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New York City, U.S.A
To Kelly Wright, a hardware store is a place where ideas manifest, problems are solved, and people come together. And through her own hardware store, YUNS, she wants to help us all get a lot more comfortable with the tools of the trade.
When you think of a hardware store, you might imagine it as a functional pit stop on the way to completing your tedious DIY job, or you might find it an intimidating warren of fixtures, fittings and patronizing sales assistants. However, Kelly has created YUNS in a new image: “a curated hardware shop that aims to inspire self-reliance through everyday tools and household objects.”
YUNS couldn’t have come at a better time. With the cost of living rising regardless of where you’re based, we could all do with access to better hardware and help to develop the skills that will extend the life span of our belongings and spaces. The existence and early success of YUNS also speaks to the desire to turn away from the throw-away society we’ve found ourselves in, a culture where if something is broken, we don’t fix it.
Having grown up in rural South Carolina in a family of “farmers, mechanics, homemakers, landscapers and moonshiners”, Kelly saw first-hand how the tools and equipment used by her family allowed them not just to fix practical problems but to also make their ideas a reality. She explains, “Growing up, I learned how to do things and get creative with these everyday tools on the shelves and the aisles at the local hardware stores. It was so cool to realize that, ‘Wow, this is more than just functional stuff.’”
Kelly’s father, “a very masculine but sensitive farm dude,” made a point of teaching his daughter all she needed to know about tools and how to use them properly. “He always showed me how to fix things and educated me about tools. He never saw me being a girl as a reason to exclude me.” Because of this inclusive attitude, Kelly credits her father as one of the main influences behind YUNS and the reason why she’s never felt intimidated in hardware stores or the building industry. As she says, “It’s always been open to me because of him.”
While Kelly had a happy childhood, growing up in the rural south wasn’t without its challenges. Originally born in Korea and adopted into an American family, Kelly felt like she didn’t always fit in and experienced racism on a regular basis at school. As a result, she pushed away any traces of her Korean heritage, “I wanted to distance myself from the Korean side of my identity because it was the thing that made me different.” Throughout her teenage years, Kelly tried to assimilate but then discovered the music of the Riot Grrrl movement, a period of time in the 90s when bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater Kinney made songs that told the world in no uncertain terms that they’d had enough of society’s bullshit. “When I heard that music, it broke my brain open. I was like, ‘This is crazy. This is so cool.’”
Emboldened by this riot attitude, Kelly made an express line for New York as soon as she’d graduated. It was there amongst new colleagues who shared her Korean heritage that she found an ability to connect with a side of herself she’d disconnected from as a defense mechanism, “When I moved to New York, I made Asian friends for the first time. One woman took me under her wing, and we’d go to all these amazing Korean BBQ places where she’d teach me how to order and eat Korean food.” Today, Kelly proudly and comfortably inhabits a place at the intersection of both her Korean heritage and her southern roots, a dual identity that allows her to appreciate classic country music alongside hardcore music from the 90s and can be traced through all elements of YUNS where you’ll find the most practical OG American hardware tools alongside Korean dish scrubbies.
The initial idea for YUNS – which is how people say "y'all" deep in the southern Appalachian Mountains – came out of Kelly’s frustration with where she found herself; in the world of advertising. As anyone who has worked in advertising will tell you there is a presentation graveyard where exquisite ideas and genius strategy go to die – often for a multitude of reasons. It’s an occupational hazard and one that comes with the territory. As a talented brand strategist, Kelly was beginning to feel the urge to create something more tangible than a Google Slides deck, and her southern roots were pulling her back to what she valued most. “I think I was craving intimacy in a lot of ways. I wanted to do something that was about connecting people and making something tangible. The hardware store idea was something that had laid dormant for a long time, and then it just kind of rose to the surface.”
A long gestation period of research and strategizing followed, out of which came YUNS. This careful consideration is evident across all of Kelly’s output with YUNS; the curation is perfect, the brand design is incredibly sharp and referential of the accidentally iconic typography of traditional hardware. All of this is underpinned by Kelly’s solid ethos and desire to connect people and inspire them to get fixing, to think about how we’re living, and take care of our belongings, ourselves, each other and the earth.
Wary of using the word empowering – a term co-opted by global brands that has started to lack any real meaning – Kelly does see real value in learning practical skills, not just for our own benefit and enjoyment but for our wider collective.
This ethos of care is what really underpins YUNS. Kelly cares about her community, and she cares about the products she curates. In turn, she wants us all to care a little bit more about the impact our lifestyles are having on the world around us and what we have sacrificed in the name of convenience and ease “I think we've gotten really caught up in the ephemeral, fast, convenient culture of that we live in today. It’s easier to throw something away and buy a new one than fix it. There’s also the issue that products today aren’t made to be mended. They’re made cheap to be disposed of. There’s no sustainable life cycle considered in a lot of design today.”
But change is afoot. People are waking up. A recent feature on The Guardian discusses the rise in repair shops and predicts that we are on the cusp of a “fixing revolution”. Kelly and YUNS are yet another marker that things are moving in the right direction, that there is a kickback to chasing the cheapest and easiest option, and she’s hopeful, “I think there's a resistance forming. People don't want their humanity taken away from them. I think people are feeling the urge to fix their own household items, master some DIY skills and grow their own food.”
For now, Kelly is raising her small baby and thinking about the evolution of YUNS, both of which are no small feat. When looking at any business or endeavor from the outside, we don’t often see the hours and energy that go into making something look seamless. We don’t appreciate the hardships, the sleepless nights, the financial sacrifices and the emotional strain starting, running and maintaining a business can take. Kelly acknowledges all of this but she’s still game. She’s committed and passionate about the possibilities of YUNS, and she’s only interested in defining success on her own terms, “When you’re an entrepreneur, there’s no blueprint. You just have to figure out what your own rules are. It’s the same with success. It's something I wish was talked about more. Not everything has to be a blockbuster, and you can define what success looks like for yourself, whatever the scale.”
