For Birthe Wilson Achtner, using the Internet allows her to kill two birds with one stone. First, it's an effective way of marketing her business, The Stitchhiker, and second, it allows her to promote her beautiful community to global audiences.

Birthe designs counted cross-stitch kits depicting heritage buildings that are located in and around her home community of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada. She sells them primarily from her Web site.

Cross-stitch was used extensively on old European peasant work in fairly stylized forms, but has progressed to more "free-flowing" designs in botany, buildings, landscapes, to name a few.

These designs may be printed directly on the fabric or worked from a chart and stitched onto an open even-weave fabric stitching over 2 threads of fabric either horizontally or vertically in the form of an 'x' or cross.

Before Birthe remarried and relocated to Nelson, she had enjoyed a successful career as a fabric artist living in BC's largest city, Vancouver. "A fabric artist can be defined in various ways - it can be someone who manipulates commercial fabric, such as quilting, for example, or someone who literally creates the fabric.

"In my case it's a bit of both," explained Birthe, whose varied work experience includes contributing information to the North American film industry as well as the design of handwoven and handpainted clothing and items for the home, handknitted sweaters and crocheted hats, and the custom design of clothing for a person with a physical disability.

Unfortunately, after moving to Nelson, Birthe discovered that employment opportunities were scarce in her new community. "Maybe due to my age," mused Birthe, who has two daughters and one grandchild. "It has been a bit disheartening to find that I could not get a job here in Nelson. I only wanted part-time work, so that I could continue with the fabric design that I really enjoy doing, but that hasn't happened."

A solution came unexpectedly one Sunday morning a little over six years ago. Birthe awoke from sleep with a project in mind: She would design and sell original counted cross-stitch kits of the lovely old heritage buildings found in her area.

Nelson is a small city situated in a scenic and pristine mountainous region known as "The Kootenays." The little city and its scenic and architectural attractions may be familiar to movie-goers. The motion picture "Roxanne," starring comedian Steve Martin, was filmed in Nelson, and two heritage buildings (the Firehall and the Kootenay Exchange) -- depicted in The Stitchhiker kits -- appear in the film.

The first kits, developed successfully after some experimentation, were sold locally, first to friends at her kitchen table and then at local Nelson shops and at craft fairs.

"Using the Internet was the furthest thing from my mind," said Birthe. "At that time, the Internet was not really available to ordinary people."

Unfortunately, Birthe soon discovered that she disliked the direct sales component of doing business. Describing herself as a shy person who is uncomfortable with selling and who has a fear of public speaking, Birthe mused, "I love creating, but have a hard time selling. I hired people to sell for me, which was a lot easier on me, but not great on the pocket book. So I'm back to selling directly."

When the Internet came along, it seemed to Birthe to be a good solution to the sales problem, and one that also allowed her to promote her beloved community to an international audience. Birthe remarked, "I favor the Internet because there are greater possibilities for connecting with a larger amount of people than with business calls or mailings."

When Birthe decided to take her business on the Internet, she selected a local graphic designer, a personal friend, to develop her site, which came to be named "The Stitchhiker." The site was designed in about two weeks, at a cost of about $150.00 Canadian.

For the most part, Birthe left the site design up to her friend, offering feedback as to what she liked and disliked about the layout. As Birthe remarked modestly, "It was a new venture for me. He was the expert, so for the most part I listened to what he had to say.

For instance, I didn't want to put the part about working with the film industry up on the site, but the Web developer thought it should be included." When the site required updating, Birthe contacted her brother Steen Hartmann, in Denmark. Steen, who is a computer programmer and designer, updated the site and continues to maintain it today.

Birthe reports that, thanks to the Web site, sales have picked up -- mainly wholesale, not too much at the retail end yet. Her work, however, has been sold in Europe, Canada, United States, and Japan. Birthe does not yet accept credit card sales from her site and looks forward to the day when surfers will be less leery with ordering over the Net.

Plans are underway to further enhance the Web site "I haven't really used my site to gather marketing information at this time," she said. "In fact, I really don't know how to go about getting that yet. I'm still learning some things about the business side. I think I should have a Guest Page to get more feedback. I think people would be more willing to leave messages if I had a Guest Page. Sometimes people write me to say that they 'love my work,' 'have been to Nelson,' 'will order in the future,' and so on."

Birthe promotes her site in all the usual ways. "I've started to use my web site address in my signature when I e-mail; I belong to Internet mailing lists where I discuss my business with other people; I tell people about it (the site) through word of mouth; and I have registered in as many places as I've been able to find on the Net, as well as finding links to other sites. People can use the search engines to find me -- they can search on 'counted cross-stitch' or 'heritage'. I'm also listed in Canada's Business Women's list on the net, Yahoo Canada and various other search engines."

Birthe continued, "I am very fortunate in that people almost always come with good comments about my work. But I do have to point out from time to time that my charts for the cross-stitch are hand done and not computer generated. I've found that I do not get the detail I want in computer generated graphs, so I take the long route.

"This past summer, a woman from Ottawa saw my work here in Nelson and she wanted me to do a personalized chart of her family home here in the Kootenays. It was a great pleasure to do something as personal as that, and I've recently received another commission to do a chart of a person's home."

Birthe reports that her family has been very supportive of her venture, and that she has had enough time left over to continue to work on her fabric art as well as to participate in some other projects.

What does she like best about having a Web site? The answer, emphatically," I don't have to go out in person and sell!"

Birthe Wilson Achtner
The Stitchhiker
email: achtner@netidea.com
http://www.netidea.com/~achtner