My Journey with Printerette Press

I haven’t ever officially announced my ownership of Printerette, so I wanted to take the opportunity to do that now and to tell you the story behind my purchasing the company.

In 2019 I was working in design at Target and had a coffee catch up with Catherine (the former owner). During that coffee meeting, she asked me if I wanted to buy her business. I thought she was joking and I laughed at her because I didn’t think buying a business was something that I could do, but it did plant a seed.

Fast forward to 2020, I really hadn’t stopped thinking about that conversation and continued to consider the opportunity. I really loved Printerette. It had a great brand and I knew the owner ran a tight ship. Plus, I felt like it would be a good stepping stone for me to own a creative business again.

Prior to working full time at Target, I owned a freelance design company. I did that for about 10 years focusing on brand design. Ultimately I decided to accept a full time role at Target because I was burned out from running a business and doing the design. I just wanted to focus on design.

So, I’ve had a taste of small business ownership, and this time, I wanted to focus less on consultancy and more on products. The benefit of purchasing an existing creative business is that you get runway to work on what your vision of the business will be, while still maintaining the existing business. The challenge though, is that the runway ends and for me, that time is now.

For the last 4 years, I’ve been running things behind the scenes working my creative process to figure out my version of Printerette Press. I rebranded the company to align with my design principles and am now in the process of determining what my artistic style is and how that will show up in products. 

I’ve been experimenting with different mediums, illustration styles and graphics to figure that out. It’s been an interesting exercise because working as a designer for so long, the headspace I’m typically in is a little more pragmatic, trying to solve a problem visually for a client. And discovering the visual style for my version of Printerette requires a looser, less pragmatic approach. 

In the coming weeks, you’ll start to see the results of that approach as I have new designs to share and am looking forward to your reaction.