Fifteen years ago, Rena Casey-Wilhelm sat on the floor of an empty storefront in Greenport and cried.

She and her husband, Jason Wilhelm, had packed up their lives in Westchester County and gambled everything on opening a boutique in a village they barely knew. They had left steady jobs behind. Their first Greenport location wasn’t attracting enough foot traffic to survive. Now they had signed a lease on a much larger storefront they could scarcely afford, and they didn’t have enough merchandise to fill it.

“I was like, ‘What did I just do?'” Casey-Wilhelm recalled.

Today, that storefront is The Weathered Barn, one of Greenport’s longest-running independent retailers and one of its best-known destinations, celebrating its 15th year in business this month. The anniversary marks the survival of an artisan who repeatedly bet on herself, reinvented her business when circumstances demanded it and built a loyal following by putting community ahead of profit.

“It’s the longest I’ve ever done anything,” Casey-Wilhelm said with a laugh.

That evolution began long before Greenport.

A business is born

After growing up in Mount Vernon and living in Yonkers, Casey-Wilhelm and her husband bought a tiny cottage in a quirky former Swedish Methodist campground in Westchester County, a close-knit community that became filled with artists, musicians and young entrepreneurs. At the time, she had left a successful career as an interior designer for Ethan Allen to start her own design business, only to find herself searching for direction after closing it.

She organized a holiday artisan market inside the campground’s aging auditorium to raise money for repairs, inviting the public into the once-private community for the first time. Alongside dozens of vendors, she sold handmade pillows, artwork, candles and vintage finds of her own.

The response surprised her.

“It was really, really great,” she said. “Everybody’s reaction was so positive.”

Then came another setback.

After returning to Ethan Allen for the security of a paycheck and benefits, Casey-Wilhelm lost her job during the 2008 financial crisis as the company’s window treatment department was eliminated.

“I thought I was doing everything right,” she said. “And then … now what am I going to do?”

A friend’s advice changed everything. Instead of searching for another corporate position, she challenged Casey-Wilhelm to rent a tiny storefront and simply see what happened. That search led her to Sugarloaf, an Orange County artisan village where she rented a 400-square-foot space for just $300 a month.

Business was slow. The recession had emptied streets that once bustled with shoppers, and many stores kept inconsistent hours, making it difficult to build customer confidence. But the experience immersed Casey-Wilhelm in a community of potters, soap makers, woodworkers and other craftspeople who would shape her philosophy and, eventually, contribute to her inventory. It also gave her the name that would define her future. Back at the campground, she’d imagined converting its old weathered buildings into permanent artisan spaces. In her mind, she always referred to them simply as “the weathered barn.”

When the couple decided after a year in Sugarloaf that they wanted to build something bigger, Greenport beckoned. Jason’s parents owned a bed-and-breakfast in the village, and every visit reinforced what Casey-Wilhelm already suspected.

“What better place,” she thought, “than Greenport?”

The couple arrived in 2011 with little more than the inventory Casey-Wilhelm had made and accumulated in Sugarloaf — handmade candles, sewn goods, jewelry, artwork and furniture. But the first store struggled. Located off the main shopping path, it attracted little foot traffic during an era before Instagram could drive customers to hidden destinations.

“I really didn’t think I was going to make it at all,” she said.

Determined to survive, she found an available storefront that longtime florist Jane Greenko had once occupied. The rent was higher, and the space was several times larger. Her landlord, Burton’s Bookstore owner George Maaiki, offered the couple something almost unheard of today.

“He was like, ‘Move in. We’ll worry about the rent later,'” she recalled.

The arrangement reflected something Casey-Wilhelm says still defines Greenport.

“I think the Greenport business community is very similar to the Greenport residential community,” she said. “It’s pretty tight-knit, and we all kind of care about each other.”

The larger space forced another transformation. She began recruiting artisans whose work matched her aesthetic, eventually filling the store with handmade goods from about 10 makers while continuing to produce her own products.

When she realized men often waited outside while their partners shopped, she reimagined both the store and its identity.

“The White Weathered Barn” became simply “The Weathered Barn.”

Bright farmhouse décor gave way to darker colors, handcrafted chef’s knives, leather and canvas bags, richer home fragrances and a broader mix of products designed to appeal to everyone.

“We had to reinvent ourselves,” she said.

That willingness to adapt became essential. As handmade products grew more expensive to produce, Casey-Wilhelm discovered an uncomfortable reality: supporting artisans and running a profitable business didn’t always align. Rather than demanding the typical consignment split that favors retailers, she said, she flipped the formula – giving artisans 65% of sales and keeping just 35% herself.

“My heart was with artisans,” she said.

Eventually, economics forced difficult decisions. The store still features local makers, but fewer than before, balancing artisan work with carefully curated merchandise from around the world and an expanding line of products made in-house. During the pandemic, that evolution accelerated unexpectedly.

When the French couple who produced The Weathered Barn’s bath and body products retired overseas and couldn’t return because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, Casey-Wilhelm purchased their recipes and began manufacturing the products herself. Today, the store’s candles, soaps and body care products have become some of its strongest sellers.

Along the way, Casey-Wilhelm also became deeply invested in Greenport itself.

She helped organize the effort to revitalize the village skate park after seeing a heartbreaking social media post from a local child discouraged by its deteriorating condition. She has served on community committees, advocated for year-round commerce and consistently argued that business owners share responsibility for the village’s overall health.

“I’ll always do everything for Greenport, almost to my detriment,” she said.

That’s how she runs her own business. The Weathered Barn remains open during slow winter days even when sales don’t cover payroll because, Casey-Wilhelm believes, visitors shouldn’t encounter locked doors and conclude the village has shut down.

“If you want to be busy in the winter, then you need to suck it up and be open so that we all are,” she said.

She points to businesses like Noah’s, First and South and Clark’s Garden — fellow long-running establishments — as evidence that year-round commitment matters.

“The people who are open year-round are the people who have the longevity here,” she said.

Fifteen years after sitting on that empty floor wondering whether she’d made a terrible mistake, Casey-Wilhelm believes the answer lies not in any single product, marketing strategy or retail trend, but in authenticity.

“There is nothing in that store that I sell just for the sake of selling it,” she said. “I love every item that’s in there. Every artisan that’s in there. Everything that’s in there is authentic to me.”