Jul 28, 2007

Leave the shore behind with tote bags made from recycled sailsBy Kristen AndresenBangorDailyNews.com

When Beth Shissler walked into Hannah Kubiak’s life three years ago, Hannah was cruising along, doing her thing, which happened to be making tote bags out of recycled sails. Since 1999, she has spent her days cutting and sewing canvas and Kevlar, and hand-splicing rope to make a durable, continuous handle, just like her ocean-loving dad had taught her years before.

Beth had taken a little time off from her corporate job to help her mother open a gift shop on Isle Au Haut. When she saw Hannah’s bags, she knew they’d be perfect, so she ordered 15 of them.

“Hannah said, ‘What? You want 15 bags?'” Shissler, 39, recalled, laughing.

“Which was unheard of, because I had never sold more than one at a time,” Kubiak, 33, added, as the women sipped iced tea on the deck of the Porthole Restaurant, just steps away from their base of operations on Portland’s Custom House Wharf. “I never really treated it like a business.”

At the time, Shissler was considering a lifestyle change. The long hours and nearly constant traveling of her career as a global account manager for Phillips Electronics had begun to wear on her, and she and her husband were thinking about starting a family.

Read complete article.