RUMFORD – A custom-built 42-foot van, with colorful exterior designs and a satellite dish that’s loaded with scrap-booking and art supplies, is the newest addition to Lem Cissel’s business ventures in the River Valley.
And soon, it will be traveling down the road to fairs, churches, festivals, campgrounds, businesses or anywhere else in the state an organization wants a chance to offer scrap-booking and artists’ supplies, or lessons on how to create something from paper.
“If we can park it, we’ll take it,” said Martha Hill, assistant manager at Scrapper’s Domaine, Rumford, the parent business of the new, fully-equipped van.
Brenda Baker, an artist and Scrapper’s Domaine employee, drove the truck from Ohio to Rumford last month. She’ll manage the van’s visits. Local sign business, Brushmarx Custom Lettering of Hanover, designed the signs, such as the logo, “Rolling with Creativity” and other colorful additions to the white van.
It’s a store on wheels with all the latest scrap-booking and artists’ supplies. If the place the van travels to, such as a church, has space, classes and “crops” will be offered. Wherever it goes, Denise Donahue, a scrap-booking teacher for Scrappers Domaine, will present demonstrations on creative designs.
So far, the van is booked for the Bangor State Fair and Molly Ockett Days in Bethel, with more bookings coming in all the time, said Cissel. The maiden voyage of the Scrapmobile takes place on May 25 for a trip to Rangeley.
Cissel said the van was created by a company that builds bookmobiles and science labs. Expanding his business this way was necessary.
“We need to extend the store beyond Rumford, to people from out of the area,” he said, adding that many people now travel from all over western Maine to his store in downtown Rumford.
The satellite dish attached to the rear of the van allows connecting to the Internet and the Rumford store.
The new business venture will call for the creation of about three new jobs in Cissel’s businesses. Right now, Scrapper’s Domaine, Great Falls Frame Shop and the Pennacook Art Center employ 12 full- or part-time people. His first business, Scrapper’s Domaine, opened in October 2003, followed by the art gallery in June 2004.
If the van is as successful as Cissel and his employees believe it will be, plans will go forward to franchise the idea.
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