Kathleen Hotmer and Luke Tandy’s home is filled with beautiful goods and music — and so are their stores.
Kathleen owns Pink Moon Goods at 2027 E. 5th St., and Luke owns Skeleton Dust Records at 133 E. 3rd St. in Dayton. The duo has been together since 2008, and married since 2018.
Luke opened his record store first, in October 2017. He carries have records, CDs, tapes, audio equipment and a few books that cover a variety of genres, though he specializes in noise and experimental music.
“I constantly was hearing him say things like, I just want to open a record store, and it was just something that kept coming up,” Kathleen recalled. “There was one moment when Luke said it, and I just said, Okay, let’s just do it. You want to do it, let’s start.”
At the time, Kathleen worked in the theater department at Sinclair, but within a couple years, Luke would inspire her to open her own shop, where she specializes in ethically manufactured home goods.
“I never really felt like I was a theater person,” Kathleen said. “So I think that always kind of left a door open that made me feel like there was possibly something else for me that I wanted to do.”
For Luke, the seed was planted during an intro to entrepreneurship class in college. For his final project, he imagined opening a record store. The idea lingered.
“We went to Europe in 2012, and I specifically remember going to a store in Berlin, where it was unlike any store I’d ever seen before,” he recalled. “It was incredibly unique, and just a very special store, and that moment was super inspiring to me because I was just thinking, I can make my store however I want to make it. It doesn’t have to be a certain way, it can just be my own creation. And really it was that moment that I was pretty dead set on ultimately opening my own record store.”
But it took him years to build up the confidence to actually do it, Luke shared.
“Over time, you realize that it’s possible to do your own thing, if you work hard, and you’re passionate, and you’re offering something maybe a little bit different than other people are,” he said.
Kathleen is a maker, a seamstress, and always toyed with the idea of making and selling her own product. But it wasn’t until she helped Luke open his store that owning her own business seemed like a real possibility, she said.
Writing out full business plans was a key exercise that they both underestimated at first, she said.
“We sat down, we both helped each other, and you know, we’ve never requested financing. We’ve never had to use it for anything. But it helped us solidify what our businesses were going to look like,” Kathleen said. “As I started asking those questions — what is this business, who does this business serve — I started to discover that the thing that I felt really passionate about was creating an opportunity for people to consume in an ethical way.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Kathleen’s plans were delayed but not dashed. When the Downtown Dayton Partnership started organizing sidewalk sales that summer, she jumped in.
“That was the first moment that I was like, okay, I’m just going to do this now,” she recalled. “It’s funny when I look back at those pictures now because i had maybe four products that I was selling.”
Now, she works with 100+ vendors to fill her store selves.
She kept her full-time job at Sinclair for two years while she grew her business and looked for a brick + mortar space.
“I was really lucky in a sense that I knew that I was going to quit my job in a certain time frame, and so I did save a lot of money,” she said. “I was fortunate that I was working in a position that paid me enough money to just start pocketing money, putting it aside.”
Owning a business is hard, but Kathleen and Luke wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I feel like both of our businesses are a reflection of who we are. It’s different than things that we did in the past where, you know, I was a theater artist but I don’t really care for a theater,” Kathleen said. “So I think that that’s something that’s really satisfying about our our current businesses is that they reflect our lives.”
“Certainly there’s a lot of stress and anxiety with owning your own business, but I have never once felt dread about going to work since I opened my own business,” Luke added. “It just seems like a natural thing that I do, every day almost, and I just never dread it. I get to be surrounded by the thing I love most every day, all day long. And sharing that with other people is a huge part of it as well.”
Meanwhile Kathleen spends her days surrounded by beauty and those who appreciate it.
“I love beautiful things. There’s so many things that, when I’ve seen them, it’s like my heart stops, or I take a breath,” she said. “That is so pretty. And I just love seeing that reaction in other people.”
Just do it, and be smart about it, she advises.
“Just do the thing. Dedicate the time to doing the smart things like, don’t put off paying your sales tax. Just figure it out. Don’t let that keep you from not pursuing something that you feel excited about,” she said.
And use fear as motivation.
“Be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before, be more stressed out than you’ve ever been before. But also to remember to take those things and re-channel them and use them to your advantage,” Luke said. “Use them as inspiration to make things work.”
“The fear is the motivation for discovery,” Kathleen added. “You can be like, forget it, I can’t do this, I’m giving up. Or you can be like, okay fear, help me do something awesome.”
We’re Kathleen Hotmer and Luke Tandy, and we are entrepreneurs.
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There’s no one way to be an entrepreneur.
You don’t have to look a certain way, operate in a particular industry, or pursue specific education. You don’t have to grow up in a particular household, or spend your free time nurturing any particular hobbies — entrepreneurs grow from all walks of life.
In this series, entrepreneurs, founders, and small business owners from across the Dayton Region share their individual stories to break down pervading stereotypes about who can or can’t be an entrepreneur.
They proudly declare, “I Am an Entrepreneur” — and you can be, too.
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