Artist-Entrepreneur Tries New Business Model | Crafts, Crafters & Creations brings Bohemian flair to Fitchburg
Photo/Amanda Roberge
CRAFTING A NICHE: Julie Olivari, right, owns and operate Crafts, Crafters & Creations in Fitchburg with the helpˆ of Ryan O'Rourke, left, and Michelle Biscotti, center.
If ever there was a small business that was willing to evolve and grow, change and adapt, Julie Olivari’s is the one. Her Fitchburg shop, Crafts, Crafters & Creations, at 507 Electric Ave., is the most recent embodiment of the journey she’s been on for the last couple decades, and every year she gets a little closer to the vision she’s been trying to articulate all that time.
“I’m in it,” Olivari said. “I get it. I am really learning and starting to understand how it all works.”
Art Bizarre
Olivari owned a kitschy kids’ art studio in Gardner called Hands On 4 Kidz for three years after spending the early part of her adulthood as a preschool teacher. She closed that business last July, moved the business and tried on an entirely new format, which relies on local artists to fill her store with one-of-a-kind items.
“My vendors are all basically artists or crafters who rent space inside the shop and are free to design their own displays for their merchandise,” she said, adding that since she opened in October 2010, she’s done all of the promotion and sales. Most importantly, she mans the shop so her artists are free to come and go as they please. She takes a small commission from their sales and also collects a monthly fee, but she is liberal-minded when it comes to their creations.
“I try to encourage my vendors to do what it is they feel passionate about,” she said. “It benefits all of us if they believe in what they are doing.”
She is also accepting help — most notably from her dedicated vendors Michelle Biscotti and Ryan O’Rourke — in the form of creative ideas and moral support.
“Michelle is definitely my right-hand man,” she said. “She’s been, in a lot of ways, like a partner.” O’Rourke, a committed vendor from Northeast Promotion & Apparel Co., can often be found on the scene pitching in any way he can.
While a majority of Olivari’s customers are comprised of groups of senior citizens who stumble upon the store because of the plaza’s proximity to a public transit bus stop, word is starting to get out to another demographic.
“The crowd that we are hoping to reach is just starting to find us now,” she said. With album cover journals, vintage ’50s, ’60s and ’70s clothing, clever T-shirts and guitar pick jewelry, there is plenty there that you won’t find anywhere else in the Twin Cities.
“We want people to know that if they like funky, gypsy, Bohemian stuff, they don’t have to drive to Worcester to find it,” she said.
As has often been the case with her shop, Olivari continues to allow her supply to morph with the demand. Currently, a small corner of the store is dedicated to retail items for crafting — something her customers have asked for. An even larger corner is designed to accommodate groups of scrap-bookers — the Scrapper Café — where visitors can pay a flat five-dollar fee for access to all manner of supplies with which to complete pages of unique design. And yet another corner in the front of the store is set aside for kids to come and do crafts, from recyclable art to painted ceramics.
“We get groups of ladies in here from time to time, or Girl Scouts or moms with their kids,” Olivari said. “People really have a great time.”
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