Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kelly and Shannon Gustafson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kelly and Shannon, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
The biggest risk we have taken was when we showed for the first time at NYNOW in February 2020. (Amazing timing right?) At that time we had just launched k.Patricia Designs and we immediately jumped right into the tradeshow world without any preparation or knowledge on how to properly operate a booth. We assumed we would figure it all out along the way and we would be swimming in wholesale orders. Unfortunately, Covid was the only discussion at the show and we ended up with a total of three orders. Only one of them fell through. Kelly (daughter and head designer) was truly devastated and swore she would never show at a tradeshow ever again. Shannon (mother and marketing wiz) however kept k.Patricia afloat and pushed us to keep trying tradeshows in the future. Fast forward to the summer of 2021 and NYNOW was open again. We were both nervous to show again, but thought we would give it another chance and see what happens. To our surprise we did really well! We made new connections with customers, met very cool stationery brands and had orders in the double digits (all went through!) Without the risk of trying and putting our stationery out for the world to see, we would not be where we are today.
It is so easy to give up entirely after failing because you do not have to face the pain or embarrassment. Our first tradeshow failure was a blessing in disguise as it allowed us to pivot our business and how we would handle our next tradeshow. It was and still is a learning process for us, but we are happier with where k.Patricia is now and where it’s heading.
Showing at NYNOW in 2020 as tradeshow beginners was what actually catapulted us towards our current success and our drive to keep growing k.Patricia. We are extremely grateful for all the failures, risks and success that we have experienced so far. This past August we just completed our fifth tradeshow at NYNOW and we are starting to plan showing at the Atlanta Market in January 2024!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
k.Patricia Designs is a mother daughter stationery brand based in Massachusetts. It first started when Kelly moved to Tokyo in 2018 to start a new life adventure. While there, she taught herself to watercolor in her free time. After showing Shannon the designs, we thought it would be a fun idea to print a small batch of Christmas greeting cards and sell them in Shannon’s stationery store. After seeing the positive feedback, we decided to turn this into our own small business! We officially launched in 2020 with a small batch of greeting cards and a big dream. Over the past few years of learning from our mistakes, finding our niche and never giving up, we have grown our small business that is now sold in 300+ stores. Our product line has expanded into wrapping paper (our #1 seller), stickers, notepads, tea towels, coasters and much more. Our main goal is to spread happiness, so we hope our designs leave you with the biggest smile!
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
We joke all the time that k.Patricia would not be where it is today without each other. Kelly is the creative behind all of our stationery products while Shannon is the marketing expert. Over the past few years Shannon has gathered a master list of customer names, emails and their shops. She is always on top of sending out marketing emails every week which we have noticed is how we gain wholesale orders. Shannon loves doing the marketing because this is her creative outlet and she loves connecting with our customers! We also do the old school marketing technique of mailing out sample packages to particular customers so they can touch and see our products. We also noticed this is a successful strategy for us for growing our clientele and wholesale orders.
Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?
Along with selling our stationery products on our retail website and our wholesale websites, we also offer custom artwork. We offer wedding invitations and custom stationery. We have also dipped our toes with licensing our artwork which is another stream of income for our brand that we hope to get more involved in. Our top custom orders are our custom pet portraits. We both own dogs and love anything dog related! Kelly digitally draws each pet portrait on Procreate and they are typically printed on 8×10″ art prints. They are simple, but beautifully detailed. What makes our pet portraits special is we donate 5% of each order to Toka’s Friends which is a non profit organization that trains service dogs for military veterans who suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and other difficulties. As this is a source of income for us, we are also contributing to a non profit that is very important to our entire family.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kpatricia.com/
- Instagram: @kpatriciadesigns
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kpatriciadesigns
- Twitter: @kpatriciadesig1
- TikTok: @kpatriciadesigns
Image Credits
All photos taken by us