We recently connected with Kristina Burkey and have shared our conversation below.

Kristina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have always wanted to have a stationery shop, for as long as I can remember. At the time there were almost no paper shops in Massachusetts and I wanted a shop that was ONLY paper and stationery. I knew there was a need and a want for one and I wanted to be the one to provide it.
I also wanted it to be full of fun and colorful things and maybe a little bit edgy things; things people didn’t see at Hallmark or Target or any other of the gift shops around. I wanted to be different. I wanted to bring people small, handmade brands they had never seen and show them that stationery and paper is not only NOT dead but alive, well and being given a new breath of life from new designers.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I currently own Calliope Paperie in Natick, MA and I specialize in PAPER. I have about 450 different cards for all occasions on my card wall, a huge selection of notebooks and notepads, pens and pencils, washi tape, stickers, almost everything you can think of, I have it, and I have a couple options of it.

I’ve been into paper and stickers since about birth…other kids had lemonade stands and I have a roadside sticker stand. And when my mom sent me to the store for milk I can home with milk, cards, and no change to give back.

The road that led me to where I am now is long and winding with lots of pit-stops but basically I started by trying to make my own products (cards, party invitations, etc) and selling at maker markets around Boston but I just didn’t have the heart or really the confidence for making my own work. I started adding other small stationery brands to my offerings and in June of 2014 I opened my first online store.
I continued to go to the markets with a mobile version of my online shop, I kept all my products in plastic crates in my house and I really plugged away on Instagram, all while I still had a full-time office job.

The turning point came when I did my first real long-term pop-up. I used all my vacation time and opened a small one-week pop-up in Cambridge, MA and it was amazing!

With barely any notice or advertising, people came to shop and it was a great window into what it might be like to have my own location. After that, opening a stationery shop was all I could think about.
I found a tiny spot just outside Natick Center in Massachusetts in January 2016 and signed the lease in April. I spent the next months painting, ripping out carpet, more painting, replacing the floors and buying product. My last day at the office was June 3rd 2016 and my grand opening was the following Saturday, June 11th, 2016.

Right up until I was about to open I even had a different name but in a twist of fate, someone I knew was changing their brand name to be named after her grandmothers and so I decided to call my shop Calliope, after my Greek grandmother.

I have been in Natick Center now almost SEVEN YEARS and for the last year in a new location still in Natick Center but much bigger and am so happy to be there. In the past couple years I have started getting back into making my own products again as well. I started with just a couple stickers and now I have notepads, stickers, washi tape, pens and pencils and a wholesale arm of my business selling these things to other stationery shops!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After only 10 months of being open, in March of 2017 a car crashed into my shop.

My location was on a corner and corner spots are very susceptible to this happening and it happened to me. Luckily it was on a day where I was closed and no one was hurt but the car slammed into my front window and basically tore the front off my shop.

It was awful. I wasn’t even nearby when it happened so by the time I got there they were getting ready to board it up, having already taken the car away and swept up a lot of debris (which included some of my damaged product…) I didn’t really know what to do or how to process what I was looking at. I think a lot of people would just figure this was the end of a very short-lived dream but there was no way I was giving up that easy.

It seemed like in no time at all the town of Natick sprang into action. A GoFundMe was set up for me and a local business held a fundraiser for me and then a local art studio offered me pop-up space until they could repair my shop. Actually the next day after the crash I went to buy paint and I painted a huge mural on my board-up and I think that helped me heal a little. People would drive by and say hi and offer help and I was visible. I wasn’t going anywhere.

The next July I was able to get back into my repaired storefront and I reopened in August. It felt like it took FOREVER for it to be done and this is the first year actually the day of the crash passed and I didn’t really think about it.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Well I think you already know the answer to this one; clearly everyone was finding themselves yelling PIVOT in 2020.

I actually was already online when I had to close so I was ahead of the game there but I went from only a few online orders a week to several a DAY. I used to pack order at a small table in my basement and I had so many, I moved the table upstairs.

I started doing care packages for people where they’d message me some details about a person and I would pick out some things and send them a picture. They’d approve it and I would send them an invoice, pack it up and ship it straight to their friend. It was a little personal shopping too and everyone was super into it.

I still do it today!

I think the real pivot came actually when I had to reopen because I had to find a place for all the product I had and be able to still do all my order packing upstairs. It was overwhelming. I had been closed for so long my store was more like a warehouse. Nothing was merchandised. I had to close my online store for a week to get everything properly inventoried to get ready to open the door after 18 months of being closed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://calliopepaperie.com/
• Instagram: @calliopepaperie
• Facebook: /calliopepaperie
• Linkedin: NA
• Twitter: NA
• Youtube: NA
• Yelp: NA

Image Credits
“Card Wall”, “Washi Tape”, “Mural and Pens” “KB at Front” and my headshot are all Stephanie Rita Photography. The rest are my photos.