I was just notoriously known by my friends as like always, always being the broke college girl.
Like I would make money and then go shopping and then have a hundred bucks in my bank account at all times. And so I didn't really have much. You know, to my name. And so even starting a business was kind of like, well, how are we going to do this? Like we don't really have anything. And then like looking at our future and wanting to get engaged and married, we were like, okay, well.
I guess we'll just trust the Lord because we don't really have a foundation of, of anything to really start us out. But both of us, we've, I mean, in our relationship prior to this, like we had talked a lot about our dreams for the future and we were both very entrepreneurial minded. And that was a dream that we both had was to start a business.
And we didn't know what that would look like, but this was an opportunity that we felt like the Lord kind of just placed in our laps and we wanted to, Try to bless your audience with these rosaries and just kind of see what happened. Yeah. And truthfully, like, even though we were both very entrepreneurial people and like, that was like, I know for you, especially, it was a dream to like own your own business and kind of do this in your life.
For me, like, I still pictured myself like just graduating and like going to work at like a marketing brand firm or something like that. Like I never really had like a big idea for a business. And if I ever had one, I would totally jump in and be like, yeah, cause I love business. I love entrepreneurship. Both of our dads are entrepreneurs. And my dad always told me that like, if you can start a business in college, do it.
But he did a lot of like tech businesses and growing up in Seattle, I was always surrounded by tech startups. And so I kind of thought that like, To have a business, like the big idea had to be surrounding like tech or software. And so in my mind, I wasn't even like, I wasn't even really thinking about a business. And at the time, like, even though we both loved entrepreneurship, it wasn't like we sat down and we're like, we're going to create this huge company. It was, it was really just like.
Why don't we make a couple rosaries like bless the people in prayer Maybe we'll save up so that trey can buy me an engagement ring if that's what the lord wants And we'll just see what happens. Yeah, and so we started out making these rosaries. I remember we did go to my dad He's kind of like our business coach in life We did go to my back my dad and like shared this idea with him and he was awesome And he was like, hey i'm gonna give you like 200 bucks to like fund the business.
This is what, you know, what you're going to start out with. And like, I'll be your first, you know, quote unquote investor. And you just like pay it back to me when you make it. And so we bought our first like round of materials and I think we literally bought enough stuff to make 75 rosaries. We had like four different skews. You started with four different designs. Uh, and then we bought enough materials for about 25 of each.
Not even like 20. Less than that, but yeah, 75 total was what it was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 20 something of each. Um, and that was all we really planned for. I mean, we just planned for that batch, sell them, bless people, hopefully save up for an engagement ring and then, and then be done and like move on in our lives. But the Lord had very different plans. Very, very different. So I remember that at that time I was back at a life teen summer camp.
And so I had all the materials shipped to me at this life teen summer camp. Yeah. And in my off time, I would just be making these rosaries. I mean, by the time we wanted to launch, yeah, we had 15 to 20 of each rosary and I mailed them back tomorrow. So she could take photos of them. And this was the first time I really ever picked up a camera.
Like, through my junior year of college, I had a few, like, elective credits that I. Could just like pick anything from, cause I was a little bit ahead on my credits and I've always liked art and creativity. And so I'd already taken a bunch of design and art classes. And the only other creative thing left was really photography. And I was like, okay, I feel like I'd be kind of into this. And so I, picked up a camera that like a friend of mine had and kind of took this class and.
This was right around when this all was happening. And so Trey was like, why don't you just like use what you learned and like take some product photos and we don't have to pay anybody. And I was like, okay. So everything was just like, so like DIY from scratch, like not professional. Like we didn't know what we were doing at all. And I took, you know, some pictures that summer of those first four rosaries. And we weren't even like, we weren't even planning on having a website.
Like it was like, I think I was just going to post those pictures on Instagram and be like, yay. Like DM me if you want one. Yeah. But we wanted. By the time we launched, we were like, okay, wait, let's make this a little bit more professional. You were very adamant about that. Wanting actual websites.
Yeah. And the B I remember the big reason why I wanted an actual website, which we made this decision the night before launch, which is pretty on brand for nothing has changed the reason why I wanted a website. I mean, part of it was professionality, but part of it, I was like, well. If we are going to sell all these rosaries, 75 is a lot in my mind. At that point, it was like a lot to get 75 DMS.
And I was like, if people are just going to be sending me their address and DMS and then payment, I just feel like that's going to be a lot to like handle. And we considered Etsy, but you're right. I do. I have, I like always have loved marketing and branding. And I was like, I at least want it to be like our own brand. If we are going to put it online, I don't really want it to be on Etsy. So then the night before I whipped up a really quick website, Made up a logo.
I mean, we didn't have a logo. We didn't have colors, like literally nothing. Like I just like picked a random font, wrote rest, coast Catholic and put it at the top of a website. And the website, if you knew what our old website looked like, was just a homepage of photos of all of our products for big blocks, square photos. Yeah. And it wasn't really much more than that. It was just like the product page that was landing page. That was the website.
And I put that together and I think I liked it. It literally at like 2 AM the night before. And then day of launch, August 12th. Um, literally a year after I started the blog, August 12th, I remember I got on stories that day and I was like, Hey, you guys, like I've been working on, you know, West coast Catholic, and I have a surprise for you. We are, you know, launching some rosaries. And it was just like a very cute, casual announcement.
If you go and stalk either my Instagram or the West Coast Catholic Instagram, you'll find there's like a nostalgic reel that has like all the clips of like, OG West Coast Catholic, like the very first days. And you can literally see the story where I went on and I look like a baby and I sound like a baby. It's kind of cringy to go back and look at it, but I'm just like, yeah, it was just like cute little Mari, like, Hey guys, like we're going to sell rosaries. So let me know if you want one.
And that day was. Not what we expected it to be. No, not at all. We literally sold all 74 rosaries. Plus. Plus. And then we started selling. We didn't want to take the website down or like market out, mark the rosaries as out of stock. Cause we just launched. I mean, we, we sold everything. What, what we had in inventory, like in a couple hours. Yeah. So we're like, Uh, just keep it going. We'll just catch up. Like, we'll just order more materials. We'll, we'll order more beads.
You just say yes. Even if you don't know how to do it yet, you just say yes. And you just figure it out. And so we were like, yeah, we're not going to shut this site down two hours after we launched. Like who knew this many people were going to want rosaries. I also had never bought a rosary in my life. Like. It wasn't something that I ever thought of like, Oh, I'm going to go buy a rosary. Like they were always gifted for free. Like as a Catholic, you just have rosaries in your house, you know?
And so I didn't like, I knew that our rosaries were beautiful and that people would want to buy them because of their beauty. But I didn't know that that many people would want to buy. Definitely took us by surprise. Definitely took us by surprise. And so like Trey said. We just, we didn't shut down the site. We kept taking orders and we just started ordering more materials.
And we told people like, Hey, by the way, like, you know, it's just us two around here, so like, it'll take about a month to get your rosary. And we started, you know, ordering more materials and starting again and making them again and at this point. Customers were very patient with us for the first, probably six months or longer of our business. It took them like four, five weeks to like, our turnaround times were very slow.
Yeah. So, thank you, You were, I don't know how people kept coming back very gracious with us, but Yeah. But then what's crazy is you would, you were in, I don't know, Colorado or Washington. Somewhere on your Instagram page promoting the rosaries. I was in Georgia with all the product. And so Mari would just like, send me the names of the people who bought it. And then I would like package them up and just.
Like you're playing Manila, yellow, and then I would just go to the post office in Georgia and just drop them off. And yeah, we're just like, we didn't even know what we were doing or how to even get the, once we even sold the product, we're like, okay, now what, now I'm going to get it to the customer. So like, do you just buy stamps? Like, what do you do? Like we had no, we hadn't even done any research anyways. So that was the first few weeks. Yeah. And then.
You know, I think that was like end of summer. And so school started again, and we kind of moved everything into my room in college. I, at this point, I was living in a house. It wasn't necessarily like a dorm. Um, but we kind of moved stuff around and got some bookshelves and just filled it with our, our inventory and our materials. We did end up buying a little like.
Like a label printing machine to like not have to handwrite everything because for a while I was handwriting after after like, but in beautiful calligraphy. Yes, I was calligraphy writing every single address on the. Envelopes as well as handwriting a beautiful calligraphy note to every single customer. So you can imagine how fast my hands started to fall off because those orders never stopped. Like they just kept coming and coming.
And truly like everything started to happen so fast that we never had a moment where we sat down to talk about what was going on. No, we were just playing catch up. We were just playing catch up. We have orders that need to get fulfilled. Yeah. Create these rosaries as fast as possible and we'll talk about it later. Yeah. So at the time when we first started, I was the only one making rosaries. Then obviously because we were selling so fast, I had to train Mari.
So then we both were making rosaries, but shortly after that, that didn't suffice. And so we started turning all of our friends were like, Hey, like, We'll pay you a couple of bucks per rosary. Like here's how to do it. Let's go. And so then we started hosting these rosary making parties to get more people involved. We would buy like a pizza or something and like feed people pizza and like our friends would just make rosary.
There was like a seminary across the street one day, like one night we had like a bunch of seminarians come over and they were all making rosaries with us. Yes. So those first batches of rosaries were made by some very holy potential priests. Potential. Yes. And so, but it was a story of us just trying to figure out how to keep up with demand.
Yeah. And I think as we were falling into these roles, like we started to fall into like certain roles and responsibilities, like in the business that we were having. And so Trey was still, yeah, like you said, We never like sat down and was like, Oh, this is a business, which is why it was always just West Coast Catholic. Cause that was the name of your, that was the name of my blog. We, I remember Trey being like, Hey, like, should we name this something else?
And I was like, no, like this isn't going to last very long. Probably like, let's just name it my blog so that people can find it easily. You already know what West Coast Catholic is. But anyways, he started falling into these like roles. So like Trey would kind of like manage the rosary makers, which are really just our friends and kind of start figuring out like logistics and shipping and finances and supply chain for materials, production, production. And filaments, finances, all that.
Yeah. And kind of what just naturally falls under my gifts. I just started to kind of create a, you know, brand of some sort and kind of like put more of our shop stuff on my Instagram and try and make the website better or like take better photos. And we started designing these little like mail cards that would go into every order with a little inspirational quote or something like that. We started to like level it up a little bit.
So we had these four original rosaries in the shop for a while, and then came Advent and Christmas, and I designed our new rosary. And this was like. This was the only other rosary besides those four, right? It was like the first new design since we started. And we chose to just make it limited edition, like a liturgical rosary for a seasonal Christmas rosary in Advent. And it's our Star of Bethlehem rosary. And I remember we were like, okay, well, how many of these should we make?
Like. I think we made like 60 or something. Yeah. I think we made like 60 or something like that. Cause we were like, well, like everybody's already bought a rosary from us. So why would anybody want to buy a second rosary? Like only a few people are going to buy a second rosary. So maybe we'll just be getting new customers with this new rosary. So we made the start of Bethlehem.
And we sold out in like, I don't know, like, yeah, like, like a day, like less than a day, it was like six hours or something like that, or five hours. And we were like, Whoa, okay. So maybe we need to restock that. And so I think we tried to do a restock and then, and then we stopped selling that one cause it was still seasonal. And then. Lent came around and we were like, Hey, let's do this again. Let's do another seasonal rosary. People loved that one.
And so we came up with a seasonal rosary. And I think that when we were like, okay, let's open it up a little bit. Let's do like a hundred, you know, let's do a hundred of the Lent rosary. And that one's called into the desert. We still have it every Lent today. And I remember we launched and that one sold out. And even less time, it was like, Five or four hours. And we were like, what is going on? This was supposed to last the entire list. This was supposed to like, yeah, last for 40 days.
And, I don't know, we probably restocked that one too. Because at that point we still had the whole rest of Lent to sell these rosaries for. And then COVID hit. And by the time COVID hit, we were in the middle of getting ready to produce the Easter rosary. Cause we were like, this is going really well. People are loving these liturgical rosaries, these seasonal rosaries. So we had an Easter one ready called the gardener. COVID hit in March. It was really well underway.
And we were, I remember we freaked out. We're like, Oh, like people are probably not going to spend money. And people are probably like really focused on the fact that the world is possibly ending right now. Like nobody knew what was going on. And. At that point we had chosen, I remember to make like 200 of those. Yeah. Thinking that a lot more people would wanna buy 'em and that we wanted it to not sell out in a day this time. Yeah. We wanted it to last the whole Easter season.
So I was really nervous about launching those. Easter comes, we launched the gardener. We sell out in two hours. Yeah. I remember something crazy. I remember it was like two hours or two and a half hours. Yeah. And we were like. What is happening? Like, what is going on? And I think that was a moment where we sat down and looked at each other and we were like, what is God doing in this business? This is beyond us. For sure.
Yeah. Because like I said, like we weren't applying any business strategy, like it was just like do as it comes, fulfill orders as they come, figure it out, move on. Like it was just keeping up with demand. Like we didn't have time to do anything extra. It was literally, let's just do it. Let's stay afloat. Let's keep up with all the orders. And so at that point, we really realized like, okay, this is bigger than ourselves. I think the Lord is trying to tell us something.
The Lord is showing us that like, this is a need in the Catholic world and in the community that we're serving. At that point, COVID happened. Our classes shut down, everything went remote. COVID was the absolute best thing that could have happened to us, could have happened to our business at the time. Yeah, COVID honestly was a blast for us. It was awesome.
Yeah, we were just, we were just like, we were still on, on the college campus, all of our Classes moved online and a lot of them were pre recorded too. Like the professors would just pre record and post them and you just watch them whenever. And so we actually had time to sit down and talk about what's happening and be like, okay. We just had so much more time that we could actually put into the business.
Like before that we were trying to work on the business, but we basically just spent class time working on the business and then outside of class time making the rosaries, shipping the rosaries. So yeah, COVID gave us so much time to actually like Work on the business. Yeah. And like I was gonna say, like, you just, we just had time to actually sit down and, and like, talk about like, where is this going? Like, is this going to be a business that we actually like work on?
Cause at the time it was a very much a side thing. If you call making rosaries till 2 AM in the morning, a side thing. Cause at that point it's kind of starting to take over your life. And so. Like Trey said, like, we were like, okay, like, let's get serious about this. Let's put time into the business. And so we both would just like, do our like lectures for class, like in the morning. And we would probably do that. Like what? Like eight to noon.
And then the rest of the day was free and all my other friends, like I've said before, in different talks and stuff like that, like they were science majors. They worked so hard. They had so much school. So they were working until like 5 PM every day. And I was just like, Hanging out with Trey, working on our business from like noon to five. And we actually were able to put time in to make plans, to start talking about where it was going, talk about new rosaries.
And, and that's where the business really started to flourish as a business and a brand. And that's where we started to decide, okay, what. Does the long term future of West Coast Catholic look like? What is the mission of this brand? What's our dream with it? Are we going to do more than just rosaries? And so then we started talking about other products. Yeah. It was really, really fun. It was fun.
And I remember in those early days when we were dreaming about it, I had always said, like, I want this to be like the Catholic version of like Magnolia, like Chip and Joe. Like I love, I love Chip and Joanna Gaines. I love everything they make. And I was obsessed with Magnolia. And I remember just saying that all the time. Like, I want to be the Catholic Magnolia. I want this to be more than Rosaries. I want this to be a lifestyle brand.
I want this to be Something that like provides products that people can bring into their home and into their everyday life that can speak, something about their faith without you even having to say it, that you can just evangelize with your home and that when you invite people into your home or into your life, people just.
Either either start asking questions because of the beautiful products that they see, or they just know that you are living your faith and that you are a Catholic family or a Catholic woman, you know, in the modern world due to the products that you're wearing or that you have in your home. Yeah. It honestly was an extension of your Instagram blog. Like you wanted to. inspire women to be in the world, but not of it and to live out their Catholic faith in their everyday life.
And so now we were just trying to give them the tools, prayer tools and lifestyle goods to equip them to do that. That was a really big summer for us, um, for my Instagram, that was a summer I hit 10 K followers and that was the summer we became focused missionaries and we moved our life to Nebraska, or at least I moved to Nebraska because you still had a semester left of school.
Um, and we kind of started to have to figure out a lot more, uh, Obstacles that came our way because it wasn't really like the quarantine life anymore where there was nothing to do but be home. We actually started to live normal life again. And so now we had to figure out, okay, like how are we going to run our business while we're also missionaries and where are we going to like put all of our inventory?
Because I was living in the missionary girl's house and like in our inventory was just overflowing everywhere. Our inventory was growing and growing. The more our business grew in the more our customer base grew. And so it was just boxes of beads. Everywhere, everywhere, all the time. So we found a little office space in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yeah. We hired on a team to help us with production and fulfillment of the products.
Yeah. At the time the team was just like a group of Catholic sorority girls. So shout out to them. They were awesome. It kept us afloat. Absolutely. And so, but yeah, then we were just trying to balance missionary life with running this small business that was quickly taking over our entire lives. And Yeah. And then we were just trying to discern what to do next. Yeah. And trying to ask the Lord, like, like, what do we do with West Coast Catholic?
What are you trying to really do with West Coast Catholic? Because it kept growing and growing. And again, that wasn't something we really expected. And at the time when we became missionaries, so much of our time was going into missionary life because that was our full time job. And so you're working on your full time job. For most of the day. And then as a missionary, your job goes into like nine or 10 PM because you're leading Bible studies.
And so really it was like a lot of weekends were spent working on this or random, like break times when we weren't missionaries, like we were working on our business, but it wasn't like we were pouring a ton, a ton into it to actually grow it. And yet, like we experienced so much in the past, the Lord was just blessing it. The Lord was just showing us that there was something there that he was calling us to do.
And so we really started to discern with the Lord, like, where are you, Taking West coast Catholic. And what does that mean for Trey and I, like with us being missionaries and also having this business, like, are we going to have to like leave missionary life? Like, are you calling us to go full time? Like, is the business even able to support that? Like, what is the long term goal and plan with West coast Catholic and, and what you're calling us to do?
And when you're a focused missionary, you have an initial like two year commitment and. I, I loved being a missionary and I think if I didn't have West Coast Catholic, I'd probably be a missionary for longer. But nearing that two year mark, we were getting super overwhelmed. I remember like, it was a pretty stressful time for us, um, doing full time missionary work. Going, you know, trying to do more with West Coast Catholic. We were traveling a ton at the time as well. We're big travelers.
So it's not like we don't travel anymore, but I remember we were traveling a ton to see family and friends. And it was just getting to be a lot for us to, to handle and juggle like in our day to day life. And so we discerned that I would go full time. So we discerned that we both would leave focus staff and Mari went full time with West Coast Catholic. I got my normal marketing job and. And I was just able to devote, Oh, obviously a ton more time into the business, given that it just became.
My actual day job, um, which as an entrepreneur, you know that there's no such thing as a day job. It's a day, night, 24 seven job. There's all these jokes on Instagram, like all these reels on Instagram that say like, I left my nine to five to become an entrepreneur. And now I work 24 seven, which is just the life of like those, especially those early years of entrepreneurship. It's a grind. It's really tough. And, um, You just got to get through them, I think, but it was still beautiful.
And there was so much excitement and joy around that. And there still is, because I knew at this point, the Lord had a much bigger mission than what we were doing with West coast Catholic. And so I started to pray a lot about that over the summer. And I decided that it was time. We had a rebrand. I think at this point, it was year three of having the business, year four of having like the Instagram blog or something.
It was, it was already a few years into the business where I finally decided, like, we need a rebrand because if you remember from the story earlier, I put no thought into the brand logo, the look, and I'm such a marketing nerd that I knew that, like, we needed a really strong brand. And I wanted to communicate what I feel like the Lord's mission was for us and for West Coast Catholic through the visuals of the brand.
Um, Because all of our products, everything that we do and did at the time was all very intentional. It all had specific reasons and meanings to draw you into some sort of part of the faith or some scripture or something. And so I wanted our brand to, to be in line with that, to be intentional and meaningful and to communicate these underlying truths that the Lord wants you to know.
And this mission that he's given West coast Catholic to fulfill and started working on this rebrand and then we launched the new brand in 2022. Yeah. After a long summer, just grinding through all the visuals, all of the aesthetic for the brand, the colors, the logo, the icons for the brands, everything we learned so much about branding. Yep. So we did a whole like brand video that summer too, that we were traveling to Colorado to record here. Yeah, it was really.
Having a West Coast Catholic enter into a new frontier like yeah, it was just like a We wanted to just redefine what West Coast Catholic was and who we were moving forward. And with that, I also felt like this was the time to introduce the whole lifestyle part of the business. At the point, at the time, we'd only really done rosaries, I think. And then at that, in that moment, when we Rebranded.
I was like, this is when we are going to open the doors to the whole like lifestyle brand that I've been dreaming of that I feel like the Lord is calling us to do. And so with that rebrand and the new website and the new look and everything we launched. Our first lifestyle items. Yeah, it was a little tumbler cup, which is his first tumbler, which is still one of my faves. I literally use it every day. We launched these beach towels or blankets, Turkish towels, Turkish towels.
They're a little combo. You can use them as blankets in your home or as a beach towel and then a little tote bag. Yeah. And I remember the day before launch was also really crazy for us as all. Big launches have been big launch. You're up into the early, early hours in the morning. We were in Mexico with my family on vacation, which again, somehow all these big things line up with some like crazy travels that we have going on. Cause we just, we're just always traveling. We love to travel.
We can't say no. We can't say no. We should, we should, but we were in Mexico on a family vacation. And that happened to be in the middle of when the new website and the new brand was launching and all these new products were launching and we were out making tweaks to everything. Literally, I think up until like four in the morning was when we finally went to bed and woke up the next morning to launch everything at like 8 AM or something like that. Um, but it was beautiful.
The response was beautiful. Just the whole look was beautiful. It's the brand that we currently have now, and I love it so much. And I love that we took the time. To pray through every single icon, every meaning, every color, um, our mission statement, our visuals, like everything has a deeper meaning. And if you don't know, like our mission for West Coast Catholic is to help you experience a foretaste of heaven.
Basically what that means is to like bring heaven down to earth, into your life and to have you experience that through the products that we make for you. And ultimately what heaven is, is communion with God and communion with God is found through prayer. That's how we're able to experience heaven here today. On this earth is through prayer. And so that was our mission through West Coast Catholic and through the products that we create is to give our customers just that little experience.
Of heaven. And because we're hoping that every product is intentionally made, it's beautiful and it'll lead them to prayer. Yeah. And so on the same topic of helping you experience heaven, I want to talk a little bit about like our main logo and our main icon that you see often is a baby's breath flower. And despite that they're one of my favorite flowers, they actually hold a lot of meaning and the visual in our brand holds a lot of meaning.
so baby's breath flowers in the secular world, commonly, Symbolize eternal love. Like that's what the world kind of like has coined this flower to represent eternal love. And so they're commonly used at weddings. And so I felt like one that was very fitting for our brand, because like Trey was saying, like the experience of communion or the experience of heaven is communion with God. And essentially heaven is this eternal.
wedding banquet that we're invited to, to feast and to be in communion with God. And so these flowers that are commonly used in weddings in the secular world with the meaning of eternal love could also simultaneously represent the wedding banquet that we are called to, to be in heaven, to be in communion with God and experience his eternal love in heaven.
And that also kind of ties in the idea of being like in the world, but not of it, you know, taking something like from the world, but bringing this like deeper meaning that brings us to God that shows us like deeper truths of our faith. That's what the baby's breath flower means. And that's why you see it in all of our branding and our photos and stuff like that. And the other brand element that we have that you see a lot are these swallows.
And so that's represents Mari's favorite Bible verse, Matthew 6 33. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite Bible verse is Matthew 6 33. And it says, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and all other things shall be given to you besides. And I. Loved this verse for years. I mean, maybe in high school was the first time that I heard it and it just stuck with me. And, um, the true like meaning of this verse is to first, first priority in your life above all things is to seek the kingdom, right?
Seek the kingdom and his righteousness. Seek, seek heaven and seek the Lord and dedicate your life to him and everything else will work out. The Lord will bless everything. But to do that. You have to, you have to learn to like, let go of your worry and let go of control and surrender. And so the verses leading up to that is the whole passage of like, do not worry the whole, do not worry passage in Matthew. And there's a verse that I always loved.
I think like, I always saw it visually in my head when I read this verse and it was like, look at the birds of the air and they don't worry about what they will eat. Want the father who provides for these birds also provide for you. Exactly. Exactly. And so this idea of like the animals, you know, the birds, they fly through the air and they're never worried about what they're going to eat or how, how they're going to like survive. Like the father just provides in nature.
He just provides food for them. And they, they go on about their merry little bird life. And that's what I want it to be. I just want it to be a merry little bird that like surrendered my life and just trusted the father. And that would allow me to. Seek him first and seek the kingdom above all things.
And so that's the piece of, encouragement that I want to offer people as well through our brand is this reminder of the joy and the beauty and the freedom that comes with surrendering your life to Christ and how that happens once you just give him all your trust and trust in the providence of the father and know that he is good and he provides and putting your trust in him is the first step to surrendering your life and. And living a Christ centered life.
And so we've had this brand, this new, like, look to our brand for almost a year and a half now. And since then we've been really leaning into that more lifestyle part of the business and I've had so much fun with it. And I think it's been so well received by our audience and our customers as well. I think people are really loving it.
And we've moved into, um, home goods, apparel, jewelry, some devotionals, All products that ultimately we're trying to bring to you, our customers to serve you, to help you experience the four days of heaven, to help you experience community with God and to lead you into deeper prayer. Yeah. And these lifestyle items, obviously like a lot of them aren't like.
Explicitly religious items, you know, but my goal is always to have a message of faith or like infuse like a faith filled design into the product so that you can bring the faith and bring a little piece of heaven into your everyday life. And it's worth noting too, at that time, we also decided to split the Instagram so that the business, the shop West Coast Catholic, could have its own. Instagram page. And then Mari would continue her own personal blog on her own Instagram page.
Yeah. So there are two Instagrams. So the shop has its own Instagram and it's at West Coast Catholic. And then I just left my Instagram as my own name. I just took on my own name for my blog. So it's more at mari. c. wagner. But you can follow the Instagram for West Coast Catholic on Instagram and you'll see all the beautiful products and some more inspiration on how to live your Catholic faith as well as, you know, be notified on all the big sales and stuff that we have throughout the year.
And so here we are almost six years later from when we started the business. And we're just in constantly in awe of how the Lord has blessed it. And not only just the business, but also we see now and.
We realize the mission the Lord has given us and we realize that this is more than a business It's more than just getting product into your hands but really it's about changing hearts changing souls and winning the world for Christ and Evangelizing through this Avenue that the Lord has placed on our hearts to do. It's been crazy. It's been a wild ride It's so much fun.
So much of a challenge, so difficult at times, but the Lord has been faithful through it all and he has blessed us in the business so, so abundantly. And it's just so beautiful to see the way it's impacting people's lives. I mean, from the DMs that I get in, in my Instagram of conversions that are happening or ways that these beautiful rosaries are bringing people to prayer, just like it did for me.
Blessing, you know, people in times of need or in times of sickness, the way that, you know, people are just turning back to Christ through the beauty of the rosary and the power of the rosary, especially is amazing, amazing to see. And although we have expanded to lifestyle products, and that's a big part of our brand now, I think the rosaries will always be kind of that fundamental part of our mission because our mission is always to draw people to the Lord through prayer.
And it's beautiful to see like the number of people that have one of our rosaries now, I mean, over the past,, almost six years that we've been in business, over, I think close to 30, 000 of our rosaries are out in the world now in people's hands. And I mean, you'd hope that at least. All those people have prayed at least one rosary.
Most likely they're praying rosaries more frequently now that they have a beautiful, well designed and beautiful, meaningful product that they are drawn to prayer through. So yeah, I mean, there has been so many more rosaries, so many more prayers that have been prayed. From these products. Yeah. And, and I think that's the part that always gets me.
It always makes me a little bit emotional to think about because I see the weight and responsibility that this mission has, you know, especially with the rosary and knowing that, you know, close to 30, 000 of our rosaries are being prayed. Like Trey said, you hope that at least one is being prayed, but you just, you just hope. And you'd think that. Somebody buying a rosary would hopefully be praying more than one.
And so I just think of heaven and Mary, like rejoicing at the number of people coming back to the faith of the number of people coming back to prayer. Um, or even just pray, even if they already were, you know, in the faith and praying regularly, just praying more fervently because of this beautiful product or being drawn to the rosary more.
I'm just sure heaven is rejoicing So it is just an honor to be, an instrument of the Lord in this mission and that the Lord has called us to bring people to him in this way. And that's the story of how West Coast Catholic started and how we got to where we are today. And if you haven't checked us out, head on over to westcoastcatholic. co and grab yourself a beautiful lifestyle product or prayer tool, especially rosary and check us out on Instagram at westcoastcatholic.
And we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you guys, our amazing customers and our community, our West coast Catholic family. So thank you for all your love and support over the years. It means so much to us and our family. And we just hope that we can continue to serve you in the best ways that we can, that the Lord calls us to for, for so many years to come.