NCTA will host six start-ups in the consumer technology industry as part of our Thought Leaders event with Walt Mossberg on January 17, 2013 at the Umstead Hotel.
NCTA asked Ann Revell-Pechar to interview these companies’ CEOs to whet your appetite about some very cool companies located here in N.C.
The latest interview is with Spoonflower.
Other companies to be featured include Sqord, Vallencell, INRFOOD, Spoonflower, Reverb Nation and Gema Touch.
Visit with these companies at the North Carolina Technology Association’s January 17 Thought Leaders event featuring Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal Columnist at The Umstead Hotel.
Interview: Spoonflower - Reigning in the World of Custom Fabric
Great business ideas come from interesting places. Take Spoonflower, for example. This four year old start-up is arguably a leader in the oh-so-hot crafters market. The idea came from … listening.
Stephen Fraser and his business partner Gart Davis were keeping their eyes open for a new business idea five years ago, and heard his wife one day — frustrated because she wanted to make some yellow polka dot curtains, but the fabric was not to be found. Why couldn’t fabric be custom printed, in this day of custom everything?
So in 2008 Stephen and Gart started a blog for quilters and crafters about fabric and posted a questionnaire, asking if designing and printing personalized fabric would be of interest. Within days there were 500 responses, and by the end of the summer they had 10,000 people on the waiting list for their “go live” notification.
Understand, Gart and Stephen knew nothing about fabric or textiles. But their years at Lulu.com, helping people publish books and create calendars, etc., taught them that the Internet could be a conduit for just about anything to be produced digitally, and could serve as the front end for the manufacturing process.
Remember where these guys founded Spoonflower: in the heart of America’s textile manufacturing mecca. It was a dry mecca, but a mecca just the same. The talent, the resources – everything was here to create a success from the get-go.
And go they did. They got some space in an old sock mill in downtown Mebane, NC, bought a textile printer, and they were off to the races.
According to Fraser, “Spoonflower couldn’t have happened anywhere else but North Carolina. We exist at the intersection of textiles and technology. We came from the technology side, but the expertise we relied on came from NC State College of Textiles, the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorist, Cotton Inc.– the list of experts goes on and on. The guidance they provided when we were fumbling novices was critical, and was available to us because North Carolina is a place with such a textile-rich history.”
Today, Spoonflower has 47 employees, more than 1 Million members of the online community, and are growing 100% year over year.
They finished 2012 with $7 million in revenue, due primarily to the explosive growth of their community of people creating clothing, pillows, blankets… any kind of custom textile work. But the key is how that community grows.
“Our community draws not just designers but those who enjoy finding new designs and designers. The glue is a weekly fabric design contest we host to uncover new talent. Anyone can enter; anyone can vote. It provides structure for the community and has drawn designers from across the world. We get an ‘American Idol’ effect, where designers get popular and gain notoriety – some are even signed by major fabric companies.”
The name Spoonflower comes from a common wildflower in North Carolina that grows on the edges of swamps. “Kim (Fraser’s wife) & I fell in love with it when planting a rain garden in backyard. It was such a crafty kind of name that it just stuck.”
This is creative group. At the end of 2012 they expanded to provide custom wallpaper, decorative wall decals, and holiday decorations.
This is the company’s first expansion outside of textiles – and so far so good. Just wait until you see what they have up their sleeves for 2013
