I started Dresslikeapirate.com in 1998 as an E-bay Business called Hal’s Since 2001, selling vintage clothing and housewares, which included lots of Medieval feast gear or Pirate flavored items from my time dating a guy in the SCA, knowing that there was a market. ( I was also a washerwoman at Pleasure Faire back in the 70’s. ) What started as a hobby during my time as an Office Manager for a website development company became a full time business when the dot com bubble burst and the company had to close.
With a special needs child getting off the schoolbus in the middle of the afternoon, it was the perfect excuse to build a business from home, and extend to ready made clothing . After receiving the first 75 pirate shirts and selling them out in 3 weeks, the very last shirt going Express Mail, I was told by the post office clerk “Did you know that September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day?” Well, don’t you know I rushed home, looked it up, found out the Pirate Guys were right down the road in Albany, Oregon, and exclaimed “You guys will be my friends for life!” and named the new venture Dresslikeapirate.com. To this day, the Pirate Guys are my friends, my son has played with Chumbucket’s son, and I dressed his wife for the Pirate episode of Wife Swap.
The website went live in 2003 and grew from just a dozen or so items of clothing to over 500 items at it’s peak, and it was my full time career for over 21 years. Then Covid hit. No events=no sales. I had to move, downsize, then move and downsize again. Now my focus is on just the clothing lines that I have produced under the dresslikeapirate.com label, and have closed-out all resale accessories. Looking back at this update, now that it’s been 3 years, it was naive to think it would be back to full inventory in a year. It will take probably another year or more to completely fill in all the colors and sizes to full stock. Contact me here: the contact page if you have any questions.
Faire winds and full sails!
Captain Machete Betty, aka Shayna Vest
