We were lucky to catch up with Kelsey Reust recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kelsey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

The Scenic Route is a path that is not the fastest way but that is beautiful.

I have a goal to visit all the National Parks, so I’m frequently trying to find the Scenic Route. When I’m at a park, I gravitate to the more remote and scenic places instead of the busier highlights or visitor’s centers.

One day when I was driving to my day job, I was daydreaming about a recent vacation and it just hit me: The Scenic Route may be a road, or it can be a way of life! It’s making the decision to surround yourself with what you find most beautiful and helps you slow down. Taking the Scenic Route causes you to lose track of time surrounded in what you love most.

This is the exact feeling I think my drawings bring out when you look at them. They are drawings of the hometowns, pets, vacations, and more that you love the most. It’s the things and places where you love to invest the most of your time. And you don’t see what I want you to see in the artwork, you see your own memories or experiences between the lines. The drawings leave room for you to interpret them your own way.

So, the Scenic Route Shop was named. And thankfully the domain, social media names, and emails were still available!

Kelsey, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Kelsey and I’m a dog loving, world traveling, book reading, pub food eating, God loving, outdoor adventuring, list making, always busy kind of person.

I have been an artist since I was old enough to hold a crayon. And I’m actually a licensed architect. You may see some of that precision in the lines of the pieces. Although so many years were spent drawing walls and floors for buildings, I’ve finally found what I truly love to draw in the Scenic Route Shop. I love being able to help you imagine your dream destinations, relive your favorite experiences, and cherish your furry loved ones through artwork personally chosen and displayed by you.

How did this begin? The first art pieces I made many years ago were for my husband to represent some of his favorite summer activities – Wrigley Field (go Cubs), daisies (he loves gardening), and an Indy Car (he’s an Indy 500 fan). Friends and family saw these on display in the living room and started asking for their own pieces, and eventually Scenic Route Shop was born in 2017. It began with a dozen pieces, but today you can find your piece among more than 300 designs with multiple sizes and options.

What are the things that I love most that are my Scenic Route? Traveling to the National Parks (41 of 62 so far!), visiting international cities (Havana, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, and London are a few of my favorites), swimming with turtles off the coast of Maui, Arizona hiking, and loving my trusty assistants Gary & Dave (the golden retrievers).

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Christmas of 2020 was a booming time for online businesses. It seemed everyone was looking for meaningful gifts, and after a horrible summer and fall, it was a relief to see a little success as winter was coming around the corner. My orders kept coming in and I was making daily trips to the post office to send out the anticipated Christmas presents and home décor that my customers were needing by December 25. It seemed like I didn’t even have to run ads because Etsy was overflowing with visitors.

Then I got one message from a customer politely asking where their package was, wondering when it was going to arrive. I began to comb through the tracking of the packages I had sent out over the last month. And my stomach dropped. There were more than 50 orders that hadn’t even been scanned in at the post office and they had been dropped off there WEEKS before. And others that had tracking but seemed to be sitting somewhere states away from where they should be. So it was time to get creative and ahead of the problems I could foresee coming.

I contacted every one of those customers that were still waiting on their packages. Then I create a personalized card for each of them to download and print out that had a picture of their particular piece so they could wrap that and give as the gift until their actual piece arrived. It was an incredible amount of work, correspondence, and planning to get all of those out within a day so my customers were updated on what was going on with the nation-wide shipping issues. And then I stared at my inbox waiting for the worst. I thought there would be demands for refunds, questions I couldn’t answer, and upset customers for sure.

And my incredible customers proved how amazing they are. Not one bad review and not one negative complaint. But I do think it was because I got ahead of the problem it and made sure they were taken care of instead of waiting on issues and hoping it may go away. Sometimes things are out of your hands, but you can still figure out a way to adjust to make sure the relationship is salvaged.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When Scenic Route Shop began, I had initial success on Etsy, but I wanted to be more connected to my community and start having my products sourced in local boutiques and retail shops. I built a sample display, had an entire hand-out with everything the retailer may want to know about me, and hit the streets finding stores that would want to carry my products. I got in 4 stores and was over the moon. I really ramped up production of my pieces and was working on the list for the next round of stores that I wanted to visit. Things were going great!

This was the first week of March, 2020.

Do you remember that fateful month? I had JUST installed my products in 4 stores by March 6th, and then everything crashed down. Stores I was in closed, limited hours, and struggled along. I made coloring books and other products that were in high demand for people that were stuck and home and bored. But it just wasn’t sustainable. Everything I had worked toward for so long ended what seemed overnight, and I had to pivot my business goals and focused back to online sales. It was a massive disappointment because I loved getting to know these wonderful shop owners and employees, but it just wasn’t meant to be at that time.

Each next step can be a pivot because we will never know what’s right around the corner and when we’ll have to dance around the next obstacle. But I do like to think about it as a dance rather than a roadblock. Sometimes it’s just time to learn some new steps.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ScenicRouteShop.com
• Instagram: @ScenicRouteShop
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScenicRouteShop/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelseyreust/
• Other: www.ScenicRouteShop.etsy.com

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