Elkhorn’s Camp Wandawega has made the leap into merchandising, including recent collaborations with national beer company Hamm’s, as well as locally owned shops in Chicago and gas station/convenience store Wally’s: Home of the Great American Road Trip, among others. The Camp Wandawega-branded items feature a vintage camp aesthetic in keeping with the camp’s midcentury, lo-fi design and branding.
Owners David Hernandez and Tereasa Surratt bought the former Latvian church camp on Elkhorn’s Lake Wandawega in 2004, restoring some of the property’s original structures and relocating buildings from other camps to create an idyllic “adult summer camp” vacation getaway and creative teambuilding destination. Due to their efforts, the camp has since been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Now, the couple has expanded Camp Wandawega’s line of branded merchandise through several thoughtful collaborations. A successful pop-up shopping experience last summer inside The Tie Bar Chicago, a modern menswear store, was followed by a Camp Wandawega shopping experience at The Center of Order and Experimentation. The quirky coffee and gift shop, located in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood, describes itself as a “coffee and retail operation designed to create community and uplift independent makers by purveying curious objects of exceptional utility.”
Camp Wandawega prides itself on working with makers and manufacturers, often sourcing their products directly from the original companies that made the midcentury camp gear they are emulating. The camp’s collaboration with Wally’s: Home of the Great American Road Trip includes such nostalgic items as a camp duffel, a tackle box, camping utensils and a pocket flask all branded with the camp’s retro logo. Items are available at Wally’s locations in Pontiac, Illinois, and Fenton, Missouri, as well as through its website.
Partnering with Hamm’s Beer, Camp Wandawega produced classic clothing items like swim shorts, work shirts and jackets, as well as a camp chair, beach towel and lake floats. (The Hamm’s collaboration was so successful that most of the items sold out quickly.) Other companies the camp has partnered with to produce merchandise include Faribault Woolen Mills, Solemn Oath Brewery and Crow Canyon Home. In the past, home store Crate & Barrel has even sold a Camp Wandawega Treehouse Play Set based on the camp’s real tree house, which is also featured in a children’s book, “The Forever Tree,” written by Surratt.
These collaborations have created new opportunities for Hernandez and Surratt to bring the story of Camp Wandawega to the wider world. Reflecting on The Tie Bar collaboration on the company’s Instagram page, they write, “It’s our favorite way to tell the story of camp.”
Photo courtesy Camp Wandawega
