((PKG)) PRESERVING FAMILY LEGACY
((TRT: 08:34))
((Topic Banner: Preserving Your Legacy))
((Reporter: Faiza Elmasry))
((Camera/Editor: June Soh))
((Map: Virginia))
((Main characters: 2 female; 0 male))
((Sub characters: 1 female; 0 male))
((Blurb: Meet Heather Nickerson, co-founder and CEO of Artifcts, a platform that transforms cherished objects and their associated stories into tangible heirlooms meant to be passed down through generations.))
((NATS))
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
These are my most cherished artifacts ever. They're a pair of hiking boots I've had for almost two decades. They've carried me across four continents, thousands of miles, and dozens of countries. They remind me of all of life's ups and downs, and how no matter what life has thrown at me, I can tackle it one step at a time.

((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
My name is Heather Nickerson. I'm the Co-founder and CEO of Artifcts. This is a painting that my husband and I bought as a gift to each other after he recovered from his heart surgery and his stroke. It's by an artist named Stephen Powers. And to us, it really…it spoke to us. The ‘Nothing to say’, ‘Someone to say it to’ is what we hope as part of our growing old and gray together. Always having nothing to say, but always having something or someone to say it to.

((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
We'd like to say that truly any object that has a meaning or tells a story for you, it can be an artifact. This is my mom in the photo. She's the one that inspired us to create Artifcts. She passed away in 2016. She was very young. She was in her sixties when she passed away, and she left a house full of stuff. 6000 square feet of stuff to be precise. And my brothers and I wanted to keep the items that mattered most to her, except we had no way of knowing what those items actually were. Crystal, jewelry, china, artwork…those are relatively easy to figure out. There's a monetary value there. But what we wanted to keep were the ones that had the heart value, like what mattered to her. And I spent nearly two years doing a ton of research, and I found all these companies
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
that do like memory books or storybooks or, you know, there are apps that do inventory, but there is nothing that allowed you, as an individual,
((end Courtesy))
to take your story, take your history, take the memory and connect it with the object. And then also note like what do you want to happen to this object at the end of the day? So, at that point, when I realized there's nothing else really out there like this, really thought like, all right, this is something I want to do. I want to build this company that lets people connect the stories, the histories with the stuff. Not having a technology background, I really wasn't sure
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
how to start. I knew how to start a business, how to run a business. But on the tech side, I was a complete, just, I was at a loss.
((end Courtesy))
So thankfully, very early on in my career at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst, I met my co-founder, Ellen Goodwin, who, we grew up together at the agency. So, I reached out to her during COVID.

((Ellen Goodwin
Co-founder, Artifcts))

Actually, her story is very inspiring and very compelling. But I asked her, okay, so, how is this not an Excel sheet or an inventory or elaborate Post-it notes? And she more or less said, well, that's what we're going to figure out is how to do this together.
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
And we incorporated Artifcts right around the anniversary of my mother's death. So, it was a very symbolic moment for me of going from having this tremendous grief and loss and losing so much of my family history and my family story to actually starting a company that would help others ensure that that story, those histories, those memories get to live on through the stuff. ((NATS))
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
This is my mother's cookbook. It is one of my most cherished items from her. Her love language was food. So, she showed you she loved you by cooking all of her favorites, from blueberry buckle to the different birthday cakes, bonny butter cakes, spice cakes, even the Christmas cookies, gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. It's amazing. The stories the cookbook holds the memories for me. She was one that did not cook by recipes. She cooked by memory. So, she would have the cookbook open, but she wouldn't always follow exactly what was written. But I still, knowing that she touched the pages, and knowing that she used this cookbook day in, day out, is why it means so much to me.
((NATS))
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
This is element Artifcts. I'm popping into your day to make sure that you know how to add a custom banner into your Artifcts collection space. We built a website and also an app
((end Courtesy))
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
so that anyone, anywhere in the world can download our app or go to our
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
website, Artifcts, ARTIFCTS dot com. And once they're there, they can choose to create a free account. They can upload photos, video, audio of an object. The object could be an old photo. It could be an old pair of hiking boots. It could be a priceless family heirloom. Whatever the object has meaning to you, that is essentially an Artifct.
((end Courtesy))
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
So, we have members who have hundreds of artifacts, and they're entirely private. That's great. You are building your own personal digital museum
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
that tells your story, that documents your history. But a lot of our members love to share.
((end Courtesy))
((Ellen Goodwin
Co-founder, Artifcts))
This is a photo of my great aunt. She passed away recently, just hours before the age of 98. Little did her family know that when she was 20 years old, she stopped working at her parents’ local grocery store, to go and learn how to weld, and worked on the tales of airplanes for World War Two. And this is a photo of her welding at a facility in Illinois. This cat was carved by my mother when she was in high school. And I love it because it looks like you could have gotten it anywhere, but it was a piece of her history, and I have it in my own house as a decoration. On the bottom, you can see her name that she wrote there when she was in school and the year.
((Ellen Goodwin
Co-founder, Artifcts))
We had envisioned, you know, there's an optional field you can fill in at Artifct, which is location. We were thinking, okay, it's in the attic, it's in the garage, it's in the front hall closet, it's in my dresser drawer, it's on the bureau. But instead, genealogists were using location to say, if you want more information, go here in my family tree and here's a link, or here's a folder where I’ve stored hundreds of photos related to the same thing. So, we're always learning from our community, which is a lot of fun, frankly.
((Ellen Goodwin
Co-founder, Artifcts))
This box was given to me by my father. It has no story other than I always loved it growing up. And inside there used to be some coins and a cassette tape from his youth. And now I have it at my home.
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
So, we have thousands of members. They are all across the US and in dozens of countries overseas.
((NATS: Heather and Jeannette))
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
Hi, Jeanette.
((Jeanette
Artifcts member))
Hi, Heather.
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
Thank you for joining us from Denmark today. We're very happy
to have you as one of our earliest members here today. A couple of questions for you. We'd love to know, what are you currently artifacting?
((Jeanette
Artifcts member))
Currently I'm artifacting a lot of memories. I have been to a wonderful concert with my mom. She's 85, so I don't know how much longer I will have her. So, I've got that kind of moments and small videos.
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
We have folks, we had one member who just wrote in the other day. She wanted to know, she's got a pile of items to artifact, but she was having trouble taking a really good photo.
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
So, my co-founder Ellen wrote back and gave her a beautifully detailed response.
((Ellen Goodwin
Co-founder, Artifcts))
Avoid overhead lighting, right? Overhead lighting is a very big culprit in glares and in shadows that you might be competing with. If you can have a window, and set up next to it, and use the natural lighting, you can control which way the shadow falls and you're not competing with the overhead. I also gave a link in the article to where I buy plain paper, large sheets of plain paper that I can set down on the floor in front of the window, and place an object, and have a very neutral background so the object pops.
((Heather Nickerson
Co-founder, CEO, Artifcts))
So, one of the things that we find to be most heartwarming and also very humbling as founders is when we hear from our members how much Artifcts help them
((Courtesy: Artifcts))
either to cope with a grief process of losing a loved one or helping them to downsize and move from one stage of life to the next.
((end Courtesy))
((Ellen Goodwin
Co-founder, Artifcts))
Our whole objective was how do we make it as fun and simple as social media, but with none of the privacy trappings or the advertisements or any of those kinds of pressures.