They’ve got the goods

Anyone in the event industry knows: Even the best-laid plans sometimes go awry. It’s a little bit like that in the retail space, too. But Dani Antol and Heather McNulty-Haynie have enough experience at this point—having owned Downtown Mall paper goods store Rock Paper Scissors for 12 years—to make lemonade from lemons.

The two have been dealt a few curveballs in their time as owners of the business: Antol was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, their shop was mere feet from the deadly Unite the Right Rally in 2017, and, like many retailers, COVID forced them to temporarily shut their doors in 2020. 

“If we have learned anything working in the event world, it’s when you’re thrown curveballs, you just have to power through and find a solution,” says Antol, who handles the company’s design and art direction. “You try and spin the positive, not just for you but for your clients and community.” 

Even prior to Antol’s diagnosis, the women had launched Paper for a Cause, taking 10 percent of retail sales each Tuesday and donating it to a local charity benefiting causes to which they felt personally connected. After August 12, Antol designed the teal C’ville heart—still a ubiquitous local symbol of unity—and together they created merchandise that allowed them to donate nearly $25,000 to the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation Heal Charlottesville Fund. COVID pushed them to create an online store (“finally!” Antol says), and inspired Project Connect, an initiative in which they partnered with other local businesses to create downloadable PDFs with Charlottesville-inspired activities to do during quarantine.

This sense of community is the retailers’ superpower. They see themselves as part of a larger Charlottesville story, and want to contribute accordingly. Sometimes that means designing a window display that makes a passerby smile—like the time they suspended two wooden swings from the ceiling or created larger-than-life ice cream cones from tissue paper—or sometimes it’s designing a unique crest for a couple’s custom wedding invitations. 

“I love when customers laugh out loud at a card that I’ve selected, or when someone comments on our wide selection of products and how much they love our store,” says McNulty-Haynie, who oversees the retail side of the company. Since they’ve opened, the friends—they were roommates and co-workers looking for a change when they heard RPS was for sale—have made plenty of changes, both big and small. They’ve upgraded the point of sale system, they’ve expanded the team to include six more people, they’ve grown the retail store to include gift items beyond cards. 

“Ultimately, what stays the same is our community who values shopping local, picking up the product with their own two hands, appreciating the old-world texture of letterpress or cotton stock,” McNulty-Haynie says. “Those things don’t translate the same online.”

Antol agrees. “Our success has so much to do with being in Charlottesville and this community that understands what supporting local means,” she says. “It’s big, C’ville thrives on it, and it’s what makes it all work so well.”