Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/267166
40 | I nsIgh t • M a r c h 2 0 14 w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m W hen Dawn nowakowski's daughter, hannah, le for college last fall, nowakowski found herself facing more than just an empty nest. she was staring at empty walls, too. "she took all of her posters to college, so the walls were bare," nowakowski explains. While she wasn't looking to renovate the room into a home office or make drastic decorating changes, she did want to cover those bare walls. rough her job with the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce, nowakowski learned about a new company in neenah that produces personalized, removable wallpaper from photos customers upload to its website. "Being in member services at the Chamber, my job is to understand the landscape of local business both small and large," nowakowski says. "I am always interested in new businesses and like to learn about entrepreneurial ventures and new ideas on the market." is particular new idea turned out to be the perfect solution to nowakowski's design dilemma. "I loved the idea and asked to meet him (James Oliver, WeMontage CEO) for coffee," she says. James Oliver, a neenah resident, is also a fan of new ideas. Watching an interior design television program sparked his idea for the creation of WeMontage. "is family had covered a whole We Montage personalizes wallpaper with your photographs Tapestry of the times in focus { s m a l l b u s i n e s s } B y C o n n i e F e l l m a n c o u r t e s y o f W e M o n t a g e wall with black and white pictures," Oliver says. "I stayed up all night trying to figure out how to do it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Who doesn't love pictures ... of themselves, their friends, their loved ones? to see it in that large, unique way; I've never seen anything like it. It was stunning." As stunning as the end result appeared, Oliver soon discovered that turning personal photos into wallpaper was not quite as simple as they'd made it look on hDtV. For Oliver, however, that simply made the challenge more appealing. "One of the things I'm really good at is never quitting," he says. "When it gets super hard, I go to the wall." Oliver initially worked with an agency in new York to develop the computer soware needed for the photo part of the process, then went to Madison to participate in the "gener8tor" start-up accelerator program. Oliver hired technical co- founder Chris schmitz from De Pere to revamp and fine tune the company website into what it is today. It's all in how you don't frame it Oliver says the goal of WeMontage is to allow people to "live beyond the frame" in a physical and emotional sense. "First, you have an environment that, for whatever reason, picture frames just don't work. e kids' room, for example: If they're in there playing nerf basketball, you don't want frames in there," he explains. e emotional component, however, is what Oliver says can have the Dawn Nowakowski's WeMontage collage displays her daughter's passion for Hula hooping.