Mother-daughter team Tanya and Ana Frost crafted a company.
The pair, based in Westford, launched Hudson Illustration Co., blending Tanya’s artistic talents with Ana’s web development and graphic design skills, in 2020. Hudson Illustration Co. offers original stationery, using Tanya’s illustrations.
“I make the templates for stickers and cards and everything, and I created the website,” Ana Frost said. “I am educated in running a small business, so creating this new business from the ground up was a challenge I wanted to take on.”
Hudson Illustration Co., Frost said, offers three product lines, with the tourism-focused About Town line proving a branch-out success.
“About Town is tourism and town pride and we make stickers, magnets, postcards and prints,” she said. “Our customer favorites are definitely the About Town designs and we have made a separate website just for that. We designed a sticker for Hudson, New York, which is our namesake, and we thought, ‘Why not cover the surrounding towns?’ So, they’re definitely the most popular with our wholesale customers, because most of them are gift shops, museum stores and tourism hotspots.”
According to abouttownco.com, that effort expanded rapidly.
“There are over 1000 towns and cities in New York State, and so far we have 200+ designs featuring towns across the state, as well as boroughs and neighborhoods in New York City,” the site states. “We have many more to go, and the project is going strong!” Local towns such as Delhi, Downsville, Oneonta, Sidney and Unadilla are among those featured in the line.
Hudson Illustration Co. goods, Frost said, are in more than 100 independent stores and are selling at a sports merchandise chain which has about 300 locations across the nation.
Frost said the other two product lines highlight greeting cards and stickers.
“We have our Cards for Interesting People (line), which is unique, blank-inside cards where, unless it’s something like a Christmas card with Santa, it’s left up to the interpretation of the customer,” she said. “It’s been really great feedback. (Customers) really like being able to find unique products; we make a line of birthday cards that feature dogs, and people love those because they can find their specific breed of dog.
“And we have recycled paper sticker sheets,” Frost continued. “Children love them and grownups love them. They are for journaling, decorating, letters and scrapbooking.”
Frost said Hudson Illustration Co. grew out of 2020’s pandemic-induced lockdown.
“We started this … when many people were getting creative and starting their own businesses,” she said. “It was interesting, because on the one hand, you had so much collective trauma from COVID, but there were people seeking positive ways to use their time and form businesses to create solutions for their lives and make a living. Our business started because we actually had time for our artistic pursuits.”
The tone of the work, Frost said, struck a chord.
“We sell both wholesale and retail and, for About Town especially, our demographic is anyone that lives in a town or city or travels to a new place and wants to remember their time there,” she said. “We’re able to take note of what people are buying online and in brick-and-mortar shops, so we know About Town has been the most popular for both sets of customer demographics.
“A lot of people favor the About Town for sending to loved ones, and a lot of people that are homesick buy designs that feature their hometown, or they’re in college and they want a little magnet to remember where they come from,” Frost continued. “It was a very happy surprise that people really seemed to connect with what we’re making.”
Frost said she and her mother are focused on growth and collaboration.
“We’re the two full-time employees, and we are working with sales reps on the wholesale side, and we’re also looking at hiring some employees for doing markets and trade shows and things like that more toward the summer, things like City of the Hills,” she said. “One of the larger projects we have in the works is the New York State Project for About Town. We’re trying to create a design for every town in New York, which is quite a few, and we want to collaborate with neighborhoods, towns and cities to foster connectivity across the state and offer visitors a collectible and cohesive range of souvenirs.
“We want to work with people at the state, county and town level to make it more of a statewide thing,” Frost continued. “It’s a mix between a personal project, because we love our state, and it’s a challenge to create that many designs.”
Frost said Hudson Illustration Co. welcomes commission requests and submitted, site-specific views of towns and villages.
For more information, visit hudsonillustrationco.com or abouttownco.com.