One of the things that really caught our eye at the gift fair last week were these amazing pillows from K Studio. Mary and Shelly Klein are a mother/daughter duo who’ve been in business for six years, and clearly love what they do. Working on products like these all day, how could you not be happy?
Kegan from Design Glut falling in love with K Studio’s pillows
What brought you to start your product line?
I’m from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where there’s a big contract furniture industry. We have Herman Miller and Steelcase – big furniture giants. For many years I was doing custom work for their showrooms. I did a project where I wanted to apply some imagery to fabric, and I knew of this small-scale embroidery system you could run in your own studio. I got it and set it up for that one specific project, but one thing led to another and it kind of turned into a product line.
At that same time, my mom was ready to leave her corporate job, and I thought I was ready to take on some help or a partner. She has this great business mind, so it’s a perfect partnership. We’ve been doing this for about six years, now. It’s been going great!
How has it grown? What were your first products, and how has it transitioned into this?
That’s a good question – it’s really relevant to our product line. I’m actually a painter. That’s kind of my true love. The imagery you see right here is the kind of imagery I use in my paintings. I really love the way my work lends itself to embroidery. But it’s not what we started out with in the product line. I thought that I had to come up with other stuff for that. When we started out, we were doing more embroidered patterning. It went well and people liked it, but down the line it became clear that the more our work was true to the artwork I really wanted to do, the better our products did.
That’s a great thing to discover!
What you think people want isn’t necessarily what they want. They want something that’s really honest and genuine.
You can definitely see that in your work – it has such character to it.
Thank you!
Once you had the first products, how did you get out there and spread the word about them?
We started to come to shows. We do this show twice a year, and ICFF once a year. We get different things from both shows. You just never know what the residual effect will be. Even if you think you had a terrible show and didn’t talk to that many people, you still get phone calls and something will happen. So it’s worth it.
For example, we did a project for a hotel here in New York, called The Shelburne. We did a large art installation in the lobby and then we did textiles throughout. It was a huge, great project, and it came from a contact we’d made at ICFF many years ago. The interior architect who worked on the project was just a fan of ours. If there is one lesson to learn, it’s that showing up gets you something. People remember you and will involve you in something down the line.
K Studio’s new Quilty line is on the left – Mary Klein is on the right taking orders
What’s new in your booth right now?
This is a brand new product line that we’re launching at this show, and it’s called Quilty. We wanted to have another thing to offer. Our line isn’t for everybody, so we wanted to do something else to compliment our current line. One thing that we have learned is that you have to stay flexible.
The idea with Quilty was to have something to offer a different audience, and I think we’ve done that. We’re trying it out here and it’s going really well. It’s an exciting thing to figure out. We learn as we go. It’s totally freestyle. Every time we come to a show we learn something, and every time we do a project we learn something.
Is that where you’re heading? Branching out into other styles?
You know, I’m not sure. It was so much work to design another whole line. I don’t think I can do that very many more times. We do think about doing other types of products quite a lot, and that would be a major expansion. We have an embroidery system that only allows us to embroider a certain size. We’ll want to do something that’s just a little bigger or just a little different, and we can’t. But we’re looking at printing some fabric – we’re looking at all kinds of things.
What advice do you have for people who want to work for themselves?
Don’t think it will be less work than having a job – that would be the opposite of what’s true. You never get to put it away, so you have to be really committed. And we are! We work a lot, but we don’t mind.
