Oldis Road’s unique wallets have captured the attention of online audiences for years.
Its social media content, some shot by customers, has racked up millions of views on TikTok and more than 300,000 followers between Instagram and Facebook.
The company reports having sold more than 70,000 wallets. Founder Jonathan Jamieson envisions becoming one of the nation’s leading brands. So naturally, for its North American distribution hub, Oldis Road chose Presque Isle.
Stacks of wallets and other leather products sit on shelves in the company’s office, located in the heart of Presque Isle’s downtown. The location is not a retail store, but is emblematic of how Jamieson wants to shape brand identity.
“Main Street America is where I want to be,” he said. ”This is what I want to be doing. I like this energy, I think there’s potential. I think there’s like a lot of goodness on Main Street that’s not being taken advantage of.”
Oldis Road came to Presque Isle in 2023, just as it began to go viral online. Searching for a solution to ship products quicker, Jamieson turned to his mother, Lori Holmes, a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen who lives just across the border in Perth-Andover, New Brunswick.
“I just asked her … ‘Would you like to help me out with something?’” Jamieson said. “And of course, as a proud mother she is, she was like, ‘Yes, please, sign me up.’”
The company began sending goods in bulk from Ecuador — where they are made — to a shipping center in Presque Isle. After a few months, it rented an office in the Innovation Center at the Northeastland Hotel, a co-working space run by local economic development nonprofit Ignite PI.
From there, Holmes singlehandedly packed and shipped every order. As Oldis Road continued to grow, so did its shipping demands. The brand moved across the street into its current space last fall, a storefront formerly home to a women’s clothing store. It hired several on-site sales associates earlier this year to help keep up with demand.
“It’s unbelievable,” Holmes said of the growth of her son’s brand. “From selling at markets or on the street. He definitely was selling wherever he could sell for a lot of years. Then he started getting a little bigger … he started doing videos about [the wallets] and putting that out, and it started flying.”
Most of the company’s videos feature its signature wallet, the Oldis One, which is made from a single piece of full-grain leather and designed to open vertically in a way that makes it easier to remove cash.
“A lot of [wallets] are traditional billfold. You open your wallet up and now you’re sorting through it from the top trying to find which bill to take out,” said Jedidiah Cone, a sales associate. “These are designed so when you open it, it’s almost as if you were holding the cash without the wallet being there.”
Jamieson, who is originally from Prince Edward Island, founded Oldis Road in 2012 under the name JJ Leathersmith. Burnt out from a career as a bicycle mechanic, he booked a one-way flight to Europe and embarked on a self-described “quarter-life crisis.”
While in Portugal, he used the leather from an old purse to fashion a cover for a journal that was being destroyed in his bag as he hitchhiked around the continent.
“It was just out of necessity. I needed to make something for myself,” Jamieson said. “But as I was making it, somebody saw me make it. And they said, can you make me one? So I did.”
He traveled from Europe to Africa, making other products as a hobby, when his backpack was stolen in Mozambique. Jamieson spent about $300 — half of the money he said he had left — on materials to make a leather bag. Again, people noticed, and asked him to make items for them. So he became a leatherworker, selling goods on the streets.
“I think there was a little bit of divine intervention or beginner’s luck, with things working out when you really need them to work out,” Jamieson said.
He began selling on Facebook and Etsy after relocating to Colombia, and later, Ecuador, where he hired others to help make products as the business grew. The company now employs more than 60 people in its workshop in Otavalo, a town high in the Andes Mountains in northern Ecuador.
It’s where Jamieson lives for about six months out of the year, he said. The rest of his time is spent in the U.S. and Canada, a “good chunk” of which is in Aroostook County.
For about an hour each day, Oldis Road runs a live stream from its Presque Isle office, showing off products to customers as employees pack and ship.
The wallets, they say, “just get better by the day,” sales associate Brian Rodriguez said. It’s why the company’s warranties work opposite of most. They require customers to use a wallet for 30 days before requesting a refund. After that, replacements are guaranteed for life.
“No judging a book by its cover,” a blurb about the policy on the brand’s website reads. Oldis Road also sells leather key chains, computer cases and backpacks.
“The design principles are a bit different than most people,” Jamieson said. “With the selection of materials and the attention to detail, we don’t cut any corners … We just make the best product we can.”