Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amy and Memory Baker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Amy and Memory, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

We opened our shop in 2020 when the rest of the world was shutting down. We sold our home in another town and packed up our belongings and fur-babies and moved 4 hours away to pursue our dream. We knew we were taking a huge risk opening the shop during the pandemic, but we were 100% devoted to our dream and did not want to wait any longer to make it happen.

It was very stressful to be in a new city and open a new business. You have to not only settle into your new life on a personal level, but also navigate the ins and outs of opening a store.

In the end it all turned out ok. We have a wonderful community now that makes it all worth it. We love being on the coast and sharing our love of cross stitch with our locals and others that visit our area.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are Amy and Memory Baker and we love Cross stitch! With a combined total of over 25 years of stitching experience for fun, in 2018 we decided to give it a go at designing. We are excited to increase are online presence by offering our charts and accessories via our website and now in our brick and mortar shop in Myrtle Beach, SC.

We met in 2016 when Amy moved to the Charlotte area for work. We quickly realized we just HAD to be together forever and were married later that following year; on Folly Beach in South Carolina. Cross stitch was a part of daily life and a hobby we enjoyed doing together.

Barefoot Needleart was born in 2018 when we were searching for a pattern to fit inside a frame. Amy has a background in graphic design so she went right to work designing a cute little owl for our kitchen. From there, the ideas just started to flow. We incorporated our love of travel and the beach into many of our designs.

Barefoot Needleart has continued to grow in the past few years and we opened our brick and mortar in 2021. Barefoot Needleart is housed in Surfside Beach, SC and offers our designs and as well as all your other favorite cross stitch designers and accessories. While Amy will continue to design periodically, we have shifted our focus to creating a stitching nook in our little corner of paradise!

In our spare time, we visit the beach (we call it yard work) and get bossed around by our fur/feather babies.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social Media presence is a huge part of our business. It is almost a full time job in itself. We started with ETSY and Facebook and built an online presence first so when we opened our shop we already had a bit of brand recognition. We joined all the facebook groups we could that were related to stitching and started to spend a lot of time watching to see what people were asking for and talking about. We utilize a social media business suite to allow us to schedule posts out for a week at a time so it is not a chore we have to manage daily. We try to keep our post short and mainly focus on new items coming in our events coming up. We also depend on our friends and family a good deal to let us know when they see a mention of us or our shop. That helps us be responsive and active in places and on posts that we may have missed.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

In an internet-driven world I think people are very quick to jump to online ordering from large online retailers. We need shoppers to support brick and mortar shops or we will cease to be. Ordering from our website keeps our doors open!

Contact Info:

• Website: barefootneedleart.com
• Facebook: barefoot needleart