Cat's Meow Village
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- Name
- Cat's Meow Village
- Retail
- Miscellaneous Store Retailers
- Manufacturing
- Wood Product Manufacturing
- Services
- Gift Shop
- Founded
- 1982
Wooster,Ohio
- Founders
- 2163 Great Trails Dr., Wooster, Ohio
In 1982, Faline Fry Jones established her business producing The Cat's Meow Village buildings and accessories. Each Cat's Meow house or building is around 6" tall, made of wood, and painted to represent famous structures as well as imaginary ones, and each features a small black cat, modeled after her cat Casper. Jones took the first hand-painted house to Rosanne Burger at A Country Tradition, who placed the first order and helped promote the craft[1]. The Cat's Meow Village quickly expanded and worked with Jeff Miller at Archwood, who cut and sanded the wood for the houses and later rented a portion of the facility to The Cat's Meow to keep both operations on the same premises.
By 1984, the business had grown so much that Jones had to hire additional employees and even began taking on screen printing jobs such as making real estate signs and printed t-shirts[2]. Jones renamed the company to FJ Designs at this time, and as her business expanded, Archwood lost space in the shared facility on Nold Avenue. In 1985, Archwood moved into a separate location on East Liberty Street, and in 1986, FJ Designs grew out of their existing space and relocated to a building on Bowman Street with three and a half times the space[3].
Over the next couple of years, FJ Designs continued to grow, employing 80 workers by the spring of 1988, and the company began to implement changes. In 1987, the Home Workers Program was established to allow workers to complete some work at home on a more flexible schedule. In 1988, the company decided to retire Village Series after 5 years of production because the number of different pieces being ordered and made had grown too large. As they slowly outgrew their facility on Bowman Street, Faline and Terry Jones purchased a 4.5-acre lot on Great Trails Drive at the edge of town and broke ground in 1988 for a new, larger facility as well as a space for Archwood[4].
Slogans
Slogan
Timeline
- 1982: Faline Fry Jones sells first Cat's Meow Village building
- 1983: Jones joins forces with Archwood, rents space in their facility
- 1984: Business name changed to FJ Designs
- 1985: Archwood relocates business to East Liberty, FJ Designs claims entire building
- 1986: FJ Designs relocates to larger facility on Bowman Street
- 1987: FJ Designs begins Home Workers Program to allow staff to complete some work at home
- 1988: Decision made to retire a Village Series after five years of production
- 1988: Groundbreaking at Great Trails Drive site for new facility to bring Archwood and FJ Designs back together