The Origin of Peo Vee

Peo Vee is a creative community for upcyclers which I launched off of another business idea in late 2022. A passion project that over a two year period I invested in quietly, thinking maybe someday it could provide income, but was primarily a creative outlet. It wasn’t making me any money, it was simply about building.

Read my story below about why I launched Peo Vee, and learn more here about how I came into a passion for sustainability.

Peo Vee is a personal project, but I do build businesses for a living. Around the time I launched Peo Vee I had been working on another personal project: a small newsletter that I co-authored with a friend, which was aimed at inspiring readers to take small, positive actions that stack up to larger change. While that project didn’t end up going very far, one thing really did emerge from it: a new and growing interest in climate change and sustainable solutions.

My little creative office before it was taken over by craft remnants

A lifelong artist and crafter, I’ve long been enamored with the idea of taking things that others discarded and turning them into better-than-new belongings. When I was just 16 and had first gotten my drivers license, I basically lived at the thrift shops where I’d spend my weekends scouring for treasures. I’d have my eye on anything 50s-70s, unusual, and anything that could live a new life with just a simple coat of paint.

For years, that became the running joke in my family. “Molly will paint that,” my mom would say. Poking fun at the fact that I’d see junk on the street or even lifeless belongings in stores and suggest that I could make it cooler, more interesting with new paint.

As I grew older, my passions for thrifting deepened and I began taking more interest in the history of vintage and antique objects. I started to imagine one day I’d own a resale shop, maybe in my retirement.

Meanwhile, my career found a path of it’s own. I went from crafting art projects to small business concepts and found myself trading for virtual paint brushes, designing digitally and making with my hands less and less. It’s been a fun and fulfilling journey in many ways, but things have been missing. Making with my hands, and being in touch with the truth that I’d rather hit an estate sale or a thrift shop than do just about any other thing came into much clearer focus. All of this timed with a moment of transition. One project ending, and a new space in my life opening. A desire to build something that reflected more of me; my creative obsessions, my desire to build, my never-ending love for making the old new again, and my new-found interest in sustainable solutions. My ikigai.

I launched Peo Vee because I wanted to build a place to bring these things together, and other people who shared my passions. I wanted to explore creative projects with a community, and to make with my hands yet again. To find a way to connect to these passions before retirement instead of in retirement. If that could be a business someday, great! But if not, it would be my art project.

Through Peo Vee, I hope to unite people who believe a new way is possible. A shop less way, where through creativity we can make interesting and beautiful things out of what we already have, without buying new.