Map Adventures grows with Mt. Katahdin guide
Photo/Rebecca Goldfine
Husband and wife Steve Bushey and Angela Faeth run Map Adventures out of their Peaks Island home
In their cottage on a quiet lane on Peaks Island, Angela Faeth and Steve Bushey regularly deliberate over the problem of which beautiful area they'll map next.
Despite it being just the two of them running their small map-making business, Faeth and Bushey hold morning meetings in front of a whiteboard just as if they were in a corporate setting, scribbling and erasing as they talk about new profitable maps to make.
But they couldn't be further from a corporate boardroom. The married couple have been running Map Adventures from their island house for 11 years and enjoying a steady 10% or more annual revenue growth.
The couple now has a product line of two dozen maps, which includes a map for Portland Trails, the city's trail-making nonprofit, as well as trail maps for Acadia National Park, Camden, San Francisco, Vermont and the White Mountains. Their most recent map, completed this year, covers Mt. Katahdin in Baxter State Park. They're selling it on their website and wholesaling it to retail stores in northern New England.
"I think Katahdin is the most beautiful mountain in the East," Bushey says about Maine's highest peak. Calling his and his wife's company a "niche business," he explains, "We like mapping beautiful areas. That's what we like to do."
Faeth adds, "We don't want to map an area we don't want to be in."
As for their sales goals for the Katahdin map, Bushey says it takes a couple of years to know whether a new map has been a hit. "It is a real wait-and-see game," he says. "We're never quite sure we're going to have a popular map or just a middling map."
A map that sells well has an appealing theme, Bushey says, as well as plenty of sales outlets, which are becoming increasingly rare in this digital age, as the recent Borders' bankruptcy attests to. A challenge for print publishers, Bushey says, "is to maintain an appropriate number of venues to stay afloat."
Distributors help the couple place their maps in retail stores, and the two also sell directly to shops. "Our goal is to get as much product out there," Faeth says. "$10 per map is not a lot so you have to get a lot of them out there."
Despite such marketplace challenges, the company's sales have been growing for the past four years, with revenues rising between 10% and 15% annually. Bushey partly contributes this growth to the recent economic doldrums.
"I think that a lot of people see doing things outdoors as healthy," he says, "and it is accessible and inexpensive." He points out, too, that New England, with its alluring mountain and coastal walks, is within a half-day's drive for many millions of Americans and Canadians.
Bushey says he anticipates Map Adventures will sell about 50,000 maps overall this year. The maps cost between $4.95 and $9.95, and the couple puts out between one and two new maps a year, as well as updates their other maps every two to three years.
Mapping Katahdin
Last fall, Bushey and his brother hiked over 200 miles of trails in Baxter State Park for three and a half weeks, taking GPS coordinate points and many notes along their trek. (Faeth stayed home to take care of business and their coonhound, Olivia Rose.) Bushey does the cartography while Faeth, who is an artist, designs and illustrates the maps.
Their Katahdin map will join a crowded field. But Bushey and Faeth aren't worried about competition, saying that every map, like paintings by different artists of the same subject, is unique. Faeth, who has a background in dance, also likens map-making to dancing: Both she says, are done "with attitude."
The couple says their goal is to produce not just an original map, but one that also helps provide a good outdoor experience. To this end, their Katahdin map includes typical hiker-friendly information about trails and campsites, as well as where park users can find canoes and paddles that can be rented by the hour. It also has information on how to reach Millinocket, the park's nearest town, via public transportation.
Moving to Peaks Island
Faeth left a job at an educational software company in Cambridge, Mass., to join forces in 1994 with Bushey, who has a background in geography and cartography, to focus on their shared love: the outdoors. They married in 1998.
In 2000, they left their home in Stowe, Vt., for Portland to live in an urban area that could provide them with more technical and creative resources while also being walkable and close to nature. "It's a nice art/technology hub," Bushey says about the city. "It's good for us to be part of the hub."
Their first project in Maine was mapping the city's pathways for Portland Trails. This past year, they put out that map's fourth edition. They've also made maps for Cape Elizabeth Land Trust, L/A Trails in Lewiston-Auburn and the Evergreen Cemetery in Portland. Their cartographic reach extends to other parts of Maine, as well as to New Hampshire, Vermont and California. Selling maps on the West Coast helps keep the couple's revenues flowing year-round, Faeth explains, because California's sunnier climate tempts people outdoors for more months of the year.
As for future projects, Bushey and Faeth say they're considering exploring Canada, as well as working on an urban map that integrates walking trails with art and culture offerings.
Faeth says, though, that she and Bushey do not strive to map every national park and grow just for growth's sake. "We like doing urban areas and the outdoors -- it supports the lifestyle we want to see the world go to," she explains. "You don't need to go to Yosemite. [The love of the outdoors] starts when you're a child enjoying the outdoors where you live with your family. "
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