We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Karen Parker Moeller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Karen below.
Alright, Karen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights 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?
Two Big Risks Two years after COVID destroyed our small graphic design agency, my husband and I pointed our car north and drove to the scenic tourist towns of northern Michigan. Driving through snow and ice in the dead of winter was adventure enough, but our purpose was to see if we could launch a new business—using my illustration skills applied to products.
We had no experience in this type of business, so it was a total unknown. We had a small portfolio of four art prints, 12 notecard designs and a handful of stickers. Was it enough? How would the art be received? Would there be a market for this? Would my ego withstand the rejection I was convinced was coming?
In summer months these quaint little towns are teeming with visitors. Not so much in sub-zero temperatures and risky driving conditions. We didn’t foresee that many tourism businesses were closed in January—shop owners wisely wintering in Florida. We had no preset appointments. Walking in cold, we would approach whoever was working and ask “would you like to see some art and see if it would be a good fit for your store?”
When I think about this risky time of trying to launch a new business for which we had no knowledge, I’m reminded of a trip we made to the West Coast in 1992. We were touristing, visiting shops in Sausilito, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Fransisco. Walking in to a Laurel Burch store I stared in wonder. Laurel Burch was the artist who did cloisonne cat jewelry (I had one of her pins) and this store was full of her artwork applied to every imaginable product: mugs, bags, pillows, blankets, scarves, apparel. “This is my dream,” I said to myself. “One day I would like to see my art applied to products.”
Earlier that year, I had left my job as a senior in-house graphic designer for a Fortune 500 corporation to stay home and take care of our new born baby boy. At that time, the industry was making a transition from “camera-ready art” —which was put together with large white boards called keylines, hand held ruler pens, and gallies of type cut and pasted into postition by hand—to digital art produced on a computer and delivered to commercial printers on CD disks. I was very proficient at the former, but knew nothing about computers.
After a having a second baby, we waited until the youngest was in school and in 1998, my husband and I purchased a Macintosh computer and started a business together. I was the creative, he was the business side. We joked that he was the left brain and I was the right brain and together we had one complete brain!
I had no knowledge of computers and had to call the Mac store to ask how to turn the computer on. We invested in a suite of graphic design software by Adobe and I was mostly self-taught. Having deep knowledge of printing technology helped me get moving very quickly once I understood the interface.
It was such a joy to work with my husband, business partner and best friend and have the opportunity to work out of our home. As an introvert and a homebody, this lifestyle suited me just fine. We were in charge of our own schedules and could participate in our children’s activities, make daytime appointments and go to work in our jammies at 11:00 at night if need be. Our business grew and after two decades we were humming along, never once paying for advertising or promotion. All of our clients came by word of mouth. We live in a town with a major research university and had many interesting clients and projects over the course of those years.
In 2020, that business came to a screeching halt when the COVID crisis hit. Our largest client was the university health care system which put a spending freeze on all outside contracts, so our current university projects died on the spot. We thought everything would return to normal once the “two-weeks-to-flatten-the-curve” time was up. A year later, only a trickle of that business came back. Our clients had found resources within their departments to get their work done. And many of our clients were furloughed, left their positions, or moved on to other jobs. We never recovered from that loss of business.
Our current business, 620 Deep, LLC is our “COVID pivot.” The dream of applying art to products 30 years after walking into Laurel Burch’s store has become a reality. Just two years after that first trip north, we are in over 200 stores across Michigan. In November we reached out to a national audience and thus far our products are represented in eleven states. We are moving forward at a good pace using old-fashioned face-to-face contact with clients. This year we hope to fully develop online tools to reach even wider audiences. It’s been a fun ride so far and we are very grateful.
Karen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am an award-winning illustrator, graphic designer and fine artist. From early childhood I knew I would someday be an artist. I graduated from the University of Michigan School of Art & Design, and my early career encompassed various creative roles at a variety of graphic design studios working my way up to Senior Designer. Over the years, awards began to accumulate.
In 2002 my husband, Chas and I, launched our own boutique design firm, Karen Moeller Design, delivering a full range of design services (illustration, graphic design and fine art) to a wide array of institutional, corporate and non-profit clients. To see our work visit moedesign.com
In 2013-2015, I entered ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan and in 2014 made it into the Top 100, for a eight-foot by five-foot oil painting named “KaBoom.” This painting is now hanging in the lobby of Trinity Health Hospital in Ann Arbor. https://moedesign.com/portfolio-items/kaboom/?portfolioCats=76
In 2020 we launched 620 Deep, LLC with an eye toward the tourism market. In 2021, the Peninsula Paradise series made its debut in Michigan and it was so well received that my playful designs were rolled out to a national audience in November of 2023. We expect 2024 to be yet another year of tremendous growth.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
As I mentioned in my first essay, this work is a fulfillment of a dream thirty years in the making, so the current mission is to successfully make a living off of what we build. We hope to build a legacy that can outlive us, passing on a healthy art business to our children. But the primary goal is to remind people of innocence and joy in simple things: life, love, humor. We want to bring a smile to the face of our customers and give them a moment of reprieve during hard times.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In both our businesses there was risk and fear of the unknown—would success be forthcoming or elusive? With a little bit of talent, we mixed in our faith in God, humility to learn from our mistakes, and a strong work ethic, we were able to build our graphic design business over the course of 20-plus years, without having to advertise or self-promote. Our customers came through word of mouth referrals. The second business which is described in detail within the first essay, was an even greater risk because we had no background at all in wholesale. We walked into businesses cold and would talk with whoever would give us a minute of their time. We listened carefully to what retailers told us and fine tuned our product lines accordingly. We worked harder than before. We prayed a lot and asked for direction. We plunged in and began to swim. Our entire experience demonstrates resilience and determination.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://620deep.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenparkermoeller/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenParkerMoeller
Image Credits
Karen Parker Moeller