Please Help Save Orcas Arts and Gifts!

Please help us save our family business!!!

Our family has been operating Orcas Arts and Gifts since the late 1980's on Orcas Island, WA. While we have been dedicated rental tenants for the duration, we have recently been notified that the property will be going up for sale within the next 30 days. We have the opportunity to purchase before it hits the market, but we were completely unprepared for this to happen NOW. The seller is selling due to unexpected financial circumstances of their own.

This leaves us in a very tough situation. It is just me, my mother and stepfather of 33 years, who are in their senior years, trying to figure a way through this. My mom started this business in the late 1980’s, and soon after fell in love with my longtime stepfather, Patrick. Together they have built and maintained a niche with what many might call The Best Gift Shop on Orcas Island. I grew up in the shop and came back after college to help my family run the shop through a few medical situations, one of which is ongoing. As self-employed small business owners they don’t have much of a retirement fund to fall back on. I want to do whatever I can to help ensure Orcas Arts and Gifts can stay put for awhile.

Orcas Arts and Gifts is one of the oldest family-owned businesses on the island. The gift shop is inside a beautiful building that started out as the original Post Office on Main Street in the heart of Eastsound, WA. For decades, we have been a favorite stop for visitors and a reliable source of gifts of all kinds for locals. Generations of families have crossed our threshold, with children of children from families who love to come see their "favorite shop ever" (we hear this a lot and it makes us smile every time). We make our own jewelry. We design and print many of our own apparel designs. Not only that, but we are one of the last providers of full jewelry repair services for the San Juan Islands, including custom designs.

As one of the last existing vestiges of soulful and funky “Orcas”, we still have a lot to offer. We have poured our entire souls into the business, and we love this community and want to stay! I have grown up and out of my childhood on this island, and as an adult I have enjoyed becoming more involved in the local community. My heart is here. But, the timeline is short for the option to purchase, as the owner wants the sale to happen quickly. We have spent the past month agonizing over this, exploring every single option available to us, and we cannot come up with the down payment on our own in time.

Asking for help is not easy for us. We've always been able to handle our own things, but this is a monster of a purchase for us at this time. We need your help to make this dream a reality before time runs out.

With such a short timeline, we have been unable to scrape together our own resources and build up the funds needed to make a commercial real estate purchase with 30% down. Every day has been a rollercoaster of emotions as we dive deep into another option and find we are unable to proceed down that path.

So this is it. Our last chance to gamble on our future to stay and we have less than 30 days. Since the beginning, we have given back where we can to our community in the form of donations and fundraisers. We never really expected to be in a similar situation of need, but here we are.

Our main plan is to purchase this property. That is Priority #1 but in the event that we run out of time we intend to use any and all funds raised in this fundraiser to relocate the shop elsewhere, whether that means moving into a commercially-leased space (whenever one is available) or purchasing property and developing a new space there.

And for those of you who have been following our story for awhile - I promise I will write that book. And thank you, so much, Grace Grantham for such beautiful photos of our family.