Onward Reserve, a downtown Athens shopping destination, demonstrates how starting small does not mean you cannot turn out big.
From its first location on 146 E. Clayton St. that opened in 2012, the franchise has now spread to locations around the southeastern United States.
Before it became better known, though, it was a simple thought created by then banker T.J. Callaway, along with William Watts, who is no longer with the company.
Callaway, a Thomasville, Georgia, local NATIVE? and a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, knew all about commercialism and Southern style as the store website describes.
The brand owner discussed in a January 2016 interview with the Athens Banner-Herald how there needed to be a “good place to find a curation” of all the “great brands out there.”
Callaway originally started Onward Reserve as an online store named FiveMile in 2011, but as the Banner-Herald noted, the growth was so exponential that Callaway took the opportunity to open a physical storefront.
The Thomasville (Georgia) Times reported in April 2015 that Onward Reserve was “recently recognized as the second fastest-growing business owned by a University of Georgia graduate from over 450 regional nominees at the 2015 Bulldog 100 celebration.”
The founder runs his business how he wants it run, though, by not letting it turn into a chain of doppelgängers of the original location, reports the Banner-Herald.
TJ Callaway on Instagram: “We are headed to my hometown of Thomasville, Georgia in a couple of weeks to shoot our Fall 2017 Catalog. I am excited to share a little more about this special place with our customers. In the mean time check out this article in the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/fragile-hunting-grounds-in-the-southeasts-quail-belt-1486048576?mg=id-wsj”
237 likes, 11 comments – tjcallaway4February 3, 2017 on : “We are headed to my hometown of Thomasville, Georgia in a couple of weeks to shoot our Fall 2017 Catalog. I am excited to share a little…”
“I’m looking for things that have a cool story and for things that just look like they have some character,” said Callaway in a 2014 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Atlanta Magazine provided a summary of the Atlanta branch’s eclectically Southern products after the magazine titled Onward Reserve “Atlanta’s Best Men’s Prep Shop” in 2014. The collection ranged from “waxed Barbour jackets… and needlepoint Labrador retriever collars” to “Filson bags and Vilebrequin swim trunks.”
The Clayton Street location uniquely carries items like “Atlanta Braves baseball bat fragments… turned into bottle openers” and other merchandise not found in similar stores, according to the Banner-Herald.
While the expansion has been remarkable, Callaway also told the Banner-Herald “the Athens location will always be his favorite.”