In this edition of Entrepreneurs Heart Hartford, we interviewed entrepreneur, Jeffrey Devereux Founder of Hartford Athletic Club, and part of the Brothers Crisp team in Hartford.

Tell us about your company

I am involved in a couple of ventures. I first returned to Hartford to start a social enterprise sports club, which is now called Hartford Athletic Club (HAC). Since then, I have also joined the team at The Brothers Crisp, where we make artisan hand sewn footwear.

Hartford Athletic Club runs sports and recreation activities, events, and leagues and is getting ready to launch a membership opportunity to allow individuals to play a larger roll in the club and receive member benefits. Hartford Athletic Club joined an awesome group of businesses that incorporated as Benefit Corporations on the first day the option was made available in Connecticut. Hartford Athletic Club is set up to financially support youth sports in Hartford through an organization called Active City. WE like to say this allows adults and kids to play for the same team.

The Brothers Crisp was founded by Joshua Westbrook. He is an inspiring maker and started his business almost 2 years ago. Josh started out making custom moccasin constructed shoes for individual customers. We have in the past few months transitioned to be come a shoe brand, and now offer limited collections of particular styles on our website and select boutique retailers. All of our shoes are made in Hartford by Josh and the team he is training and growing. We are a small artisan shoe making outfit now, but its been so exciting to see the company grow!

How is your business affiliated with Hartford?

Both businesses operate in Hartford. One of the goals of HAC is to unite the city and the surrounding metro area around a club concept. We operate all of our activities in the city, and we hope that HAC will encourage the people of Hartford and the metro area to personally identify themselves with our city.

The Brothers Crisp is located in the Parkville Neighborhood, which is really taking off at the moment. We have a ton of creatives and creative businesses growing in that neighborhood, and we are gaining some critical mass. The Brothers Crisp is proud to call Hartford home while making shoes for the whole world.

How does your business impact the community?

The Brothers Crisp hope to show other artisan businesses that they too can be successful in Hartford, hopefully inspiring a new generation of businesses to set up shop in the city. We are growing and are soon going to start creating new jobs. It’s important to any city to have a strong core of businesses, like the Brothers Crisp, because they help to improve the city particularly at the neighborhood level. We already see a more vibrant Parkville, and if we are able to reach critical mass, we hope to start stemming some of the tide on the bigger issues facing Hartford and Connecticut.

What words of wisdom would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur who might be hesitant to take the plunge?

You have no idea what you are getting into and that’s totally fine. Everyone starts at point zero. All that matters is that you believe in the idea you have and are willing to learn and adapt along the way and if you do some things right you can really make your dreams come true. Like anything worth doing its a lot of hard work, but unlike a lot of other work, doing what you love is life affirming.

What is it that you love about being an entrepreneur?

The obvious things are that I and other love about being entrepreneur is solving problems and helping other people. But what I didn’t expect is the amazing community of entrepreneurs that I have befriended in Hartford through places like reSET and some of the travel we have been able to do with The Brothers Crisp. Its an inspiring group of people to hang out with and be a part of.

What is your vision for your business over the next five years?

The Brothers Crisp hopes to be able to establish the brand over the next 5 years to become known internationally. Its not as crazy as it might sound. Our best customer at the moment is actually from Singapore. To get to that point we need to keep innovating and releasing beautiful footwear collection after collection after collection. We hope to grow not only as an online business but also to have our shoes in the many amazing boutique shops all over the world.

We also have a few tricks and innovations up our sleeves that we are pursuing now, but there will be more on that in the coming months.

Hartford Athletic Club hopes to have a full calendar of year around recreation activities, some larger annual events established, and further activate some of our assets such as the riverfront with more water activities like canoeing and kayaking. We also hope to have by then created a strong community of members who play an active role in running the club and making it their own. The ultimate goal is to include professional level teams within the model to fully unite sports and recreation on a city and metro level. A big dream but one that really makes sense (at least to me).

*This blog series, posted in partnership between HYPE and reSET, offers a platform to showcase the commitment that Hartford Entrepreneurs have for their work and this City. It will examine how young entrepreneurs have chosen their work, and give examples of the ways in which they are having an impact in Hartford.*