Orange and Turquoise Sets
This is another post on my textile design process. My design and business strategy is to combine hand processed surface textile design with digital technology.
Design Strategy
This weekend, I completed (well, kind of) the sets for the orange and turquoise shibori fabric. The idea is to have at least three coordinating fabrics that can be mixed and matched for quilting, garment, accessory, and interior design.
The problem in designing with digital processes is all of the possibilities. Eventually, I have to force myself to release the work into the universe and move on to the next pattern, motif, design.
Short recap
The original fabric is 2 yards of white, 5mm, silk habotai. The fabric was dyed several times using a variety of shibori or resist processes. Digital photographs of the fabric were uploaded into Photoshop, then into Illustrator for creating motifs and patterns, and finally back into Photoshop to be saved as tiffs.
This is the orange shibori set. The set consists of a repeat (the distance between the beginning of one complete motif, or design unit, and the beginning of the next one, can be horizontal or vertical) of a section of the original fabric; a stripe where the original fabric is used as a background covered with a white transparent layer at 50%; and a little motif created from an elliptical shape of the original fabric and a pink ellipse at a 70% transparency. The fourth image is the little motif in a mirrored repeat.
The image above is of the turquoise set. This set consists of: a section of the original fabric edited in Illustrator to create an overall pattern (in the upper left corner); a geometric block motif with a narrow golden horizontal stripe and a background of the original fabric enlarged, with a golden green layer covering the background at a 60% transparency; one striped pattern is composed of a stripe of the original fabric, a black stripe and a gold stripe on the same background as the geometric block motif; and the second stripe is composed with solid green, turquoise, black and rust stripes on same background used for the geometric motif and the first stripe.
Business Strategy - Digital Fabric Samples
I used Spoonflower, an online digital fabric print house, to have samples of the fabric printed. Those will be posted next week. You'll have an opportunity to see the difference in color. While I'm waiting for the color samples to arrive (takes about a week), I'll continue to refine the designs.
Additional online digital fabric print houses include KarmaKraft, Fabric on Demand and Eye Candey. While these shops are set up to simplify the online digital fabric printing process, don't overlook the many print houses where individual customer service is offered as an intial part of the process. Even the big guys will offer sample runs and small quantities of yardage, often with a larger selection of fabric.
Business Strategy - Pricing the Fabric
Printed quilting weight fabric costs $18 for a 44X36 inch yard. Pricing on a fat quarter is not rocket science. Just jump on etsy or artfire and search for fat quarter, yardage, quilting fabric, handmade fabric or spoonflower. The fat quarter prices range around $10 to $11. (I don't pay much attention to anything priced at the low end of the scale. I figure those folks won't be in business very long, if they are creating original products and not pricing accurately.)
A fat quarter is one quarter of a square yard of fabric, cut to about 18x22 inches as compared to a regular quarter-yard cut which measures 9x45 inches.
The printing cost of a yard of fabric is $18, four fat quarters sell for $44 at $11 per fat quarter. The difference between the print cost and the sales price is $26. (There are lots of other costs associated with designing, producing and packaging the fabric, but that's another article. You aren't interested, at the moment, in hearing me rant about underpricing on the internet. We'll get acquainted first, then I'll let the monster out.)
Business Strategy - Internet Marketing
The yardage will be sold online at yasmintoo! on artfire and etsy.
I'll advertise on this blog, hubpages, facebook, linkedin, flickr, quilting webrings, fabric webrings, interior design webrings, etc.
Online advertising is more than just signing up with a social network and posting a comment. For your effort to be effective, you'll need to join groups (lots of groups) on each site, participate in discussions, comment on others' work and ask folks to join your network. In other words, you have to work it.
Expect it to take at least three months to see any actual return on this investment of your time and energy. You will get a return, and watching your audience and sales build is exciting. (At least I think so.)
A press release will be prepared and distributed through free pr sites. (This list is from 2007, check that each listing is still viable.) Later, when the budget allows I will use PRWeb, an online pr service that costs approximately $90 a month.
Business Strategy - Bricks and Mortar Marketing
Internet marketing is great, but bricks and mortar marketing and stores are still players in the game. This week the San Diego Quilt Show is at the Convention Center. That means I will get a hair cut, pluck and wax the facial hair, buy a few new makeup products for the fall, put on my best "I am a fabric designer" outfit along with fashionable but comfortable shoes, make sure I have plenty of business cards and give aways, and spend two days enjoying myself looking at beautiful quilts while I'm promoting my business.
I'll pass out business cards, but, more important, I'll also collect them. As soon as I get home these folks will go on my mailing list. I send out an e-newsletter monthly, using ConstantContact. A new list and most likely a special newsletter will be designed for this contact group. Using my archive of fabric photos, I'll give my quilt show contacts as broad a view of my textiles as possible in the first newsletter.
More on design strategies and surface designed textile business strategies with yasmintoo! and ytooty next time. Have a great week!
Design Strategy
This weekend, I completed (well, kind of) the sets for the orange and turquoise shibori fabric. The idea is to have at least three coordinating fabrics that can be mixed and matched for quilting, garment, accessory, and interior design.
The problem in designing with digital processes is all of the possibilities. Eventually, I have to force myself to release the work into the universe and move on to the next pattern, motif, design.
Short recap
The original fabric is 2 yards of white, 5mm, silk habotai. The fabric was dyed several times using a variety of shibori or resist processes. Digital photographs of the fabric were uploaded into Photoshop, then into Illustrator for creating motifs and patterns, and finally back into Photoshop to be saved as tiffs.
Business Strategy - Digital Fabric Samples
I used Spoonflower, an online digital fabric print house, to have samples of the fabric printed. Those will be posted next week. You'll have an opportunity to see the difference in color. While I'm waiting for the color samples to arrive (takes about a week), I'll continue to refine the designs.
Additional online digital fabric print houses include KarmaKraft, Fabric on Demand and Eye Candey. While these shops are set up to simplify the online digital fabric printing process, don't overlook the many print houses where individual customer service is offered as an intial part of the process. Even the big guys will offer sample runs and small quantities of yardage, often with a larger selection of fabric.
Business Strategy - Pricing the Fabric
Printed quilting weight fabric costs $18 for a 44X36 inch yard. Pricing on a fat quarter is not rocket science. Just jump on etsy or artfire and search for fat quarter, yardage, quilting fabric, handmade fabric or spoonflower. The fat quarter prices range around $10 to $11. (I don't pay much attention to anything priced at the low end of the scale. I figure those folks won't be in business very long, if they are creating original products and not pricing accurately.)
A fat quarter is one quarter of a square yard of fabric, cut to about 18x22 inches as compared to a regular quarter-yard cut which measures 9x45 inches.
The printing cost of a yard of fabric is $18, four fat quarters sell for $44 at $11 per fat quarter. The difference between the print cost and the sales price is $26. (There are lots of other costs associated with designing, producing and packaging the fabric, but that's another article. You aren't interested, at the moment, in hearing me rant about underpricing on the internet. We'll get acquainted first, then I'll let the monster out.)
Business Strategy - Internet Marketing
The yardage will be sold online at yasmintoo! on artfire and etsy.
I'll advertise on this blog, hubpages, facebook, linkedin, flickr, quilting webrings, fabric webrings, interior design webrings, etc.
Online advertising is more than just signing up with a social network and posting a comment. For your effort to be effective, you'll need to join groups (lots of groups) on each site, participate in discussions, comment on others' work and ask folks to join your network. In other words, you have to work it.
Expect it to take at least three months to see any actual return on this investment of your time and energy. You will get a return, and watching your audience and sales build is exciting. (At least I think so.)
A press release will be prepared and distributed through free pr sites. (This list is from 2007, check that each listing is still viable.) Later, when the budget allows I will use PRWeb, an online pr service that costs approximately $90 a month.
Business Strategy - Bricks and Mortar Marketing
Internet marketing is great, but bricks and mortar marketing and stores are still players in the game. This week the San Diego Quilt Show is at the Convention Center. That means I will get a hair cut, pluck and wax the facial hair, buy a few new makeup products for the fall, put on my best "I am a fabric designer" outfit along with fashionable but comfortable shoes, make sure I have plenty of business cards and give aways, and spend two days enjoying myself looking at beautiful quilts while I'm promoting my business.
I'll pass out business cards, but, more important, I'll also collect them. As soon as I get home these folks will go on my mailing list. I send out an e-newsletter monthly, using ConstantContact. A new list and most likely a special newsletter will be designed for this contact group. Using my archive of fabric photos, I'll give my quilt show contacts as broad a view of my textiles as possible in the first newsletter.
More on design strategies and surface designed textile business strategies with yasmintoo! and ytooty next time. Have a great week!
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Yasmin