Bring A Little Bit Of The Kawarthas Into Your Home
Pam Buckler, creator behind Creative Inks Studio located in Peterborough Ontario, creates original custom artwork, ranging from inspired new renditions of business buildings, cottages, and even pet portraits.
Pam originally established Creative Ink in British Columbia, using just pen and ink drawings for her clients. After moving across the country and settling in the beautiful Kawarthas of Ontario, Pam decided to take a few art classes that she claims, “Gave [me] the inspiration to start painting and expanding my field of artwork.” This included winning various logo competitions, designing cancellation stamps for Canada Post, and creating artwork used by the Ministry of Natural Resources.
As the restrictions of 2020 identified the amount of exposure that Pam could get as an artist with galleries closing, she couldn’t showcase her pieces anywhere. Upset and devastated, Pam realized, “I needed help and ideas to get my artwork out farther afield.” After doing some research Pam came across the ShopHERE Powered By Google Program.
“It’s such a wonderful opportunity to get help in promoting my artwork and business. And for free was wonderful to a starving artist!”
Pam immediately knew she had to sign up for the program and get her web presence out there. Through the program Pam was able to launch her site through the platform, Square. “The ShopHERE Program was a great learning experience for me. I wanted to get my site launched quickly so that I could get my artwork known outside of Peterborough. I was able to do so with my eCommerce Coordinator, Suthas. He was very helpful and worked well with me. He guided me at my own pace, and answered all of my questions courteously.”
Since getting her online store set up, Pam feels way more confident with sharing her work on social media, now knowing that any additional exposure or publicity is good for business. Pam has this advice to share with other artists and small businesses affected by COVID-19:
“Home based businesses during this pandemic do have one advantage… we are used to having to promote ourselves! We must take advantage of all the social and virtual media platforms available to us.”
You can scroll through and purchase Pam's art here. If you know of, or are a small business owner and would like to learn more about how to get your free eCommerce store setup you can click here.
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay and Canada Post.
A $42.5-million investment from FedDev Ontario brought together the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, Communitech, Invest Ottawa and the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association to expand the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital as a response to the impacts of COVID-19 in Southern Ontario.
