Here's our story... We were married in November of 1993 and every day since then we have lived, commuted, and worked full time together. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. The way we figure it we've already spent more time together than some of the longest married couples!
From 1993 to 2000 we occupied caddy corner cubicles in a small but growing mapping company that eventually became known as MapQuest.com. As sometimes happens with tech companies, as fame and fortune increased, downsizing happened and we were faced with a big question. What were we going to do with the rest of our lives–follow the big companies around from layoff to layoff or was there a better way to make a living? After much soul searching we started our own custom mapping company called “The M Factory, Inc.” in September of 2000. “The M Factory, Inc.”, which now goes by “The Map Factory”, still exists today primarily as a business to business custom mapping company.
OK, so how did we end up on Etsy?…
Like so many things in life, the world of mapping started to change quickly, technological changes happened: GPS, Wikipedia, Google, the list goes on. Paper maps went the way of the typewriter and we needed to figure out how we were going to keep making a living, doing what we love to do, making beautiful maps and graphics. “Lightbulb moment”...let’s make maps for the consumer instead of businesses. Let’s have fun with it and get creative, let’s keep the ART in cARTography. Etsy provided the perfect solution and now here we are. 😊
