When you walk inside Circle 25 Gifts on Main Street in White Haven, you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of gifts lining the shop’s shelves and on the walls.
What you won’t find, however, are mass-produced items made in foreign countries. And that’s on purpose.
Circle 25 owners Karen and Joe Medvitz are looking forward to the first anniversary of their gift shop which they opened Dec. 3, 2022, after more than three years of displaying and selling crafts at shows and festivals throughout the state.
After leaving a job she had held for 28 years, Karen decided to start making crafts for friends and neighbors.
“I realized, oh my God, I have some talent. I can do this,” Karen said.
“And he has some talent,” she said of her husband, Joe. “I can vision something and I could tell him how I vision it and he can help me create it.
“Joe is 100 percent part of this. He cuts, cleans, and sands the wood. If the gourds require cleaning, he cleans with me. He will help varnish them. It’s truly a partnership. I might be the creative one but he’s the backbone of it. If I didn’t have him I couldn’t do it.”
That creative partnership led to the couple bringing her creations to festivals and craft shows and eventually opening Circle 25 gifts at 322 Main St., White Haven.
“We talked about opening a store,” Karen said. “As we’re getting older it wasn’t so much fun to load up your car, unload your car, and then pack up your car,” she said of traveling to shows and festivals. It became backbreaking. And then often we had to deal with rain and wind.
“We decided we weren’t young enough for all that. We saw this spot and decided to open a store.”
Their vision, in opening a store, was to offer as many items as possible made by local people. They’ve pretty much made that vision happen.
“I knew from start, people that I became friends with over the past three and a half years of doing festivals and crafting, that there were a handful of them I would like to invite in the store,” Karen explained.
Though she has a talent and passion for creating mosaics, painting colorful dried gourds, ornaments and three-and-a-half-foot wooden gnomes, Karen knew she wanted to bring in work of other crafters.
“I never ever thought I could do this myself and have my own personal store,” she said, pointing to the shelves and walls of items. “I felt like it needed to be an adventure with other people. In knew my craft alone would not be enough for this store, so I started to create a team.”
Karen and Joe opened the store six weeks after getting the keys to the storefront located at Main and Berwick streets and setting it up.
“We opened the door with (merchandise from) eight other crafters. Five are very close friends I had had relationship with for many years. Three of them I sought out. In my vision I knew what products I wanted. We sought out a candle person, ceramic and pottery and some soaps.”
Since opening last December, the number of local vendors and crafters whose work is on display is up to 20. “Of the new 12, six of them are from right here in White Haven,” Karen noted.
“All the products are either products I’ve trusted and known or tried.” she pointed out. “There’s not a product in here I couldn’t give you a story about.”
She pointed to the macrame hangers on display.
“They are made by Sue Gower from right here in White Haven. She taught herself macrame during COVID. She made macrame plant hangers, something she’d never done before. I knew I wanted macrame hangers in here.”
Set up on a table in the center of the shop are bottles of maple syrup, rubs and seasonings produced by Huck Family Maple of Little Marsh, near Wellsboro. Karen and Joe Medvitz met Rich and Dawn Huck at the Berwick River Festival a few years ago and became fast friends.
“It was one of our first festivals and I was setting up our tent pretty much not knowing what I was doing,” Karen explained. “I started talking to the folks in the tent next to ours.”
That couple was Dawn and Rich Huck.
“They were short on a hook and I loaned one to them. That instantly turned into a relationship. We tried all their products while we were there that weekend,” Karen said.
Karen pointed out that her husband loves to grill and smoke food and always had made his own seasonings. “All their seasonings he was tasting, he was like ‘this is perfect,’” she said.
“I pretty much haven’t made my own seasonings since,” Joe added.
On Circle 25’s walls hang laser-etched slates made by local artist Dan Pop and photographs by local photographer Chuck Stoffa. Pop also has created laser-etched images of the popular White Haven caboose on slate coasters.
Among the most popular products sold are lavender lotions and other lavender products.
“They come from a lavender farm just two miles away on Tannery Road,” Karen related. “They (owners of the farm) walked in the store last December. They told me they make lavender products. I didn’t have any soap yet so I told them yes, I want you. Somebody can walk in and not know what I vision and all of a sudden they can open their mouth and I’m like yes, that’s it.”
A big seller in the store is a T-shirt created by local graphic designer Ashley Kujat. The shirt features drawings of some of the most well-known historic monuments in the White Haven area.
“It’s an outstanding seller, not just for tourists, but for the locals,” Karen offered. “It you walk in the grocery store, you’ll see at least one person wearing this shirt.”
Kujat, she noted, is creating memorabilia for White Haven’s 200th anniversary which will be celebrated next year.
While they wanted our theme to be handmade and local, they had to go outside the state for one line – beard products.
“I didn’t want this to just be a women’s store where men felt they had to stand outside,” Karen said.
Since her husband Joe and nephew have beards, she decided to try to find products for men’s beards. She researched companies that made beard oils and lotions and really was unable to find a Pennsylvania company that met their needs.
She eventually came across Warlord, an Alabama company.
“Their story is amazing,” she said. “It’s an all veteran-owned company. They give back to veterans in town and to St. Jude Hospital. So, to me that’s a good company and one I’m going to invest in. If I can’t find it local, I will always look for a good story that I could support somebody with a good cause.”
“That’s the passion we have,” Karen offered. “We get to know every person that has their products in here. And we have tried and tested them. Not because they make us, but it’s the right thing to do.”
