Claysville business holding fundraiser to benefit McGuffey graduate
Heather Shaffer with her husband, Jon, and son, Levi
Inside Heather’s Primitives and Designs is a variety of antique, handmade and country-themed items for sale.
Heather’s Primatives and Designs sells a variety of items, including decor, candles and furniture. The owner, Heather Shaffer was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Although struggling with the disease, Heather vows to get back to work as soon as she feels up to it.
Heather Shaffer recently opened her second location of Heather’s Primatives and Designs at Quail Acres Shoppes. Shaffer started the business from her dining room table with $350 two years ago.
In a barn, surrounded by walls and shelves adorned with stylish crafts and antiques, Jon Eustis smiled.
“It started in our dining room with 350 bucks,” he said inside the Quail Acres location of Heather’s Primitives and Designs, a business his wife, Heather Shaffer, launched two years ago – on Facebook.
“I thought it would be a hobby, maybe sell a few things,” she said.
“Heather has always had an eye for things,” Jon said. “We started getting items, posting pictures. People responded and it grew from there.”
Heather’s Primitives grew on social media, grew to an online operation, grew to a shop in Claysville, grew to a second shop off Racetrack Road, and continues to grow.
What started as an avocation morphed into a vocation for Shaffer, a West Alexander woman with a 9-year-old son, Levi, and a creative side that was previously untapped. “I never did this before. I never thought I could craft,” she said. But being an entrepreneur making headway with something she likes, she freely admits, “was a dream of mine.”
Shaffer is driven to sustain that dream, to enhance it, even though … “it hasn’t been easy. Owning your own business is stressful, but I’m very glad it has worked out the way it has. I literally work morning ’til night.”
As if that regimen alone weren’t exhausting, Shaffer expends even more energy fending off a demon.
Its initials are MS. Last summer, Shaffer was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website, “is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain, and between the brain and body.”
She is 37 years old, but somedays feels 137.
“I’m feeling horrible,” Shaffer said during a phone interview last week, managing a slight laugh. She was in a wheelchair at home, not well enough to meet with two Observer-Reporter staffers at her location in the Shoppes at Quail Acres.
“I’m exhausted. I cannot walk and it’s been like this for months. I haven’t been to the store in two or three weeks and want to get back there, to my dream.”
She said the ordeal was depressing and fatiguing, and has her wondering what’s next.
“With MS, you don’t know. One day you can walk, the next day you can’t. It’s such an unpredictable disease.”
She is taking numerous medications and isn’t sure when she will walk consistently again, but vows to do so.
“I’m sick, but I know I’ll get better and know I’ll be back. I want to inspire people to not give up.”
Shaffer certainly inspired Andrew Yetter, who owns Main Street Cafe in Claysville with his mother, Terri. Andrew and Heather attended McGuffey High School together, and he found out about her disease on the Internet.
To help her with medical and other expenses, Yetter will hold a fundraiser at the cafe from 5 to 8 p.m. today – a day when it normally closes at 1 p.m. He said all proceeds will go to his former schoolmate and his staff volunteered to serve dinner.
“We’re a small community and the people stick together,” Yetter said. “Some people who can’t be there (Saturday) have made donations.”
Donors would be aiding a local native with a local business. After building her Heather’s Primitives online, Shaffer opened a shop on Claysville’s Varner Drive in April 2014. She and her husband closed it for this winter, but Jon said it will reopen in the spring.
About a year and a half later, Heather’s Primitives expanded into North Strabane Township, to Quail Acres, a short trot from The Meadows Racetrack & Casino. But in a twist, it wasn’t the would-be tenants who approached the owners.
“I believe we reached out in early fall,” said Matt Sager, who owns the complex of chic shops and nearby Palazzo 1837 Ristorante with his wife, Susanne. “She had been operating in Claysville for a good while and had established a following and a customer base. She had a pretty impressive Facebook page. It looked like a tenant who would fill the theme of Quail Acres, so we went to her.”
When Heather isn’t on hand, Jon runs the shop with Eileen Bedillion. These are not their day jobs. He works at Advance Auto Parts in Washington, Bedillion at Target in South Strabane Township. She toils in the shop for free. All three had previously worked together at Lowe’s.
Heather’s Primitives assumed the space previously occupied by Principessa, a children’s boutique. It is rustic in nature, as expected inside a barn. “This is perfect for what we are doing,” said Bedillion, of Prosperity.
Jon and Heather generally find and collect items – “a little bit of everything,” said Eustis, 44. “Everything” includes antiques and primitives, which he described as “older items or replicas of older items.”
They sell signs with quirky and humorous messages, Amish furniture purchased from a store in eastern Ohio and much more. Some crafters produce items on consignment, including a woman who makes personalized signs and whose 15-year-old daughter, with autism, makes fabric flowers.
“It’s helping the daughter with her therapy,” Shaffer said.
Two veterans have worked with her almost from the beginning. One builds tables, shelves and wagon wheels, and the other supplies antiques.
Shaffer offers 10 percent off purchases to military personnel, police, teachers, nurses and firefighters.
Heather’s Primitives sells online and in its stores, ships items and does home decor. “A local business can come to us and have us set up their place with our products,” Eustis said.
Hours at Quail are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. That Facebook page is facebook.com/HeathersPrimitiveDesigns.
The namesake owner is eager to return to her shops – and to help anyone dealing with adversity.
“A lot of people are saying I inspire them,” Shaffer said. “I want people to not give up on dreams and maybe do what I miraculously did with $350.”