Collection Drops
Did you know that every few weeks, we drop a designed and curated collection? These pieces are hand picked straight from us, to you! And, some of you were wondering how we came up with the ideas, so I thought I’d check in with a few of the executive team and give you a bird’s eye view of just how each collection rolls.
To give a little background, Tara likes to have three ‘working’ collections at once. While it may seem like a lot of work, these collections are all in different phases and gives us a better handle on being able to work in great detail, with each one, as well as having a more successful and smooth launch. While we’re in talks about ideas on one collection, another collection will be in the ‘adding’ process, and the third collection is the ‘almost ready for launch’, just waiting for us to tie it up in a bow—to make sure all designs are completed like we want, organized, and priced correctly.
So, who comes up with the themes? That’s the executive team. They begin brainstorming ideas and space each drop to correlate with the time of the year and holidays on a calendar. From that, they begin to snowball ideas: what do we want to see within this? What is our goal with this collection? Once the exec team has a firm idea, Whitney gets to work on her computer. She likes music to help keep her zoned in; usually designing in the mornings before photoshoots and then in the afternoons if she’s not needed for Facebook Lives or other content purposes. Each design takes her 15-20 minutes to complete. From there, she uploads it into a Dropbox file.
A member of our team will then grab each design that Whitney uploaded into Dropbox and begin entering them onto a platform of a third party. Then, those designs are adjusted from what color stitching to use, centering on a graphic, and what model will be used to showcase the product. Once a team member has finished all these things, those designs are then pushed to our main platform to start the organization process. From there, another team member goes in and organizes each sub category to make sure all ‘like’ things are together. Things are sorted and made aesthetically pleasing, as well as, new website links created, so you all can easily shop!
All of this may seem like a semi easy process but each one takes time and dedication from everyone on our staff with designing, creating, photoing, content, and adding to the website. Because Whitney is the foundation of our designs, I asked her a couple questions and you can see her answers below:
What’s your FAVORITE collection that you’ve designed, so far?
I loveeeee the athletic line. Every single item and design is something I’d personally wear and I’m so proud of the quality. I may or may not have designed the TV show graphics to go well with the bike shorts and leggings from the athletic line… selfishly. Hahah
What’s your favorite part about the designing process?
I love having a creative outlet where I can get my gears going, work through ideas and produce something I’m super proud of. I also love seeing the complete collections when we launch them and seeing which items really resonate with our customers.
What is your favorite merch, launching on Friday?
SO that’s tough because I love all the shows. But I loveeee the Schitt’s creek mugs and the shirts are really rad, and the New Girl shirts were really fun to make. I love the Fruit Wines sweatshirt (from Schitt’s Creek), and the street youth’s sweatshirt (from New Girl) Picking quotes from each show was hilarious and very difficult.
Did you have to go back and watch a few episodes of each to know what quotes, phrases and lines you wanted to use?
I youtubed the different scenes and it was a collaborative effort with the girls here because Amanda, J, Lys, and Tara all know the shows like the back of their hands hahaha, so we got to decide together which quote or scene we wanted on different shirts or mugs. There were times we were cry laughing at the different dumb quotes.
TV Collection launches on Friday and includes the following shows merch: Friends, New Girl, Schitts Creek, The Office, Gossip Girls, Outer Banks, Parks and Rec., Gilmore Girls, and One Tree Hill. Look for your favorite shows merch on Friday at 9a CST!