Customers will drive hours to shop at The Paperie & Co., the fine stationery store that Robin Dworak opened seven years ago in historic Cedarburg, WI.  (That’s 20 minutes up the Lake Michigan shore from Milwaukee.)  Back in January, Robin sold to longtime manager extraordinaire, Abby Werner, while also staying on.  Here’s a look into the store that continues to beautifully evolve …

“I’d always loved entertaining, but I had a hard time finding great invitations and personalized stationery,” Robin says. “Now we tell customers that ‘perfect invitations and stationery aren’t going to be found, they’re going to come from you.’  We work with them on personalization, to express their own style on paper.

“I was never keen on selling cards because I didn’t want to maintain the inventory,” Robin says, “but my friend Mary Aschenbrener kept insisting I should carry Cardthartic. This was even before she started repping the company!  One day a Cardthartic rack just appeared in my store,” says Robin. “New Rep Mary assured me, ‘If they don’t sell, we’ll remove it.’ At first, I would call every day to tell her how many cards I’d sold, because I couldn’t believe how many were flying off the rack in a single day.  Mary just laughed and said, ‘I told you so!’ That was three racks ago.”

What makes The Paperie& Co. so special?  
Now owner Abby Werner believes it is:

COACHING – Help customers see that, by personalizing a gift, they make it an especially thoughtful one.

INSPIRATION – Provide ideas that will start customers thinking outside the box.

APPRECIATION – We remind our customers that the time they put into a note is a gift in itself.