Welcome to Whereabouts!
Hooray! Oh my goodness, I'm SO excited you're here! Welcome to Whereabouts!
I started my business, originally named Fiber and Gloss way back in 2016. As a high school art teacher, I really started to feel like I was losing that part of myself I always knew - the person who was always creating just for the sake of creating. I got so caught up in landing the dream job and watching my students make beautiful works of art all day everyday. While it was wonderful and exactly what I always dreamt of (I've known I'd be an art teacher for forever!), I realized I just couldn't give up that part of myself. I needed to find her again for my own sanity.
I set out to create an Etsy shop in hopes of selling a few miscellaneous things. I didn't have a specific vision in mind of what exactly I wanted to create - I just knew with every fiber of my being that I needed to CREATE for myself again! I don't like to limit myself, and I've never been one to box myself in to making only one type of thing, so I called it Fiber and Gloss knowing I wanted to focus on my two favorite things at the time - painting and crochet. I made countless scarves and all kinds of simple acrylic paintings. I threw them up on Etsy hoping for the best, and I slowly watched the sales trickle in - it was unbelievable! Late in 2017, I stumbled upon a super fancy calligraphy style hand drawn map for a small town and immediately thought, huh, I wonder how I could create a map of Cleveland. After all, that was the beginning of the days of Cleveland-er's being obsessed with buying, wearing, and hanging art that was everything Cleveland!
So I took that idea, ran with it, and made my own map of Cleveland. That holiday season, when I first debuted prints of it, it sold like crazy! That map print was the hot ticket item at every in person event I did that season - I completely under estimated how many people would love a map of Cleveland just as much as I did! It didn't take me long to wonder - what about a map of this place? Oh, and this one? Oh what about this city? I knew I was on to something!
Fast forward to the pandemic, my map prints were by far my top seller. I had started to amass quite a collection of designs, small shops across the country were purchasing them to sell in their own brick and mortar locations, and I had a to do list of 200+ locations to make maps for. It was abundantly clear that the map prints were my real winner here, and I knew it was time to think about a rebrand - a brand that fully captured what my focus now was and truly celebrated everything map prints!
I knew I needed to change the name for a multitude of reasons, but I also knew I never wanted to force anything. I wanted to stumble upon the name organically and sit with it long enough to know it was the right decision. Nothing came to me for the longest time, or at least nothing that I was in love with. One day I decided it was time to get serious, so I spent about an hour googling every possible word or phrase even remotely related to maps, souvenirs, etc. I filled every square inch of a piece of paper with each word I found remotely interesting. Then I read the word whereabouts on my screen. That was it. I saw it, I read it, and I decided nothing else would measure up to it.
So now, here I am, welcoming you to Whereabouts! I promise it will be the very same map print designs you've already fallen in love with and welcomed in to your homes and those of your loved ones, but it'll be even better! I have some seriously BIG dreams for where I can take and grow this business, especially with this fresh makeover! I hope you'll stick around for the ride, especially since you are the very reason I've made it this far in the first place.
Well, I think I've rambled long enough here. I just want to leave you with a huge THANK YOU for being here and for all of your support in getting here! Here's to where this new chapter takes us all!