How I Built Two Successful Small Businesses As An Artist

May 17th, 2019

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Ursula Barton

Founder, URSULA BARTON

$3K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

URSULA BARTON

ursulabarton.com

from Portland, Oregon, USA

started February 2012

$3,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Want more updates on URSULA BARTON? Check out these stories:

1. How I Continued Investing Into My Business Despite Some Financial Losses (2020) ➜

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

My name is Ursula Barton and I am an artist who has built two small businesses. My first business started with paper goods featuring my artwork of the Portland bridges: postcards, greeting cards, and archival prints.

It has grown over the past seven years and now I have locally screen printed apparel, enamel pins, and my most popular product, hand-mounted wooden prints that are ready to hang. This eliminates the expensive and time-consuming step of framing, a step I myself dread every time I buy art. This is how I choose new products to add to my line, I think hard about what I would use and what I would want to live with, and then start researching how to create it. It is important that even in product form my art is an authentic extension of me and my point of view.

My newest business is a retail shop called Jailbreak, it is an extension of my art studio in southeast Portland. I opened this with my new business partner Bethany Von Steuben, having a partner with the same ethics, but a different skill set has made owning a business more productive and fun. Jailbreak showcases not only my...

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