Regional Assembly of Text Reaches New Frontiers

By Christy Nyiri

Alright, it’s no secret anymore. If you haven’t stepped foot into The Regional Assembly of Text (Main at 23rd) by now and oozed sloppy awe for the alphabet-themed and present-perfect gifts lining the shelves, you either don’t live in Vancouver or you have a spelling phobia. Owned and operated by a pair of women armed with a flair for letters, hand crafting and nostalgic colour palettes that would make you great-grandmother’s wallpaper blush, it officially appears that this little store has worked its way to onto the not-so-hidden local gems list.

It might seem like a bit of a conundrum to mention the word “success” in the same sentence as “visual arts degree”, but owners Rebecca Dolen and Brandy Fedoruk have proved thousands of disgruntled coffee baristas wrong. To no one’s surprise, the store has has captured the waxed crafty hearts of our fair city, but, perhaps unexpectedly, its also warranted its turn earning praise from keyboards of travel writers, bloggers and journalists from little publications like Lonely Planet and the New York Times. It seems there’s no stopping the crafters that could, who, after just celebrating their third anniversary, are now on the verge of now taking the online world by storm.

A bit of a back story for those unacquainted: After graduating from Emily Carr Institute in 2003, the pair worked a series of odd jobs before embarking on an E.I.-funded path through small business school, landing their own Main Street storefront and meticulously collecting an auction block’s worth of filing cabinets and high school science lab shelves to decorate the interior of their new space. At first worrying if they’d be able to source simple items like paper shopping bags, the owners spent the next months meticulously designing and hand making everything themselves, eventually realising that it wasn’t entirely the best option. “We spent a lot of our precious time sewing before we figured out that it would be more cost effective to hire someone to sew for us,” says Dolen. “The quality of the products increased and it also freed up more time. We learned that for our store to be continually improving and changing, we both needed to have more time to be thinking and designing, rather than making.”

It is this dedication to consistent and clever aesthetics that has garnered the attention of other stores wanting to capitalize on their wares. The Assembly now wholesales greeting cards, chalkboards, button sets and wooden boxes to 25 (!) establishments across North America, and is a few weeks away from launching their new website, which will include an online store. For two very hands-on people who didn’t even know what a blog was a few years ago, it’s kind of big deal. “Now, we really appreciate being featured on someone’s blog,” explains Fedoruk, extolling the benefits of the digital era. “Especially now that it leads to thousands of hits on our website.”

So, after the internet has been conquered, what’s next? “Our dream is to have a larger studio space for product designing and building. And also to spend a little less time in the store so that when we are here, we are in love with it.” What, not be in love with the Assembly of Text? That’s probably the only thing impossible for this store to achieve.

Visit www.assemblyoftext.com... The new version of their site should be up in early September.