Gem City Style: Flagship City Press
An Interview with Dena Rupp and Corinne Kraus
Don't forget about Eighth Street!
A year after moving from pop-up tents into a 120-year-old storefront on Masonic Row, Flagship City Press owners Dena Rupp and Corinne Kraus are still keeping Erie weird. Now they'd like you to sit down and make something.
When Flagship City Press, a bespoke stationery store offering originally designed, Erie-centric gifts and goods, opened its doors on Masonic Row last November, the displays were simply banquet tables with tablecloths thrown over them. Rupp and Kraus had signed the lease in September, leaving two months, "if that," to turn a former barber shop on West Eighth Street into a stationery and gift shop. They opened on Gallery Night, the Friday after Thanksgiving 2025, and were back behind the counter for Small Business Saturday the next morning.
"Nobody cared," Kraus says of the tablecloths. "We were super busy on Small Business Saturday, open to close. People just love the vibes."
A year later, the banquet tables are gone, replaced by custom shelving, a vending machine of mini Erie prints, a free little library, and a back room that went viral on TikTok this fall. Getting here took eight years, one rained-out flea market, and a cat café.
Rupp and Kraus, family friends, worked together as graphic designers at Kim Copy on Eighth Street, where Kraus still works full time. By 2018, Erie's shop-small scene was coming alive, and they saw a void.
"There were a lot of line drawings of Erie at the time," Kraus says. "We were like, what if we got more Etsy? More illustration is fun."
Their first outing, a Flagship Flea at Federal Hill, was a washout. "It poured," Rupp says. "We were one of maybe three vendors who showed up."
They came back for the next one with a red tent, a quick banner, and a handful of prints thrown together at the last minute between full-time jobs. They sold. Those early designs are still among the shop's best sellers: Keep Erie Weird, a lineup of hometown snacks (think sponge candy and orange twist cones), and Presque Isle turtles sunning on a log. The Keep Erie Weird postcard made the cover of this paper's Shop Local issue a few years back.
"That was the vibe we were going for," Rupp says. "Weird and fun, but iconic and recognizable. People love food. Anywhere you travel, food is such a nostalgia. People are always telling us their Smith's hot dog stories, and how they're shipping stuff to their kids or family who've moved away."
For years Flagship City Press stayed a side project while Rupp opened Purrista Cat Café, which turns five years old this Valentine's Day, and Kraus kept the Etsy orders moving.
Then, a year ago, the storefront next to Purrista became available. "I said to Corinne, I want to show you something. Come meet me," Rupp says. Kraus got about a week to decide.
"We both knew it was crazy, but we both knew it was now or never," Rupp says. "Either this was going to happen, or Flagship was probably going to dissolve, because we were just so busy."
She wasn't going to do it alone. "I wanted Corinne to be part of this," Rupp says. Kraus, for her part, credits Rupp's drive. "She gets involved," Kraus says. "[But] I'll sit back and let you talk to all the people."
The building dates to 1907 – the shelving, by Gary Hubbard of Harborcreek, comes apart and moves around as the stock changes. Despite the name, Flagship City Press Stationery and Goods is not all paper: they stock embroidery and flower-press kits, puzzles and cards that run from G-rated to PG-13.
Rupp, who came from food rather than retail, doesn't sugarcoat the learning curve. "Running a business is not a cakewalk, especially with pricing going up," she says. Rupp has learned that the opening is the easy part. "It gets hyped up in the beginning, and then the real work starts," she says. "You have to keep your name out there, and that's the hard part."
Everything in stock at Flagship City Press is made with Erie in mind – from items featuring local food-related nostalgia items to Erie landmarks and everything in between. (Photos: Jessica Hunter)
Emily Ernes at Glass Growers Gallery had warned Rupp how quiet retail gets after the holidays. Then Rupp's sister-in-law, a Pittsburgh native, asked whether she'd heard of a craft café. Rupp, a self-described research-aholic, fell down the rabbit hole, and in early September Flagship's back room became the Craft Cafe.
It runs off a menu, a nod to Rupp's food-service background. "Appetizers" are quick projects for anyone with an hour for an appointment; "entrées" take longer; there's also a kids' menu and a monthly special. Scan a QR code and your drink order goes to Purrista, and a barista brings it over.
The projects draw on what the two already know: sublimation from the print shop, painted canvases from Rupp's classes at Purrista, plus magnets, and the current hot commodity, trinket frames. "It's that nostalgia," Rupp says. "Sitting down, getting off your phone, and making something for yourself or someone else."
They launched quietly on purpose, then that TikTok took off and the weekends started to fill up. The shop is open Wednesday through Sunday.
For anyone who swears they aren't creative, every project comes with an instruction sheet, and the totes and magnets carry a light sketch to fill in, a sip-and-paint trick. "Really, you can't mess it up," she says. "You're here to have fun."
Rupp's standing refrain is that nobody should forget the corner at Eighth and Peach, a block off State Street and a short walk from Gannon. It comes from a bigger conviction about where she has chosen to build.
"[The] Downtown of any city should be the heartbeat," she says. "Downtown Erie is really trying to grow and do all this really cool stuff, and to be a part of it is awesome. It's a lot of work, obviously. It's exciting."
The work is the part people don't see. Both owners will tell you that October through December carries a small business, that January and February are when everyone wants to hunker down, and that this has been a rough year on top of it – with gas and food prices climbing alongside other costs. Their answer has been to treat the block as a team rather than a set of competitors. Last Small Business Saturday, Sam of Sundae Vegan Desserts set up in Flagship's back room, and Masonic Row ran its own "passport," with stamps to collect at each stop. On the corner, Barbie of Bespoke Tailoring and her fiancé, Mitch, "work really hard," Rupp says. "Barbie was just a breath of fresh air." The same goes for the whole row, she says. "Everyone is just open-minded. We're willing to work together. We're willing to try to bring people here. I'm grateful for that."
This year that spirit reaches past the row. Rupp is helping organize a cookie tour with the Miracle on State Street crew, and she went door to door to bring Eighth Street in. "No one ever remembers us," Rupp says. "I'm like, let's try to change that." She sees the tour as a way to kick off the holiday season together, "and the start of future things."
Kraus makes the case for shopping small in terms of where the money goes. "There's families that we're helping out. You're giving back to the community," she says. "A lot of people don't understand how small businesses are a huge part of the community. If you could just take some time to come and visit and shop, you're really giving back to a whole slew of things, not just a corporation."
Before I left, I asked what card they'd send Erie this holiday season. Kraus picked one already on the shelf: There's no place like home.
"A lot of people leave Erie thinking it's better somewhere else," she says. "Then they realize they miss certain things, and that Erie actually is a great place to live."
"Shopping local, supporting local, is so important, especially right now. These are the gems in your city," she says. "When you go visit other places, where are you going? You're going to these places. Celebrating your town and the people who are putting risks out there to create this awesome space – this is what it's about."
Learn more about Flagship City Press at flagshipcitypress.com
Gem City Style is a monthly column featuring an intimate profile of someone making a creative impact in Erie. If you or someone you know would make a good fit for a future Gem City Style, email jessica@eriereader.com
