Heartbreak, Hope, & A Very Big Thank You!
Heartbreak & Hope
On Tuesday, August 17th our small town of Canton, NC suffered a devastating flood. I want to, before anything else, address how blessed we are to have our home, and our family safe. There are roughly 30 people missing, and countless homes and businesses have been destroyed.
We moved to Canton, North Carolina because of the spirit, the community, the people, and the mountains. Lauren’s family is from this little paper town, and we love it with all our hearts. We felt a sense of authenticity here that we’ve rarely experienced elsewhere, and that authenticity is what makes Canton the perfect place for a craft like ours. We are home here. We love this town, and we love her people. That authenticity got a little more real today, in the wake of a devastating flood. Despite their tragedy, there are already parked cars lining the streets of downtown of people coming to offer help in any way they can. Canton is a strong town, and we will come back stronger. That said, there are a lot of people hurting. Unfathomable damage was done to homes and businesses throughout Haywood County, and there are people in need. We suffered that damage ourselves, and are now faced with rebuilding an entire business. We want to be extremely clear here that we feel blessed. Our family is safe, our home is intact and safe, and not everyone in town can say the same.
Our new shop is located in downtown Canton and was under about 6' of water. The damage to the shop is overwhelming. Nearly all of our equipment was destroyed along with lots of damage to the building itself.
We were getting close to finishing our showroom and getting that open to the public and of course, this has essentially put us back at square one with that. It will likely be some time before we are able to re-open as we need to clear out the shop and replace at least 90% of our tools and equipment.
wow & Thank You!
A GoFundMe was set up to help us replace our equipment and get us back up and running. We didn’t have any expectations going in but wow our community really showed up! The Gofundme goal of 10k has almost been met! We are truly overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity all of you have shown to us during this challenging time.
With our goal almost being met, we have a unique opportunity to help other surrounding small businesses as well! The damage to other small businesses in our community is staggering and we want to make it clear that any donations we receive above what we need to re-open will be donated to other local businesses who suffered losses.
This shop means the world to us and we are truly heartbroken over this loss, but the love poured out by this community has filled us with so much hope. We know we have a long road ahead of us but we have hope we will be able to re-open and get back to doing what we love!
Thank you for your continued support and for being a part of our special community. If you'd like to donate to or share our campaign, so that we can show some support to other surrounding businesses, we will link it below.
Again we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We believe in Canton and we know it will come back from this stronger than ever. We’re paper town proud!