It’s hard to pick just one cool item at One For All Gifts, a two-story store staged with a variety of curated goodies. It’s one of the most unique shops on the North Fork and has a story unlike any other in the area: Not only is it filled with one-of-a-kind handmade crafts and products, all with a story to tell, but each item is made by neurodiverse adults and children.
Neurodivergence is a broad term that encompasses a multitude of challenges — among the issues that fall under its umbrella are autism, dyslexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Down syndrome, bipolar disorder, and misophonia — and, as One For All Gifts owners Theresa DeMarco and her son, Sean, would add, strengths.
The items they curate for their store, tucked inside Feather Hill Village in Southold, all tell a story about their creators — but the most fascinating story is, without a doubt, that of its owners.
Pioneering, Positive Poster Child
“For a lot of parents of young adults with different abilities, what do you do after school is over?” Theresa says. School provides a structure and foundation that is invaluable to neurodiverse kids and, once it’s over, it can be hard for them to adapt to the freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood.
The buoyant and enthusiastic Sean, 26, has autism, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says affects one in every 100 adults in the United States. According to Autism Speaks, the largest nonprofit autism awareness and advocacy group in the United States, only 20% of adults with disabilities, including autism, are employed.
It’s remarkable, then, that Sean is running his own successful business on the East End. When One For All Gifts first opened, entrepreneurship for those with different abilities was a nascent idea, says Theresa.
After graduating from Garden City High School and moving to the family’s second home in Mattituck full-time, Sean and Theresa initially had the idea to frame his massive collection of movie posters and sell them at fairs and conventions, which was great in concept but proved to be challenging to execute.
“I always loved movies,” says Sean. “Growing up, I almost had a Wikipedia-like knowledge of all the lines and scenes. We started out selling posters but I didn’t enjoy it at all.”
Going to loud, busy conventions, fairs and large-scale venues with his movie-poster collection was hard for him. “Speaking with strangers really caused Sean a lot of anxiety,” Theresa says. “People don’t realize how impairing that can be. That was really the impetus. How do I take his love of movies and help with a bit of his social challenges? Because when he’s talking about movies, he knows everything.”
But when COVID hit in 2020 and all the poster-selling opportunities dried up, the mother-and-son pair had an idea that changed both their lives.
“I said to myself, is there any other person like me that has, like, an interest or that sells [something unique]? So we had this idea of reaching out to other people on the spectrum that have [businesses], and I thought, ‘One for all!’” Sean exclaims. A huge fan of anime and manga, Sean found inspiration in one of his favorite manga, “My Hero Academia,” in which the phrase “One for All” affords a special, magical power that helps the story’s hero save the day. The name stuck and the store was born.
Learning Curves
As it turned out, Sean and Theresa had a great example of a successful business run by a father and neurodivergent son near their own backyard.
John’s Crazy Socks is a Farmingdale-based business run by Mark Cronin and his son, John, who has Down syndrome. A highly successful e-commerce site that sells colorful and fun socks with all sorts of patterns and themes, Sean got to meet with Mark and John to see how they ran their business as they developed One For All Gifts. Today, the socks are part of One For All’s inventory.
To fill their store, Theresa cold-called about 30 businesses around the country, all run by neurodiverse people, and 12 businesses initially agreed to sell their products wholesale to the DeMarcos for the new shop, which opened in October 2020.
So, along with John’s Crazy Socks, One For All is a bit of a trailblazer.
“It’s evolving,” Sean says. “It’s very special.”
Theresa handles much of the curation and selection of the items on display at One For All Gifts, which now offers products from more than 70 businesses, while Sean often works the back end, including managing the website. Since opening the store, Theresa says, her son has come a long way toward finding strategies to cope with his anxiety and bolster his social skills.
Owning and operating a business has been an evolving learning experience for Sean, but through his own work and with the help of his business-partner mom, he’s overcome hurdles both big and small.
“I’ve learned so much,” says Sean, who participated in a variety of programs for people with autism during and after high school that helped him learn vital skills, like cooking, cleaning and traveling. But the store has provided its own unique, real-world learning experiences for the 26-year-old.
“It’s very difficult to describe what ‘browsing’ is until you observe it,” Theresa says. “He used to walk up to people in the store and say, ‘You’ve been looking at that thing for five minutes; are you going to get it?’”
Today, Sean understands that browsing is part of the shopping experience. He’s also become more adept at speaking to strangers, especially when they share a common interest, and can geek out with them over mutually appreciated movies or video games. And when he’s out and about, he’s now able to promote One For All by telling folks about the store when, for example, he walks to nearby Michelangelo’s to get pizza.
“I’ve perfected the whole browsing thing,” Sean says. Another piece he’s added to his skillset: negotiating and debating different aspects of the business that he and his mom might not readily agree upon.
“We were chit-chatting the other day, and I said, ‘You know, if you ever go work somewhere else, a boss isn’t going to like [what you said].’ He responded, ‘You’re not the boss, we’re co-owners!’” Theresa recalls with a laugh.
Looking to the Future
With the skills and tools he’s acquired, Sean plans to continue running the business once it’s time for his mom to retire.
“I would like to take over the store,” he says. “Hopefully I’ll get married and have kids and my wife and I could take over. That’s what I see.”
But for now, Sean loves his job. In his free time, he likes to play Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer and still enjoys watching — and getting inspired by — the movies that spawned his business idea to begin with.
In the short-term, Theresa plans to continue to expand the store’s offerings and a special art event the store hosts, a maker’s market they’ve held for neurodiverse artists and creators. The last one was held in October at Hallockville Museum Farm.
“We’d like to partner a little bit more with the community,” she says.
Theresa considers Sean an ambassador for what neurodiverse adults can do, and she takes special joy in watching her son home in on other neurodiverse folks who come to the store.
“He makes people feel comfortable; he gives them dignified attention,” Theresa says. “A lot of parents with younger kids look to him and are like, ‘OK! There’s a little hope, a little light.’”
