It hasn’t taken long for Jessica Babb to feel like her business — and the businesses it supports — have become a family.
The owner of Makers Around Main, an expanding Bucks County business celebrating imagination, invention and skill of all types, aims to introduce customers to regional “makers” including artists, artisans and craftspeople. The business, with locations in Warrington and Doylestown, and soon Ottsville, also aims to foster customers’ own creativity through a variety of workshops.
“It’s more than just a business to me. It’s more of a community of creative makers showcasing their talents,” said Babb, after purchasing and reopening Makers Off Main at 38 E. State St. in Doylestown this summer.
The store is one of three businesses under the Makers Around Main umbrella. Babb also owns Makers on Main (formerly The Farmhouse) in Warrington, and she plans to open Makers Cafe in Ottsville.
Babb is renovating and rebranding her Warrington store and plans to reopen it in late September. She has leased space in Ottsville, but an opening date for Makers Cafe has not been set.
Makers carries a variety of regionally crafted products, including jewelry, candles, skin care, woodworking, knitting, sewing, photography, crotchet, body care, graphic design, dried floral, leather work, and refurbished furniture.
The items are crafted by 85 makers, all based within 90 minutes of Doylestown, and Babb said she has an “extensive” waiting list, too. “The world is full of creative people,” the married mother of two young boys added.
“It’s my business, but it’s also 85 other businesses under one umbrella,” Babb said. “It’s becoming a family already.”
Amy Karpinski, who creates digital art, and works in acrylic, watercolor and mixed media, is among the makers whose works are displayed and sold at Makers Off Main, and soon, at Makers On Main. She also sells directly through her own website, 3sunsstudio.com, on Etsy, and at festivals, including the Doylestown Arts Festival.
“It means a lot to me to be at a place like Makers because it makes me feel like part of a community of like-minded people,” she said. “With Etsy, I sell to people all over, but Makers gives me a connection to local buyers that I might not otherwise have. With a lot of my work focusing on local towns and cities, this is crucial to my business.”
Babb said she was inspired by her mother, Sharon Curtis, a schoolteacher who made crafts in her spare time and sold them at craft shows. “I just saw how much joy it brought her,” Babb said of her mom’s sewn creations.
She said her interest in the business side of crafts was piqued when she attended craft shows with her mom.
Babb opened her first store for makers in Hatboro and then, after the pandemic, relocated to the Shops at Valley Square in Warrington. She purchased the Makers Off Main business in Doylestown earlier this year when the owner decided to close it. Babb reopened it in July.
The business owner said she’s also signed a lease for space on Easton Road in Ottsville, to be called Makers Café, where she anticipates hosting cooking and baking workshops with local chefs, having some retail space and providing space for private events.
Babb said her goal is to have the Doylestown shop be primarily a retail space, with mini workshops held there, and to hold larger workshops in Warrington, where there is more space, and more free parking. She said the Warrington store will continue to have some retail space, too.
In addition to craft-making workshops, Babb said she also would like to host meet-the-author events, creative writing workshops and music workshops or events too.
Trish DiGaetano, the stores’ brand manager, said Babb also plans to host other kinds of workshops — on topics such as marketing, social media and financing — among others.
“It’s not just the products we’re selling in the store,” DiGaetano said. “There’s no one way to be creative. It’s really our goal to foster that in the community.”
“There’s creativity in pretty much everything,” added Babb. “And everyone’s creative in their own way.”
Creative endeavors, she said, have been beneficial for her own mental health and well-being.
“It’s definitely been an outlet for me. I struggled with depression. I still do,” Babb said. “It helps me cope when I’m having a rough day.”
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