Meet the Owner

Hello! Welcome to the Hitchcock Paper Co. blog. I'm your host Sarah and I'm the owner of the newest shop to come to the Occoquan, Virginia riverfront. I wanted to start our first post with an introduction of me and tell you a little bit about how we came to be.

My background is in arts administration and events. After several years in the events world, I branched out into graphic design - specifically invitation and event stationery. I designed for corporations, arts organizations, and individuals for 10 years through my design firm Hitchcock Creative, before deciding to expand into a retail shop.

But let me step back for a second.

Over the years - while walking on the beach, hiking in the mountains, or driving through the country on vacation - my husband and I would talk about what we wanted to do in retirement. Because apparently the idea of retirement has never included not working. We're working on that. But one thing that always came up was that we wanted to live in a small historic town and open a stationery shop where I could continue to design, but also share the work of other amazing designers.

Fast forward to this past September and a decade of "wouldn't it be nice" thinking turned into "why are we waiting?!" We solidified our decision when our local stationery shop Hawthorne House Designs closed after 32 years when the owners Fred and Diane retired.

We decided to take a leap of faith and do it. We signed a lease and 15 days after moving into the space we opened on Halloween weekend.

It has been an amazing, wonderful, tiring, and hilarious adventure these past 10 weeks (there's a reason I'm just now getting to this first post...). I love Occoquan. I love the shop owners, employees, customers, and residents. I love the town employees. It is truly a unique little town full of creativity and passion and we're so excited to be a part of it!