We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shana Wanco a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Shana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Towards the end of college I knew that I wanted to work with letterpress. I wanted to find a job anywhere that would offer me the chance to learn the art form & also gave me an insight into the wedding stationery world. After getting my first job & knowing that particular company was not the long term path for me, I decided to do it on my own. It was never my intention to work for myself one day, but with the encouragement of my parents, close friends & my husband I felt more confident to purchase Iris (my letterpress) & do this thing! My letterpress is from the 1920’s & I named her Iris after my grandfather. An iris was his favorite flower & he was very influential in my art journey. He was a painter, a wood worker & a stain glass maker.
I knew I wanted to elevate wedding stationery & use letterpress as a tool to create really fun experiences. I’m also an artist, so my work is very art forward. Wedding stationery at the time didn’t have a lot of personality to it. It seemed like the couple was getting lost in the process & I decided that my onboarding & inspiration gathering process would come exclusively from the couple & their story. The time spent with the couple’s I work with is long & drawn out, mostly because we have multiple meetings to get to know one another, gather thoughts & ideas, mood board & sketch through different stages & finally create the artwork for the suite. Everything that isn’t an antique resource is created by hand by me. I hand paint & hand illustrate many elements of the wedding suite so that the end result isn’t simply a piece of paper, but it’s a work of art that whole heartedly reflects the couple & their journey. I also don’t shy away from color & playing around with new-to-me art styles, so my work stays really fun & exciting. Each couple is different from the next & I really enjoy getting to explore new possibilities & ideas with each couple I serve.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into letterpress because a college professor had a letterpress studio & let me print my business cards on his table top press. Those business cards were AWFUL, but I still have a few squirreled away in my studio somewhere. The clear letterpress path for me was through wedding stationery, so I sought out work opportunities that had both wedding stationery & letterpress. Eventually, I made it all up on my own! When people ask what I do, it’s kind of a long winded answer because I dabble in lots of things. Mainly, I’m a wedding stationer & artist. I also create brand identities for small businesses & create a few products. My main goal for 2023 is to license my artwork because I would love to see my creations out in the world for everyone to enjoy, not just my wedding couple’s.
I don’t know if I necessarily solve a problem for my couples. I guess their problem would be they need wedding stationery & aren’t willing to settle for bland. If that’s the problem, I definitely solve it. The couple’s that work with me know that they want to create an experience for their guests, they highly appreciate stationery, they are art forward, & they want to put a lot of trust in their wedding vendors. They also know what they want. It’s rare that a client comes to me without a vision. It’s so helpful when they do because it makes it fun to take what they’ve gathered & turn it into stationery. It’s like magic for them when they see it all come together, & it’s magic to me to see their faces when they realize their story has been translated perfectly using paper. That’s why the Proposal Meeting & Design Meeting are my favorite interactions with a client. In the Proposal Meeting they get to see a comprehensive mood board & listen to me outline all the ideas I have. In the Design Meeting, I finally show them the mock up of their suite. It’s a really fun experience!
This sounds cliche, but I’m really proud of all the work I get to create. While wedding stationery makes me really excited & lights up my creative brain, small business branding is some of the work I’m most proudest of. It’s extremely fulfilling to drive around town & see a logo on the side of a building, walk into the coffee shop you helped get off the ground, order pizza from the menu you designed, etc. Seeing these businesses flourish & know that you helped them is really rewarding.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
People have often told me how great I am on Instagram. I think I spend too much time there, but it is also beneficial for me. It’s hard to think back to when I first started by business & how social media played a role in it, but I can speak on how it’s helping me now. When people ask me how I do social media so well, I usually respond with “just be yourself.” I’ve always been pretty open & honest on social media. Maybe it’s a good or a bad thing, I don’t know, but I tend to share lots of my life on there. I am an avid thrifter & estate sale shopper, so I really enjoy sharing my finds & what I turn them into. For example, I just shared yesterday a dress I’m making from vintage curtains I found at an estate sale. People love to see how I’m creative outside of work & gets conversations going by sharing interesting aspects of my life. I think if I were to focus on selling, selling, selling it would hurt my chances at genuine connections. If I can take 5 seconds on Instagram to share my struggle with anxiety, my thrift finds, my sketchbook pages & someone can relate & begin a conversation with me, then it’s a win.
When it comes to gaining clients through social media, I’ve booked clients because a stationery friend has shared my work or a connection was made in the DMs with planner. I think fostering relationships with people in your industry is crucial to finding good work. Instagram is the best place for me to see a glimpse into someone else’s life on a daily basis & relate to them. Once a personal relationship is formed, professional ones can begin.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I don’t think it comes as a surprise that the pandemic was hard. 2020 was actually my best year financially, but 2021 & most of 2022 was pretty hard due to the pandemic aftershocks. In the beginning of 2021 I didn’t have much income or many clients, so instead of turning to my typical scarcity mindset, I decided to take a mini sabbatical. I created 3 days out of the week & worked on clients the other 2. I created for fun, painted my front door, make some new products & began working with a business coach. I also launched a mood board course called Mood Board Masterclass that ended up carrying me through most of the year while weddings were slow. Through the end of 2021 & into 2022, sharing my artwork outside of wedding stationery became less scary & more inviting. I loved sharing my random sketchbook pages & sketching on my travels. The work I shared became even more about being in the moment & less of always trying to find the next client. I began putting into the universe that my next phase of the business would be art licensing. A licensing opportunity did fall into my lap in May of 2022, but didn’t pan out. While it was a huge bummer to not have my first deal, it showed me that this next phase was a definite possibility & something I can strive for.
The biggest pivot for me in business came at the exact same time as the above. As someone that lives in the southeast of the United States, I decided it was finally time to make it known I will not take on any more weddings or events hosted on plantations or former plantation land. For some parts of the country, this isn’t a big move, but down here, it’s huge. It’s kind of mind blowing when you look into just how many plantations are in South Carolina alone & how many hide their past. With that came the other big pivot of increasing my pricing significantly. I decided I would go from taking 12 wedding clients a year to taking 6 at 5x the price it was before. It was a huge leap & I think contributed to why 2021 was slow; it was like I was starting the business over. I had to market myself differently, I also rebranded at the same time & I decided to forego in-house letterpress. I still have my 1920’s press & print on it every now & then, but for the most part, I outsource all printing. A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when I decided to do that. It’s been the best decision I’ve made. The work I’m creating is exponentially more intense, intricate, exciting, colorful & creative now that I can take out a part of the process that was holding me back. I realized that I didn’t find joy in letterpress printing & needed to let it go. I now work with a trusted friend in the industry that prints my work & a couple other printers that are extremely talented.
Contact Info:
- Website: [email protected]
- Instagram: @irisandmariepress
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/irisandmariepress
- Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/irisandmarie/
Image Credits
Photo of Shana Wanco taken by Josie Derrick. Photo of woman in blue dress holding ginger jar save the date is by Alicia King.