We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Karyn & Tanya Mielke. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Karyn & Tanya below.
Karyn & Tanya, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey for every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
We definitely learn by doing. We were open hand slapped across the face with the opportunity of our dreams and we swan dived, awkwardly, into a big ‘ol rainbow colored pool of uncertainty. Three years later, we are so, so, so much more knowledgeable about ourselves, running a business and creating thriving relationships within our vendor family and with our surrounding community. Although there has been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in that time, neither of us would wish to skip through the process. The learning has been (and still is) the fun part! We thought we were going to learn how to run a business (which we did and continue to do every day) but what we found was the importance of the relationships we have formed with all the creative, like minded folks who surround us, in the shop and in the wider community is really what feeds us. Dandelions & Rust has been home to 70+ artists and makers over the years. All of those wonderful people are the reason we are still here. We hope that we inspire them in the same way that they inspire us. One of the things we’ve learned is not to take ourselves too seriously. We make a point to keep our minds and hearts open for curating change within ourselves, our shop, and our thoughts for the future of D&R.
Karyn & Tanya, 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?
Hello! We are Karyn Mielke and Tanya Mielke. Besties, crafters, and boxed wine connoisseurs for almost TWENTY YEARS. (Related by marriage for ten of those years). We have been sharing and honing our common interests all the while. One day we realized we had amassed quite a collection of homemade and collected goodies, so we decided to try our hand at one to the local maker spaces…and then another…and then another (with some babies and breaks mixed in there), and we loved having the creative outlet! Fast forward 7 years or so, and we were presented with the opportunity to become one of those maker spaces that we had loved being a part of over the years. So…in May of 2019, brick and mortar Dandelions & Rust was born in “The Big White House” at 1220 S College Ave. We opened our doors with about 10 vendors (most of whom we inherited from the previous lease owner) in a pretty sparsely filled space. It was amazing, exhausting, exciting, and back breaking work. We loved every second of it. It took a while, but we grew to around 35 local makers and collected quite a few neighborhood followers through our outdoor Saturday markets. We felt pretty successful in that we got so much positive feedback from our customers and our vendors. It felt very much like a family atmosphere. Two and a half years later at the ending of our lease we found an amazing new space at 119 W. Oak St in Old Town. We are now a collection of over 50 local makers and collectors. The shop is filled with a curated selection of local art, jewelry, pottery, accessories, furniture, home décor, collectibles, natural body and home care, and more! It is an ever evolving space. Some people find what works and stick to it. We REALLY love change, so we strive to keep our regulars on their toes. We love hearing how different it is every time they come in. Although we provide our makers with individual “booth space,” we attempt to arrange the shop in such a way that there is an effortless flow about it. We are extremely proud of the shop, the local products we carry, and all the hard work and love we ALL have put into it. The thing that brings us the most pride, though, is that we are providing the opportunity, space, and support to our vendors (and they to us), many of them jumping into selling their wares for the first time. We, ourselves, are still VERY new at this… constantly learning, falling down, and getting back up again with the support of everybody involved. One of the aspects of this business that we both have been so surprised, and filled with joy and inspiration by, are all of the relationships we have formed with our community. This is a common theme any time we are given the opportunity to talk about our business. Yes…we sell really awesome stuff that you may or may not need…but what feeds us is you. The makers, collectors, shoppers, passers by, business owners, locals, tourists, moms, dads, etc. We have loved getting to know alla ya’ll!! Please keep coming in. Let us know how you are doing, and we will do the same. We are all in this together:-)
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Well…the world is a funny place right now. I think all business owners, big and small, are struggling in one way or another. Over the last couple of years we have heard lots of kudos from our friends, family, and customers for being able to make it through Covid as a couple of newbies trying their hand at running a small business. We opened in May of 2019 and felt like we were just getting into our groove when we faced the mandatory shut down only ten months later. It was terrifying. I think we worked harder while our doors were closed than we had ever or have ever worked since. We probably have Covid to thank for our social media presence. Our goal was just to keep our name out there. We didn’t want anybody to forget about us AND we really needed our vendors to stick with us or we surely wouldn’t have made it. Every day we tried to figure out what the hell we were supposed to be doing. We photographed items from each vendor and posted them on our Instagram, hoping our handful of new followers would either see something they couldn’t live without, or just have mercy on us! We shipped and we did local deliveries and pickups. We hustled like we had never hustled before. It was great! Terrifying, but great. And we made it!! We even grew enough to move into a bigger space in Old Town. Owning a small business is definitely a labor of love.
Is there a mission driving your creative journey?
Our goal is multifaceted. On the surface, we are a retail space that is host to over 50 local makers, artists and collectors. We sell really cool stuff, made by really cool people. But we want to provide more than just a fun shopping experience. If we can create a space for learning, laughing and growing, we would be pretty stoked. And it’s coming! We are working toward hosting classes and workshops on site by our own vendors and other creatives from the community. The mission is to make lasting connections. We have loved getting to know our community better and are really excited to find out what the future of D&R looks like.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dandelionsandrust.com
- Instagram: @dandelionsrust
- Facebook: @dandelionsrust