We spent spring break visiting my sister, Rachel, and her family in Durham, North Carolina. Spoonflower is headquartered there and I got in touch with the marketing team a few weeks before my trip to see if I might come for a visit. We scheduled a podcast interview with co-founder Stephen Fraser and they invited me to lunch as well. So exciting!
Before I went I watched this short video to get a sense of the place:
On Tuesday afternoon Charlie took the older girls to tour the Duke campus and my sister took Josephine and I headed out for the afternoon.
Thanks to my sister for dropping me off and for taking this picture of me before I went in. I was a little nervous.
Spoonflower is located in an office park in Durham. They’ve moved several times as the company has grown and they’re getting ready to add even more space.
You enter into an adorably decorated lobby full of Spoonflower fabrics, wrapping papers, and wallpapers in action.
Past the lobby is a large open office space. Over 100 people work at Spoonflower and it’s pretty bustling. Lots of computers and lots of fabric.
Wall of base cloths.
From the office area you can see onto the printing floor where crews work 24 hours a day 7 days a week printing fabric. They have two new digital printers made by an Israeli company. Each printer is large enough to park your car inside.
These printers are very fast and powerful.
The majority of Spoonflower fabrics are printed on these smaller printers, but everyone is clearly excited about the big ones.
Each printer has a name and a personality. These are some notes about how to adjust this one for different substrates.
Three things are really struck me as I toured the facility. The first is how little dye digital printing uses in comparison to other printing processes.
These inks look just like the ink cartridges in my printer only larger.
The second is how little waste there is. No dye runoff. Any misprints are shredded and sent off to be reused for things like carseat fill.
Empty tubes that once held rolls of fabric.
And third is how much organization is involved in keeping hundreds of thousands of tiny orders straight! The average Spoonflower order is a yard or two of fabric. Many people order multiple small cuts that are printed throughout the day. Plus some customers pay for rush shipping. Keeping track of it all is a huge job!
Shelves containing orders that are still in progress.
Every order gets a custom barcode that’s printed right onto the fabric. Spoonflower software engineers have developed a customized system for tracking and filling orders. It’s impressive! Orders are hand cut and wrapped and each receipt is signed with a cheerful note from a staffer.
After my tour co-founder Stephen Fraser took me and two members of the marketing team out for lunch. When we returned to the offices Stephen and I sat down and recorded a podcast episode. I’ll air the show on Monday, May 4.
Like my trip to Craftcation last month, visiting Spoonflower was like seeing my online life in real life. I so appreciated the warm welcome!
So interesting! Did they talk about dye fastness and washability? I was so excited when Spoonflower launched and over a year I ordered 3 fabrics. Alas, all of them had streaks of dye come out as soon as they went in the (cold, gentle) wash, and when I spoke with their customer service they said that they knew that happened a lot. Granted, this was a few years ago – do you know if they’ve changed things now?
Yes, they did. They have a research and development team that works on this issue quite a bit. Dye fastness and washability are two issues that they have worked to improve over the years and are continuing to work on. I recommend listening to the interview when it airs because Stephen addresses this, too, and maybe get a swatch now and see what you think.
Thanks for the inside scoop! I look forward to hearing the podcast too!
Thanks, Christine!
Great post! I love seeing behind the scenes looks.
Thanks!
Wow! I loved the photos. Last year I bought some fabrics from Spoonflower and I was amazed by how fast and nice was the service (also cheap!). It’s nice to see how they work from the inside. I’m looking forward to hearing your podcast!
Honestly, it was such a fun place to visit and such a neat business to learn about. I was really inspired to work on my own tiny business after seeing such success.
Those new printers are so cool! I havent been to the new faciliy. Did you get to shop at Thimble Pleasures? Julie’s original shop was in Carrboro and it was my first quilt shop back in the 1990s. She used to sell my small paper pieced pins. Her stor in Chapel Hill is so great!
Hi Colleen,
I didn’t make it to Thimble Pleasures on this trip. My one bit of time away from family was at Spoonflower on this trip, but my sister and her family live in Durham now so I know we’ll be back and ready to do some more exploring in the coming years!
Wow, it’s amazing how much Spoonflower has grown since it started. Digital fabric printing has come a long way since I first was introduced to it in Italy as a way to get our swimwear fabric printed before it went to production. I’m looking forward to hearing this podcast and learning about the innovations they’re working on. Thanks! (The substrate wall is adorable.)
This is such a fun look into Spoonflower! I knew nothing about how they worked, and this is just so fascinating. Also-super jealous of that armchair with scissor fabric!
Oh, what a great place to visit. I am looking forward to the podcast. I have been hooked on printing at Spoonflower for years. It is so fun to see your art printed on fabric. For you, it would be great for some of your designs to save some of the cutting and sewing steps.
The first commenter beat me to it. The idea of Spoonflower is intriguing and the vast amount of fabric designs appealing, but that pesky problem of fading and not being quite up to snuff, have kept me from ordering. I don’t see the point of using fabric with those problems. But I’m rooting for them and hope they figure this out in the near future!
Wonderful article. Thanks for the behind-the-scenes look.
Thanks for the post and forthcoming podcast on Spoonflower. The factory pictures are so informative. I’ve often thought about ordering a custom fabric from them but,
feel intimidated by all of the unfamiliar lingo. Thanks again, Abby
Kim,
One thing I didn’t realize until recently is that Spoonflower has a tool right on their website that will automatically tile your design. So all you have to do is draw something (or take a picture), scan and upload to the Spoonflower site. From there you can create the repeat quickly and easily and then just place your order or put it up for sale. It’s pretty great for those of us who aren’t adept at Photoshop or Illustrator!
This is fascinating! I live in Charlotte, NC and had no idea that Spoonflower was right around the corner from me. Do you know whether the colorfast issues are less significant if you dry clean only, like for draperies or garments (I don’t have the nerve to give someone a quilt and tell them they need to dry clean it)?
I think it might depend on how often you wash something? I just ordered a yard of canvas to make a tote bag for my 9-year-old (it’s a math print and the tote will be used for her after school math class). I washed it on cool with Woolite right when it arrived and it came out looking perfect. A tote bag is the something we’ll wash occasionally and I’m pretty sure it will be okay.
What a treat for you! It’s wonderful that textile production is still making business in North Carolina but in these fresh ways. (My husband had many relatives that worked in the old NC mills.) I’m looking forward to hearing about those printing machines. I love that kind of stuff.
I was totally nerding out about the printers. You should visit if you’re ever there, Amy! Spoonflower’s original headquarters were in an abandoned sock mill. It’s truly neat to see a textile business thriving in that area again.
Abby,
Thanks so much for sharing your trip. I am looking forward to seeing the podcast. I Love Spoonflower, so this is great.
Teresa
Abby,
I am so looking forward to the podcast. I started uploading designs to Spoonflower the year they opened, and have been through all the ups and downs with them as a designer. I haven’t ordered that much yardage from them, but I do order all my designs in swatch blankets to proof the colors. Right now I am uber-frustrated with the color shifts that occur from substrate to substrate – I’m working with customers to customize designs and colors specifically for their project, and to get the colors right for the substrate they need requires that they order multiple swatches to give the “go ahead”…which takes a really dedicated customer!
My great wish for Spoonflower is that they have their software engineers create an “app” so that when a customer clicks on any design, and then on the substrates they are considering, that the program would show a color bar that compares the colors in the substrates selected. I realize everyone’s monitors are different, but at least they could see the color shifts before ordering and potentially being disappointed.
Can’t wait to see what those new printers can do!
Best,
Linda McMullan
Lula Belle Style
Your post gives us a wonderful glimpse into this fascinating company. I can’t wait to hear your podcast with Stephen. And thanks for the tip about the tile section of the Spoonflower website. I’ve been playing with patterns after taking Creativebug’s fabric design class but as of yet I don’t have the tiling skill down pat.
I used to work in the printing industry and I remember the first time I saw that the large format digital printers could be used for printing fabric. It’s simply amazing. How lucky you are to have been able to connect with Spoonflower and see what it is all about. Wouldn’t it be fun to set up a local fabric print shop…
Thanks for the peek inside this business!
So cool! I’m so jealous that you got to tour them. I will listen to the podcast later today while sewing. Thanks for the great article.
SO wonderful…how big was the factory..roughly how many square meters ?
I’m sorry, but I don’t know.
Hi Abby, do you have any contact I’m pretty interesting in visit spoonflower I met Gart in a conference and it seems really amazing
You can email them and request a tour.