Merchant of the Month: April 2026

We're proud to announce our Merchant of the Month for April: Sunflower Trading Company! Each month, the Ellicott City Partnership will highlight a local Main Street business. From a family business started in 1989 to a shop filled with globally sourced goods and custom-designed hats, Sunflower Trading Company is a true Main Street staple. With deep roots in Ellicott City and a passion for quality craftsmanship, Dan, Jean Luc and their team bring a one-of-a-kind shopping experience to the community. Read our full interview with Dan Durantye below:

Tell us about your business.

My name is Dan Durantaye, and I run the business (Sunflower Trading Company) with my brother Jean Luc Durantaye. My mother and father started the business in 1989, we had a store all the way down at the bottom of the hill, and then we moved up to where the Howard house is. I believe it must be like 15 years ago now, we bought this building and mainly used it as an office for the other part of our business, which is wholesale. We wholesale around the country, about 200 or so stores, and then we do an event business where we go to festivals, Irish horse races, any kind. We do about 100 a year.

So up the hill, we have three or four trailers that go to different parts of the US and sell hats and sweaters. We've had a store, it kind of went away for a while because we focused on other parts of the business. But now we do Thursday through Sunday, and from October to December we open every day for the Christmas season. Basically, what we buy for the business and what we create is our own line of hats. Most of the hats are our own design. We pick the colors, we pick the shapes, we pick the styles, the bands. Almost everything you see here is coming out of our mind in some way. It’s inspired by existing designs, you know, a fedora is a fedora, but you can make it look cooler. My brother and I, and sometimes my nephew, go on a buying trip in January. We've been to Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Greece, and Ecuador. We find a lot of cool different items, like traditional crafts, and we become a distributor and carry a lot of their products here. That's basically how the business operates right now, and it's evolved over the years. I mean, when we started it was mostly Australian goods.

What problems does your business solve for customers?

There’s a surplus of things to buy in this world, right? But it's hard to find certain things. If you want something nice that's competitively priced, not inexpensive, but if you want something that's good quality. You can't really go to a big box store and get a cap made in Germany. You can go to L.L. Bean and get a nice sweater, but it's not made in Ireland. It's not a traditional thing. So I think when people have their heritage involved, which, you know, everybody's proud to be where they're from. A lot of people have Irish heritage and European. When they come here, they can find something that's good quality, a fair price, and they can look good when they leave. And good for gifts at Christmas, that's where we do most of our business.

What makes your business unique?

What makes us unique is the combination of being a family business that's small, but with the expansion of what we've done, we have good buying power, so that we can grab and curate this really cool selection of items from all over the world. I don't think you see it that often. And when you come see a store like that, you remember it. Our customer service is great, but just the look the products are what really sell here. You see a nice sweater and think I just want it. It's so nice.

Who is your ideal customer?

That's a hard question, I appreciate all customers, and I want to have something for everyone. I want to have somebody who comes in, who's not necessarily ready for a cap like I'm wearing from Germany. Or maybe it's not their style. I have baseball caps. Or a lady who comes in and she's like “I don't want a baseball cap. I want a $400 coat, because I got the money. And it's a nice product, and I look good in it.” There it is. I got that too. I really enjoy talking to customers. It might be my favorite thing about the whole thing. My ideal customer is someone who wants to spend money with me and enjoys what they buy.

What has been your proudest milestone so far?

I'm so busy and focused on the next thing and growing that maybe I don't focus on a milestone. When my mom and dad gave us the business and they got to relax a bit more and didn’t have to be directly involved, my brother and I took over. That I was proud of.

What challenges have you overcome as a business owner?

Yeah, quite a few, I would say, the floods. The floods were hard; this whole building was wrecked. My house up the street was wrecked. Apartment that was wrecked five cars down the street. You just had to say, well, got to clean up. And we just cleaned up. We found tons of hats in the river; we had canoes and kayaks we were grabbing them out of the river. That was tough. As a business owner, you want to try and be smart with your money. Buy the right stuff, but sometimes you screw up. You buy something that doesn't really sell, that's difficult. The tariffs lately, because we're a big importer, so that’s been a huge obstacle. You just hope that the prices that you can swallow yourself are not going to hurt you so bad, and the prices that you have to pass onto the customer aren't going to hurt them so bad. You just want it to be good.

How do you support or engage with your community?

Wow, you know, I often think of myself as like, being from Ellicott City, through and through. I grew up literally right up the street. I would canoe the river down to the big river through the tunnels. I live, breathe, and went to school in Ellicott City. I used to hang out at the restaurants a lot more when I was younger. I was probably a much bigger part of the community when I was a little younger. Right now, we do travel a lot, so sometimes I do feel that pull or that maybe a slight regret that I'm not tight with a lot of the people around here. But I do know everybody, I’ll say hi. Everyone at Shoemaker Company is great. We've known them for a long time. I get my hair cut right across the street. I buy toys at the toy store for my son. And we go to the Phoenix and La Palapas. I'm on first name basis with the bartenders, so I'm here.

What products or services are you most excited about right now?

There’s a really cool line coming in this winter, that’s the bomber hats, which are, like the trapper hats that are really warm. They have the fur on the outside and you bring them down, so we designed beautiful line of those, but with nice tweeds, nice wools, patterns different colors than you've seen before. I just got back from Ireland and Scotland a month ago, and I have some amazing new sweaters. We already had really nice lady sweaters, and there's going to be more colors and different patterns, but I'm excited about the new men's sweaters coming in. We got a few as a test run, and they did extremely well, even in a season where it's not particularly busy. Yeah. So those are coming in. There’s a lot of stuff, new gloves coming in, and then the spring summer hats should be in this week. And for anybody who wants a new Gottman cap, which is probably our bestseller of everything, all the new spring summer stuff is switching into the store.

What's next for your business?

I’m really focused on the here and now, that's just kind of my personality. My brother, he's more the forward thinker. He does a lot of the ordering and he’s better with computers. I'm more the talkative person. But what would be next for the business is to focus on acquiring new customers. Then my ultimate goal is to buy a warehouse or compound of my own, so that I can have the proper room to do everything. It’s probably a little ways down.

What do you want customers to feel when they work with you?

I want them to feel satisfied, of course, that we have what they want. And maybe a fair sense of wonder. I see when people come in, they see this brick building there's barely a sign out front. When they walk inside, they're like, “Tony, you got to come in here,” like they're waving people in. So that's always a cool feeling. And then I just want them to be excited about the product we have, and appreciate the quality, and hopefully know that it takes a lot of work, but I'm happy to do it, and please spend money with us.