“My time at Lantana’s taught me innumerable things about small business operations, marketing and also wholesaling,” she said.

There, she had experience attending trade shows as a buyer –– the same venues she now attends as a seller, seeking to get her cards in the hands of more wholesale clients across the country. This is my business!’”įor nine years, Meehan ran Lantana’s, acting as the general manager, buyer and merchandiser to support about 80 local artists the gallery sources from. “I’ve had pen pals all of my life, so it was just this immediate like, ‘Wait a second. “I always made art, I’ve always tried to sell it and market it, and I also adore greeting cards and sending letters and mail to people,” she said. She started crafting abstract pieces that she then made into one-of-a-kind cards to connect with family and friends, and later began selling the cards as originals out of her family’s Southport store, Lantana’s Gallery & Fine Gifts. “It was just too heavy of a time to do a lot of really serious fine art and I just needed to do something loose and wild,” she said. As an artist, architect and interior designer, Meehan said the circumstances prompted a “lightbulb moment” while surrounded by art supplies in her Richmond apartment and nowhere to go. “This is a pandemic love story here,” she said. When the pandemic hit, Meehan was let go from her corporate, official “jobby job,” as she called it, at an architectural firm in Virginia. The Brunswick Community College program (open to non-students like Meehan) gives startups three years to rent space at a rate that moderately increases annually, and a team of business mentors regularly checks in to aid in her growth.Īlthough she said she had long felt called to make the jump to start her own business, Mirthos’ launch may be better described as a push… off a ledge. “This is a great opportunity because this is a huge space.” “I was busting out of a spare bedroom,” she said. The move to the Leland studio was prompted by a need to escape an over-filling spare bedroom that housed greeting card inventory, envelopes, packing supplies, art tools and of course, paper. Last October, Meehan moved into a space provided by Brunswick Community College’s Business and Industry Incubator program in the Leland Industrial Park, and earlier this year she fully rebranded Mirthos as its own entity apart from her other art ventures. Playing alongside a popularized minimalism-heavy design realm, Meehan’s maximalist, yes-frills approach-easily distinguishes her cards on the rack. “My handwriting is the edgy wild child that’s still beautiful,” said Mirthos owner Hilary Meehan. In a world dominated by bouncy, bridal calligraphy, Mirthos Paper’s greeting cards are most often splashed with a signature bold, unruly cursive lettering, the dots of “i”s adorned as imperfect stars.

Real wild child original