Spoonflower Continues to Grow

More than a dozen years after Gart Davis, serial entrepreneur and visionary, founded Spoonflower, he moved from the CEO role to COO and brought in a new CEO to help take the company to the next level. Michael Jones, an e-commerce veteran, has enthusiastically embraced his new role and delighted in sharing his story – and his vision of the future. Kerry King, Spoonflower’s senior vice president of research and development, also joined the conversation.

Printing News:  Michael, first, can you share with us what attracted you to the Spoonflower opportunity? It doesn’t look like you had textiles and apparel in your background.

MIchael Jones:  I met Gart and Allison about a year ago, and I started to learn about the business. Having spent the last 15 years in e-commerce, I quickly understood the concept of the marketplace of designers and consumers being able to buy designs, resulting in commissions being paid to artists. I got very interested in the whole print-on-demand concept that I hadn’t really seen in the e-commerce world. There are a lot of very interesting companies that exist because of the internet and new technology that helps bring the world closer, and Spoonflower was one of them, a great diamond-in-the-rough company that had a lot of good offerings. Also, I have been traveling a lot over my last four roles. I’ve lived in Raleigh for the last 25 years, and I wanted to be part of a great company here and help move it – and the city – forward.

PN:  Spoonflower, of course, does more than printing. What surprised you the most in your early days there?

MJ:  My mom has been a sewist forever, even making my Halloween costumes when I was a kid, and she made it look easy. During my first week at Spoonflower, I spent a lot of time on operations, including some time sewing. It was fun, but I realized I am not very good at it. And sewing machines have come a long way from when my mom was sewing!

PN:  How involved has Gart remained with the business?

MJ:  One thing about Gart, where he has the most passion about the business is everything around operations – printing, warehousing, etc. So he is still heavily involved as COO in everything to do with operations. He also works closely with Kerry [King] and her R&D team and our print partners. He’s also looking at new technology, processes and machines that can make us more efficient. He’s an entrepreneur at heart and has started and sold several businesses. But Spoonflower speaks to him, and he wants to stay engaged.

Kerry King:  He spends a lot of time in the factory, and he has such vision. He has the ability to push us beyond what we think we can do, especially in the current circumstances.

PN:  Since we haven’t spoken with you folks in a while, can you update us on what new equipment or capabilities you have added in the last year, and also what is happening in your Berlin operation?

MJ:  We have been doing pretty heavy and fast investments in the company, especially during April and May. First, we increased our operational facilities by 25,000 square feet in a somewhat unconventional manner. We did have about 5,000 square feet of new construction, but with our office folks now working from home and with the increased demand we are seeing, we converted 20,000 square feet of office space to manufacturing. Second, we invested in quite a bit of machinery – both in printing and cutting. And third, we brought on more employees as well, more than 35 people so far, and we will be adding more, primarily in customer service and operations. We are also adding employees to our Berlin operation, which is also seeing the same explosive growth.

KK:  In terms of the machinery, we have some important projects we have undertaken. In the fabric-by-the-yard and home décor spaces, we are printing with pigment technology. We have two important partners in our printing platform, Durst and Kornit. In both cases, we have had a lot of support in terms technology implementation as we scale our operations. We have split some of the surge in demand across those platforms, and we brought in three additional Kornit Presto roll-to-roll printers, which involved a rapid renovation of our factory to accommodate additional high-speed printing technology. It almost doubled our natural fiber printing capacity. We’re also doing some things in the wallpaper space, adding additional cutting technology, and looking hard at other parts of the manufacturing operation where key pieces of equipment will be helpful for us, including sewing and technology for our wallpaper and dye sublimation polyester printing areas.

PN:  I also understand Spoonflower has played a significant role in enabling its maker community to support pandemic efforts through the making of masks and other PPE.

MJ:  Absolutely. As the world became aware of the urgent nature of the pandemic, I was going through the factory, and one of our sewists said she felt there was something we could do to help. That moved us to quickly launch a multi-phase approach. First, we put the word out that we would donate $10,000 worth of fabric and masks, and we were inundated with requests fairly quickly, mainly from healthcare workers. And our community jumped in to help. For example, we received an urgent request from the Beverly Hospital ICU for 400 masks, and we couldn’t produce them that fast. We turned to the Facebook group Sew We Care, whose members in the Boston area made the masks and sent them out. In addition, we had a basic cotton fabric we were no longer making available on the site which we sold to our current customers that were making masks at cost – we sold enough of that to make more than 150,000 non-medical-grade masks through the end of May, leveraging Spoonflower’s more than 1.8 million design options and our easy-to-use mask kits. And I’m pretty sure that Spoonflower had a hand in a pretty significant share of the hundreds of thousands of masks that our maker community has sold on sites such as Etsy. Based on the amount of fabric we sold that was potentially made into masks, we estimate that more than a million masks have been created through the power of the Spoonflower platform/supply chain. The pandemic has really highlighted how special our employees and our community of artists and makers are. In addition to masks, we have people making gowns and headwear. The fact that they have been able to adapt so quickly to all of this is incredible.

PN:  What do you think is the most important development we will see in the coming months or years in digital fabric printing that will help shift the industry to more digital fabric printing? (We’re at about 6.9% of all printed fabrics globally being digitally printed now, according to WTIN, up from about 6% in the past year).

KK:  We think this scenario we are in currently is an interesting one in terms of driving business to digital print service providers. Companies like Spoonflower that work directly with consumers and makers and digital printing make a whole lot of sense in any circumstance in the space where customization is highly valued by consumers. But if you look at how supply chains are being challenged, there are now lots of discussions about the advantages of domestic manufacturing and working with local providers to fulfill the product manufacturing needs you might have. Digital printing is a good fit in that space because it can be distributed geographically with the print service provider closer to the end consumer and designer. There are also merchandizing benefits, specifically in this case of where the demand for masks will continue to grow over the coming year. It’s an example of a space in which once we get over the initial fear factor associated with it, consumers are starting to want masks to be reflective of their personality; and short-run digital printing is all about that. As a culture, as we adopt that level of customization, it opens the door to other product opportunities. Wallpaper is a good example. With more people working from home, they want to decorate their new work environment. Working from home will continue for some time; we are expecting that might not change soon. And of course, as we connect with new customers, we are looking to help them understand the value and design opportunities we can set before them and hope we can turn them into long-term customers. Spoonflower is one example of how companies in the digital print space can change the supply chain from here on out, especially those that also have sewing capability.  

MJ:  We are excited to be leading a company that can prove that textiles can be done locally. New technology allows it to happen, with less waste and pollution, and we will continue to take a leadership role here. And we are also opening up opportunities for independent artists to make money. In April, we paid out the largest commissions that we have ever done in the history of the company. That matters in a world where there is high unemployment and you have these great designers; it’s a very great outcome, not only for our employees, but what we enable in the community. The check for one designer was large enough that we had to make a change in the way we make payments. That makes me feel good.