Wrapping Up a Very Busy 2025

A lot happened this year, but most of it took place behind the scenes. That's why we think it would be helpful to provide a brief summary.

Our biggest project was updating our product portfolio to include three new wall art options for each map. This task presented many expected and unforeseen challenges and took more time than anticipated. However, we are very pleased with the outcome. Thanks to our persistence, we can now offer all of our river basin maps in three ready-to-hang formats, with free worldwide shipping.

Another significant undertaking was creating Etsy listings for most of the products found in the Map Shop. Long-time followers may recall that nine years ago, this business started with an Etsy shop where Robert sold digital maps. When we switched to selling paper prints, we had to close the Etsy shop because it was not possible to work on both platforms. Now, all of our river basin maps can be found on Etsy again, which has delighted some of our long-standing customers. We've received several messages saying that people are glad to see us selling on the platform again.

Other areas we have tried to focus on this year are product optimisation and SEO to make it easier for people to find us through searches, translations to make our maps and collaborations available to non-English speakers, and laying the groundwork for wholesale.

While the number of collaborations somewhat stagnated this year, some projects are definitely worth mentioning:

• Since last month you can find our globe and US river basin map at Disney's EPCOT Educational Theme Park in Florida. 
• The lovely people at Nature Conservancy rocked our Africa T-shirts at their Africa Freshwater meeting in Kenya earlier this year
• American Dendrite had its world premiere at the Lighthouse International Film Festival (Read the article about our collaboration here.)
• We also continued our work with Living River Colorado and with Camille de Toledo and the team of scientists behind 'Vers une Internationale des Rivières et Autres Éléments de la Nature'.

Looking forward to next year's exciting projects!

But first, we are saying goodbye to this year with a vacation. We said goodbye to the sun a few days ago, now it's time to get cozy and hibernate for a few weeks before starting anything new.

Pictured: Robert is enjoying the last rays of the sun before it disappears behind the mountains, not to return until mid-January.