Online entrepreneurs, from left, Christine Peters, Kimberly Becker and Kathleen Kurjanowicz stand recently in the loft over Maine Street Design on Front Street in Bath. The business pop-up event celebrated the women who empower each other. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record
A recent business pop-up event, hosted in a loft on Front Street in Bath, celebrated three female entrepreneurs who empower each other and run their own online businesses in the Midcoast.
Kimberly Becker, Christine Peters and Kathleen Kurjanowicz used the space over Maine Street Design on Saturday, July 13, to host around 30-35 people who showed up to support the event featuring stationery, jewelry and clothing for purchase from the women’s businesses.
“[Pop-ups] are intimate, and you can really have conversations with people,” Peters said. “The collaboration with Kimberly and Kathleen is a new one for me, and it’s been great mixing our different ideas of business.”
Christine Peters Jewelry
Christine Peters has been making jewelry for the past 28 years. She started her art career as a sculptor before transitioning into jewelry making a year after she moved to Maine in 1995. Her nature and botanical-based jewelry work for her business, Christine Peters Jewelry, is done out of her home studio in Edgecomb. Peters works with sterling silver and 18- to 22-karat gold.
Anne-Marie Carey, visiting from Ireland, checks out Christine Peters Jewelry on July 13 during the pop-up shop in the loft over Maine Street Design on Front Street in Bath. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record
Two lines of jewelry featuring floral and botanical pieces and contemporary gold pieces were displayed in the loft.
Peters has had a website since the late 1990s, with its roots being a portfolio website that has evolved into an online store. However, she finds that customers will be more likely to buy her jewelry after they visit her home studio (by appointment only) to see the products before buying online.
Some of the work Peters does is repurpose people’s inherited jewelry by taking stones out of pieces and turning them into custom pieces they can wear and still have a connection to their family history.
Peters has two upcoming shows: the Montseag Makers Market from July 20-21 and the Garlic Festival from Aug. 17-18, both in Woolwich. Peters has co-hosted the Montseag Makers Market since 2020.
Peters met Becker during Crafts at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York, in May. Becker got to know Kurjanowicz through a mutual friend, and the trio has met for coffee once a week to discuss how to better their businesses and being a one-woman show.
James Point Stationery
Kurjanowicz lives in downtown Bath and owns James Point Stationery, a primarily online store launched in November 2021 during the pandemic lockdown.
The Bath event was the first retail pop-up Kurjanowicz and Becker had ever done, although Becker had previously held fairs and craft shows.
“We just thought it was time to get together, join forces and do something fun for all of us,” Kurjanowicz said.
Kurjanowicz designs all her planners like list makers, which is how she started James Point Stationary. The daily planners are a little more flexible without setting dates on the paper. Each of the 52 pages — in line with 52 weeks in a year — can be refilled with another set of pages after they are used by ordering more online.
Attendees look over Kathleen Kurjanowicz’s James Point Stationery products July 13 during a business pop-up in the loft over Maine Street Design on Front Street in Bath. Kurjanowicz, left, launched her business in November 2021. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record
The first planner Kurjanowicz designed was the MultiTasker, which she started after a fight with her husband about all the Post-it Notes she used to leave in the kitchen. There were also too many lists to keep track of for other tasks, like shopping lists, which was a lot for Kurjanowicz’s household, so she found a better way to keep all the multitask lists in one place.
Kurjanowicz said what separates her from other planners is the higher quality of paper bound in a fabric, binder-like case with a magnet under the fabric to post the planner to a hard surface like a refrigerator.
“Every single product here was designed based on something I wanted or needed at different points of my life and career,” Kurjanowicz said. “There is a little bit of everything for everyone.”
Kurjanowicz plans to launch notebooks and journals later in the year, and her daughter, Eleanor James, is pushing for a children’s stationery line.
K.Becker Designs
Becker, owner of K.Becker Designs in Woolwich, said the idea for the pop-up came from all three entrepreneurs, who wanted to inform their friends and neighbors about their products. Becker’s capsule collection, which helps customers gather key pieces to make a wardrobe, was on sale for the business pop-up.
The collection included clothing like a light jacket for spring and fall, a simple dress, and travel pants. There was something to choose from every season, and some customers purchased Becker’s clothing online to be shipped later.
“My whole goal with my line is to support women and make women feel better with what they are wearing on their bodies,” Becker said, referring to the unrealistic body sizes women are subjected to in fashion, with the average size in reality being 18.
In another show of female solidarity, Becker donates 5% of her profits to install bathroom units in Uganda’s rural Kyotera District schoolyards to give young women privacy during menstruation. Oftentimes, young women in Uganda without this necessity drop of out school once they begin menstruating.
In-person events like the pop-up help entrepreneurs like Becker, Peters and Kurjanowicz attract new customers after they see what they have to offer and feel them out, which could translate into an online sale down the line.
“This is what we wanted because so many times you tell people about what you do, but until they are actually able to touch it and try it on, it’s hard for them to really know and commit,” Becker said.
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