08/28/2026
A little update: it’s long, but worth a read - we promise this will be the last essay we write for a while 😂
Phew. Well THAT escalated quickly.
When we made our post about not jumping on the Dolly bandwagon, it came from the gut.
We had watched, almost immediately as businesses and individuals from all over the country, and even around the world began promoting Dolly-themed merchandise following her passing. And while we absolutely understand the desire to honor Dolly and support the causes she cared about, the reality was that the majority of what we were seeing either wasn’t accompanied by a donation at all, or involved donating a percentage of sales while the business still retained the rest as profit.
It just didn’t sit right with us.
We’re a small Sevier County business. We love this community, we respect Dolly immensely, and we’ve always felt very strongly about respecting her intellectual property and the legacy she built here. We have never, ever sold a Dolly themed design in our store simply out of respect for her.
So before anyone started asking us, “is The Soft Shirt Place going to make Dolly shirts”, we simply felt like we needed to say where we stood.
There was no marketing strategy behind it.
There was no attempt to make a statement.
There was no plan to gain followers.
The was no self righteous pat on the back.
There was no reverse psychology intended.
There was no ‘shop now’ button - we don’t even have our items available to buy through Facebook, and we certainly didn’t include a link to our website in the post.
There certainly wasn’t some secret social media master plan hiding behind the curtain. 😂 We only wish we could afford someone to do that for us 😂
Victoria was simply drinking her morning coffee with a feed full of Dolly, and picked up her phone and vented.
And then something happened that we genuinely weren’t prepared for.
You all showed up.
The response we’ve received has absolutely shocked us.
We’ve been blown away, incredibly grateful, and honestly a little overwhelmed by the kindness, support, conversations, shares, comments, and messages we’ve received.
We’ve also seen how even on a simple post that was only intended for our handful of follwers to see, that some people can be really quite nasty. But that’s ok. Those aren’t our people….. to the ones that were very bent out of shape that our accompanying image was created by AI - the only reason was because Shawn was still sleeping when Victoria went on her rampage, she doesn’t have a creative bone in her body and she needed an image to capture our existing customers attention when their feed was being bombarded 😂 - THAT is why you got AI 🤷🏼♀️. And if thats what you took from the post...... well, you missed the whole point anyway.
We never imagined that the name of our little store, sitting all the way up on the top floor of the almost 50 year old Mountain Mall in downtown Gatlinburg, with its perpetually broken escalator and its leaky roof, would suddenly find its way onto feeds all over the country and around the world.
And the fact that so many of you didn’t just scroll past, but stopped, read what we had to say,(which was a lot, we know 🙄) interacted with us, shared it, and then chose to follow along….. WOW.... incredible.
So to every single person who has found us because of that post:
Hi 👋🏻
We’re The Soft Shirt Place.
We’re a family-owned and family-run little shop that opened our doors in 2018. We’ve survived the crazy tourist seasons, the slow seasons, the “what on earth are we going to do now?” seasons, and even the COVID shutdowns, and somehow, we came out the other side.
Sometimes we wonder how We’re still here.
The business is very much a family affair.
Shawn is the creative brain behind a huge part of what we do. He draws, creates, designs, tinkers, experiments, and generally comes up with ideas that then become everyone else’s problem. 😂 (clearly not the image on our post, and NO, he doesn’t use AI when designing). He’s loud and fun and will be the one to talk your ear off if you ever stop by.
Ashley is our daughter, designer, creator, and an enormous part of the heart of this business. She’s been involved in the store since 2021 and brings her own creativity and perspective into what we make. She runs the store on a day to day basis, and is accompanied by her 14 month old son, Kristian, to work every day. We call him our Toddler CEO. He loves rubber ducks if you ever stop by. Ashley personally prints every single order, including the online ones and handles all of the fulfillment on top of the daily running of the store.
And Victoria is… well… apparently the person who has to make sure everyone else remembers there are actual things that need to get done. 😂 She runs the social media, website, e-commerce, payroll, inventory, all the background things. If she’s ever at the store you probably won’t see her, we tend to hide her in the back because her social skills aren’t the best, which was clearly proven by her post 👀
Together, we design, print, package, sell, clean, restock, answer questions, deal with the occasional chaos and somehow keep this little operation moving.
One thing we’re particularly proud of is that our designs are drawn and created in-house by Shawn and Ashley.
We aren’t simply scrolling the internet looking for something popular and slapping it on a shirt. Our goal has always been to create things that feel like us. From our Smoky Mountain designs to the snarky stuff, the funny stuff, the family stuff, and everything in between.
And that’s probably what you’ll see here.
It’s a little bit of Smoky Mountain life, a little bit of Gatlinburg, a whole lot of our products, some random nonsense because… well, that’s who we are 😂, lots of Family updates and insights into our lives, and hopefully a place where we can actually interact with the people who follow us. We don't have a social media manager, we're just making this up as we go along.
We’re not interested in being some faceless business page. We’ve had this page since we opened and never had more than a few likes and interactions 😂 You’ll find us getting excited about nice friendly people who made our day a little bit better, and, if and when needed, you might see us call out behavior that’s not so nice 🤷🏼♀️
So if you’re new here because of Dolly, welcome to our little corner of the Smokies.
And if you’ve been following us for years, thank you for being here before any of this happened.
Whether you’ve bought a shirt, shared a post, stopped by the store, recommended us to someone, left us a review, or simply laughed at something we’ve posted, then You are the reason this little family business is still here.
We’re incredibly grateful.
And to everyone who helped put our name on feeds we never expected to reach, Thank you. Truly.
We’re humbled. We’re grateful. And we’re really, really glad you’re here.
Now, if you happen to come to Gatlinburg, come find us.
We’re the little family-owned store up on the top floor of Mountain Mall, and we’d absolutely love to meet you. ❤️
Shawn, Victoria, Ashley & Kristian
The Soft Shirt Place
