As we get closer and closer to the end of the year we’re excited to think about all the progress we’ve made in our Berlin office. It’s hard to believe it’s already been over a year since we started the process of opening a factory in Germany. Today, Spoonflower DE team member Allie stops by the blog as we look back at a few of our most exciting happenings and look forward to what’s to come!
Spoonflower DE
International Friends: Spoonflower is Now Shipping From Berlin!
Get excited–Spoonflower is officially shipping from Berlin!! If you’re based in Europe, Africa, Asia or the Middle East and have placed an order over the past few days on our website, you may have noticed a few changes to your cart. This is the first step in internationalizing the Spoonflower website to make it more user friendly for our global community. Over the next few months we’ll continue to release more features, like the option to use the site in multiple languages and currencies.
To access the new cart and have your orders processed through our German factory, you don’t do anything differently.
Simply add fabric, wallpaper or gift wrap to your cart. Select your country from the drop down menu in the bottom right of the cart in the “Delivery Options, Promo Codes and Credits” section.
Then click “Continue to Checkout.” At the moment, this service is only available to those checking out with a credit card and PayPal. We plan to rollout more payment options in the future.
If you’re accessing the site from Europe, you’ll be redirected to a new cart. You’ll notice the price is still in US dollars, but VAT, or tax from your country, is now included. Paying VAT upfront allows your order to skip customs and saves you from a long trip out to the customs office. Here, just enter your shipping address and payment information and you’re all set! The rest will take place on our end. We’ll process your order through our Berlin factory and you’ll receive your order a lot faster without the chance of customs charges!
With this change comes a restructuring of shipping costs. Customers in various European countries will now receive lower shipping fees. Find a full list of countries and the shipping cost group that applies here.
Community members based in the US, Canada and Australia will see no changes to shipping costs.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer service team by emailing help@spoonflower.com.
Berlin Update: Seeing Progress in the new Office
Time for a Spoonflower status update: Berlin edition! If you've been curious about how things are going at the new Berlin office and want to stay in the know, read on as Spoonflower crew member Allie shares an update on the new space. Meet some new German team members, and behold the early stages of what will soon be a bustling factory cranking out custom-printed fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap for our European friends.
The Spoonflower mark created by the Berlin ops team using string
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What’s New: Berlin Edition
Have you heard? Spoonflower will soon be shipping from Berlin! Today's post comes from marketing team member Allie as she reflects on her time spent in Berlin!
Spoonflower DE's temporary office space
After 15 hours of traveling, Sam (from our printing department) and I arrived in Berlin to be greeted by Spoonflower's director Stephanie inside Tegel airport in Berlin. With new cell phones and transit cards exchanged, we were off to find our way in the city. This was my first trip to Germany, a place I'm now thrilled to call home.
The lovely little cafe Vabrique next door
The past few weeks have flown by as I've continued the search for crafty folks, planned a Meetup with local Berliners and talked through ideas for getting our shipping facility up and running!
Spoonflower's first Berlin team dinner
We even had the chance to catch up with all the new hires at the time for a traditional German meal (in a castle!). It was an international affair celebrating the start of a team with folks from the UK, Australia, Denmark and, of course, the US!
Berlin Meetup
Just before heading stateside for the holidays, I invited folks from the area in for a night of crafting and community. I took a few minutes to talk about Spoonflower and our plans for Germany, and then there was time for people to ask questions and share conversations about all things creative and fabric related. We had a small hand embroidery project for folks to work on throughout the night. It was really lovely to spend time crafting with local makers while chatting about all the crafty happenings around Berlin.
Spending four weeks exploring Berlin has been incredibly exciting, and I'm so excited for what's to come. Here's to a new adventure for the Spoonflower crew!
Welcoming New Partners to the Spoonflower Team
Friends,
It’s been long time since I took to the blog to talk about what’s happening behind the scenes at Spoonflower. But we have big news this week that I wanted to share personally, as it represents a major milestone for a company that started seven years ago on my dining room table, when Kim and I (and Gart and his wife, Anne) spent many late nights cutting cotton swatches and stuffing them into envelopes to send to the patient souls who had signed up to try out the world’s first web site for designing your own fabric.
North Bridge Growth Equity, a terrific investment firm based in Boston, is joining Spoonflower as a partner to help fuel our growth into new products and directions, as well as our first formal expansion into other parts of the world. Also participating in the investment is the talented team behind Bull City Venture Partners, company based here in our hometown of Durham, North Carolina. We could not be more excited about the news and the opportunities it represents. [You can find the formal press release about the investment here.]
Spoonflower co-founder Gart Davis cutting fabric on my dining room table in 2008
Our original office was a one-printer operation in an un-airconditioned old sock mill, where our first employee, Danielle, and I used to spend lots of time trying to coax uncooperative machines to get just a few usable yards of beautiful fabric out the door. But today, in our lovely, climate-controlled HQ here in Durham, we’ve got a team of 150 talented and dedicated people and a print room that hums around the clock, every day of the week. We’ve built up our fabric, wallpaper, and gift wrap-printing factory to such an extent that it recently drove our office staff — engineering, accounting, customer service, product, marketing and HR — right out of the old suite and into a new one across the parking lot (where you can, by the way, find lots of lovely wallpaper and fabric created by the Spoonflower community on display).
Having a bigger factory means that we now no longer have to sweat turnaround times, but it also frees us to pursue cool products and concepts, like Sprout Patterns, a new site for cut and sew patterns that launches this fall (be sure to sign up for their email list!). Over the next year or so, expect to see other exciting new projects that have in common with Spoonflower a powerful digital textile printing platform and a focus on design and community.
Another exciting component of our announcement today is that we’re finally taking concrete steps to support our European customer community in the form of an office in the happening city of Berlin, Germany. After getting our feet on the ground in the Berlin office, at some point in the not-to-distant future we hope to be able to show off a website that allows you to order fabric by the meter and in a language or two other than English!
There are many plans afoot (including our new book, which comes out next week!), but another element of the news today should not go overlooked, which is the addition of a handful of very smart, talented folks to our board of directors. North Bridge is a company that has a lot of experience supporting and guiding growing companies like Spoonflower, and working with Holly Maloney and Russ Pyles from North Bridge so far has already been a pleasure and an education. Bull City Venture Partners consists of two individuals, David Jones and Jason Caplain, who we have known almost since Spoonflower first started and who have, unfailingly, been a great source of support, knowledge and advice. Our merry band of fabric lovers has a lot of work to do to make the most of the success we’ve had up until now, and we’re lucky to have found the perfect team to help us get where we want to go.
-Stephen Fraser
#SpoonflowerHandbookSelfie