September 4, 2003
This article is from The Nashua Telegraph, written by Karen Spiller.
Give Danielle and James Mojonnier an old house and they go to work. That is, if it’s an 1950s farmhouse with room for their graphic design company.
The Newlyweds have opened Grinning Moon Creative, a small business specializing in Web site design, logos, brochures, book jackets, and signage – all with original photography and illustration.
Grinning Moon is housed in the couple’s 624 Daniel Webster Highway home – a century-and-a-half-year-old farmhouse on the corner of busy Route 3 and Bedford Road.
It took months of work to restore the farmhouse into a livable and workable site, but the 24-year-old couple got it done with the help contractors, family and friends.
They’ve only been there since January, but already, Grinning Moon has gained a list of local clients including RE/MAX Properties I in Nashua, New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority in Bedford, Heritage Case Management in Concord, and Blackdog Builders in Salem.
The couple, who married last October, met while students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Today, they are living their dream, with a thriving business, no commute and an eagerness to go downstairs to work every day.
“I love my job,” Danielle said, smiling at her husband, “because I get to talk about how awesome he is all the time.”
Starting from Scratch
James, who has a degree in industrial design, creates all of the designs from scratch. All of his original photography and illustrations are done in his studio, which is upstairs from the renovated barn area that is Danielle’s office.
Danielle, who has a master’s degree in management, is the executive director and does all the marketing for the business. The green door to her bright office is the original rustic barn door that connects to a conference room where they see clients and display his work.
“She’s my boss, essentially,” James said. “We know a lot of people who are married for whom it wouldn’t work well at all.”
Part of what makes it work is the separate offices.
“I like to listen to music and he likes to listen to talk radio,” she said, as James nodded in agreement.
Getting along is easy, so long as they keep in mind what their individual roles are.
“We both feel like we couldn’t do what the other one does,” Danielle said.
James loves his work so much that he even designs on the side for fun.
“I’m so into my work that I work through dinner and stuff,” he said. “She has to come get me.”
When he’s not drawing, he’s working on the house. Good thing, because when they found the house last May, it needed a lot of restoration.
“It was a bit of an eyesore,” James said, adding that he’s heard stories from neighbors about the house being a rowdy party site when it was vacant.
The couple started the demolition in May [2002] and put it back together a year ago in August.
He refinished the cabinets, tiled the kitchen, laid the hardwood floor, and built a stone wall, a carport, a front deck and a shed in the 1.3-acre back yard. Danielle did most of the painting.
“I think the neighbors probably raised their eyebrows on the day we threw a bathtub out a second-floor window,” he said.
But it wasn’t all fun. While building the stone wall, James injured himself with a pick ax.
“It went right into my knee,” he said.
He needed arthroscopic surgery, which left much of the restoration up to Danielle and the contractors.
But couple made the best of it, and opened last winter.
They even have some ancient souveneirs from their work. During renovations, the couple found old newspapers beneath the floorboards used as insulation. The ripped papers are now framed and hang in their kitchen.
The Merrimack Heritage Commission is pleased that the couple restored the home.
“They really tore that place apart and rebuilt it,” said Florence Brown, chairwoman of the commission. “It’s a restoration from the past.”
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Danielle comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Her parents started three trade magazines for manufacturing executives.
Mom and Dad were role models for Danielle, and helped make it easier to take the risk of starting her own business, she said.
“You look for a company that’s a perfect fit and if you can’t find one, you start your own,” she said.
The couple started Grinning Moon in January 2000 – the result of merging his design and illustration company, CrazySanta Productions, with her theatrical productions, Limelight Productions.
Known for its offbeat humor and political bent, his business began as a gift card company in 1997. Hers originated as a dance studio in her hometown of Beverly, Mass.
After much brainstorming, they came up with the name for their joint venture – Grinning Moon Creative, though they admit the name has no real significance. The company name and smiling moon logo do attract lots of attention, however. Danielle said they’ve gotten a number of questions about what kind of business it is.
“Two of the funniest guesses were a dentist’s office and a jewelry store,” she said.
Danielle and James are the only employees. They don’t know yet when they might get to the point where they need to hire more people.
Right now they like it being just the two of them. Their 30 or so clients get more attention that way, Danielle said.
“You always work with us,” she said. “You’re not always working a new person all the time.”
And being relatively young is a great advantage, James said.
“We know what people our age look for when they want to buy something or subscribe to a service.”
James estimated that 50 percent of the business is from word of mouth, while the other half of their customers find them in the yellow pages.
Picking a site wasn’t all that difficult. Her parents kept telling them how great the Granite State is. So they looked on the map and pointed to the area in between the state’s biggest cities. They chose Merrimack.
The Chamber of Commerce’s new slogan for Merrimack is, “It’s on the way,” noted the couple, who belong to the local chamber.
“That’s actually why we picked it,” Danielle said. “Because it’s on the way.”
Leave a Reply