Fabric and design. Creativity and color.
The Spoonflower community uses fabric to make quilts, clothes, pillows, dolls, blankets, handbags, framed textile art and many other things. When we're lucky, our customers post photos of the beautiful items they make in the Spoonflower photo gallery on Flickr.
Interest in crafting happens to be exploding right now. For a variety of reasons more and more people are drawn to the idea of doing it themselves, of creating things that are unique and carry within them a little bit of the passion of the individuals who made them.
The handmade revolution is being waged quietly. On blogs, in sewing groups, on Etsy storefronts and in homes, a lot of people have decided to make and to share things they think are beautiful.
We really liked the idea of expressing yourself through making new things. So we decided to make a company.
We launched the Spoonflower web site as a closed 'beta' at the very end of May 2008, shipping the first few hundred orders from our kitchen table. Word spread quickly. We moved into a real office in August. As of December, there are over 15,000 crafters signed up to use our site and we've sent fabric all over the world. You can get some sense of the enthusiasm of the craft community on our buzz page.
Stephen Fraser is an Internet marketing geek who used to consult for startup companies and who can't sew to save his life. One night after their three girls had gone to bed, his wife Kim interrupted his usual muttering to offer a suggestion: “You know what would be really cool? If I could print my own fabric.” Stephen agreed that did seem pretty cool.
Gart Davis doesn't know how to sew, either, but he does know a thing or two about technology. He used to run a company called Lulu.com that offers print-on-demand books. He figured print-on-demand fabric couldn't be all that different.
Kim Fraser serves as "crafter in chief," which means principally that she explains the meaning of difficult terms like "selvage" and "linen" to Stephen and Gart. She also runs the Spoonflower blog.
Anne Davis, also an avid crafter, serves as "chief spoon-counter" and is responsible for making sure we don't spend too much money.
Danielle Hazen is our resident color expert and in-house crafter. She found Spoonflower on her own and volunteered to come work for us, so we are especially grateful to her.
We decided to put Spoonflower HQ in an old sock mill in downtown Mebane, North Carolina, not far from the Haw River, which runs through the North Carolina Piedmont and was once lined with cotton textile mills. It's also true that Mebane is not too far from the cities of Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary, where technology companies like Red Hat, SAS, and IBM have headquarters. If you're in the area and want to drop by we're happy to give you the tour.
We owe an enormous amount of thanks for the help and advice of quite a few people and organizations, especially [TC]2, Viget Labs, and Yuhan-Kimberly. We also benefit from proximity to NC State University's College of Textiles and Cotton Inc. Spoonflower's art direction and logo are by Brains Are Pretty.Every day our customers amaze us with their talent and creativity. Our home page depicts just a small sample of their talent. Clockwise, starting from the handbag on the top left, the designs on the home page are by:
The designs on the sign-in page are by:
You can find us at: