WILDEX CO. Was Here Before We Named It
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WILDEX CO. was founded by Alexis.
ALEX-IS. Lex. Lexi. Kid. Larry. Whatever.
I’m figuring out all kinds of wild one small adventure, and one small business, at a time.
Before Arizona, there were years near the coast, years figuring out city life in Southern California, and plenty of moving around, traveling, changing plans and wondering what came next.
Then came Northern Arizona.
Pines. High desert. Red rock. Snow. Monsoons. Open roads. Small towns. Strange roadside finds.
I still want to see much more outside of the Wild West, but for now, WILDEX CO. has a basecamp in beautiful Mohave County.
Looking back, though, WILDEX CO. was sort of there the whole time.
Not as a business.
Not even as an idea anyone had named yet.
It was there in the handfuls of stickers I collected from all kinds of places, especially anywhere with that surf and skate feeling I grew up around.
At one point, Wahoo’s Tacos alone had practically filled a shoebox in our house because they handed out stickers by the handful.
Either that, or I was very special, like my mom says.
One of my favorites came from The Block at Orange.
Yes, I am this old.
My family happened to meet Kobe Bryant at a nearly empty mall late one night, and we ended up with a signed sticker.
The sticker itself probably isn’t worth much.
The memory is priceless.
What I remember most isn’t even the sticker.
It’s my dad’s excitement.
I can still see his smile every time I look at it.
It isn’t just a sticker.
It’s a moment.
It’s a memory.
It’s something small that somehow managed to hold onto something much bigger.
RIP to all the stickers we’ve lost along the way.
And maybe that sounds like a strange place to begin the story of a business, but that’s kind of the point.
I have always loved how something so small and ordinary can end up carrying so much meaning.
A sticker can remind you of a restaurant you used to go to.
A place you lived.
A skateboard you destroyed.
A person you met once.
A trip.
A joke.
A version of yourself that doesn’t exist anymore.
That way of thinking became much bigger than stickers.
For a long time, I had this feeling that I wanted to create something. I just didn’t completely understand what that “something” was supposed to be.
Then, while working as a host at a resort, part of it clicked.
I loved watching people have a good time.
I loved seeing people enjoy a place, celebrate something, laugh together, or make a memory.
And I noticed the little things they chose to take home afterward.
A shirt.
A sticker.
A souvenir.
Something small that said, I was here. This happened. I want to remember this.
That feeling made sense to me.
And eventually, WILDEX CO. started making more sense too.
WHEN ARIZONA BECAME MORE THAN SOMEWHERE I LIVED
Arizona became far more than somewhere I simply live and love.
There is something about the mountains that brings me a kind of peace and comfort I still can’t fully explain.
The terrain and weather change dramatically depending on where you are. High desert. Pines. Red rock. Open roads. Dry heat. Snow. Monsoons.
Somehow, all of it feels connected.
There is beauty in the desert dirt that some of us are just drawn to like a moth to a flame.
The rocks catch the light.
Railroads roar through town.
Monsoons roll in with almost no warning.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I got hit with an amount of love I can only describe as something out of a Hallmark movie.
No, seriously.
Our meet cute story is actually pretty good.
Arizona might be hot, but yes, it really is a dry heat.
More importantly, I love where I live.
Kingman gives me room to create while still keeping me surprisingly close to places like Las Vegas and Los Angeles, which has become genuinely useful as WILDEX CO. grows.
It feels like I found a place that gives me both space and possibility.
WHY WILDEX CO.?
WILDEX CO. gives all the weird little things I notice somewhere to go.
A joke.
A place.
A drawing.
A random thought.
Something funny Austin says.
Something I see on a drive.
Something that reminds me of being a kid.
Usually my brain immediately goes to one question:
What could this become?
A sticker?
A shirt?
A character?
Something somebody keeps on a water bottle, skateboard, cooler or car?
Something they tuck away in a drawer because it means something to them?
That is the part I love.
WILDEX CO. is still small, and I actually like that right now.
It gives me room to change things, test ideas, redraw something ten times, completely scrap it, or decide I would never wear it myself and start over.
I do not want WILDEX CO. to grow so much that it forgets why anyone cared about it in the first place.
I want it to grow without losing the weird little details that made it ours.
WHAT DOES WILDERNESS EXPLORER ACTUALLY MEAN?
To me, being a Wilderness Explorer has almost nothing to do with how extreme your adventures are.
It has more to do with staying curious enough to go see what’s out there.
You do not have to climb a mountain.
Sometimes adventure is a dirt road.
Sometimes it is moving somewhere new.
Sometimes it is building something when you are not entirely sure how.
Sometimes it is taking the dog to the lake.
Sometimes it is wandering through an old town and finding something ridiculous that makes you laugh.
Sometimes it is making something for no other reason than you had an idea and needed to see what happened.
And sometimes the wilderness is simply the part of your own life you have not figured out yet.
WILDEX CO. is a small business, yes.
But we want it to be more than something you simply buy from.
A moment.
A memory.
And every once in a while, something you were not expecting at all.
We happen to love surprises.
We could probably tell you everything here.
But where is the fun in that?
You can find out a little more as we go.
Meet us in the wild, find us somewhere along the way, or follow along online.