The Country Register

The Country Register is a United States and Canadian network of independently owned and published specialty newspapers that provide targeted, effective, and affordable advertising promotion of Country and Victorian Shops, Unique Gift Shops, Tea Rooms, Bed and Breakfasts, Antique & Collectible Shops, Arts & Craft Shops, Quilting & Needlework and other things of interest to the consumer who enjoys outstanding shopping, day & overnight excursions, and specialty classes.

The papers are published bi-monthly and are primarily distributed through the advertising shops. The papers are free to our readers. If you would like to see if The Country Register is in your area, please click here.

How The Country Register Got Started

It has been a life long love affair between handcrafts and newspaper publisher Barbara Floyd, the founder of The Country Registers. As a child she would crochet yards and yards of string and wrap it into a ball. In grade school the teachers had her cutting construction paper letters for all the bulletin boards. Every craft had to be tried throughout the years, which culminated in a minor in art, along with a science major teaching degree. Her first teaching job in a Minneapolis high school was partly in the art department.

Barbara and her husband left Minnesota for Arizona to start a ceramic studio in Prescott. Another art job presented itself at the junior high level.

Always an entrepreneur at heart, it seemed only natural that, after raising four children, Barbara would pickup the pieces in the business world and tie it together with her love of handmade items. As mom, she managed to sneak a bit of that in as the Ways and Means Chairman for the PTA in the form of a large arts and crafts fundraiser in Arizona. When the school phased out that show, Barbara took it upon her self to start one of the first "home" arts and crafts shows. This instant success soon became popular all over Phoenix and it was at this point Barbara started a very small gift shop close to home. With a young daughter with the same talents and passions, it was a great "do it together" project.

Today, many years later, they are still "in this together." Daughter Barbra-Jean eventually owned the shop in its second location and was amongst the first of "country" shops in Arizona. This team also created one of the first tea room & gift shop in Arizona. Under new ownership, Gooseberries is still operating in Phoenix.

Needing an affordable and yet highly effective means of advertising, daughter told mom that she should do a newspaper. Mom said, "I guess I could do that," and she did. In 1988 in the fall of the year, The Country Register was born, and the first eight pager, in black and white, came to life with twenty-four advertisers. Some of those advertisers are still in business and if they are, they are steady, constant advertisers. The paper could probably be given credit for part of the success of the industry growing in the state of Arizona and has helped bond gift shop owners, crafters, quilters, and customers together statewide. The Arizona Country Register, at the present time, is usually forty or more pages and always in full color on the front, center and back.

Soon people in other states approached Barbara for help in starting Country Registers in their states. Thus a licensing agreement for the (now) nationally trademarked name and logo was arranged and Michigan, the state with a circulation today of 66,000 was the second Country Register. There are now over 40 Country Registers in the United States and Canada. If you would like to contact The Country Register please click here.