It was 2018 when I last rebuilt the Yellow Spade Design website and since then so much has changed. If one thing influenced the direction of travel for my small business (like so many others) during the last seven years, it was Covid 19.
Within days of going into that first lockdown it was obvious that to stay viable the company needed to adapt...and adapt fast. Many long-standing customers suddenly had neither the need...nor indeed the finances for the design services I was providing...the mainstay of the business since its formation.
I took the immediate decision to revisit the company’s somewhat neglected but now potentially important retail offering.
Problem #1
I only had a handful of retail products such as greeting cards and prints from my own photography/digital artwork…remnants from the very earliest days of Yellow Spade Design.
Problem #2
These products had been sat in YSD's Etsy and Amazon stores for some time…and not moving.
Back in 2018 I’d already considered various options to expand and diversify the company’s offering and dye-sublimation printing looked the best fit for a number of reasons.
1. The entire concept of printing in any form has fascinated me since childhood, and something I’d always wanted to incorporate into the business.
2. The wealth of knowledge in colour theory and calibrating printers I’d gained from all those years in the photo-finishing industry would certainly provide an ideal platform for helping achieve the best possible results from whatever equipment I settled on.
3. Similarly, with decades of experience in preventative maintenance/repairs on a disparate range of machines and systems, I should be able to address any technical issues should they arise.
4. I had space available in the studio/workshop.
5. Maybe it might just provide a fruitful outlet for my own design ideas whislt adding a degree of resilience to the business.
After a great deal of research into the quality and reliability of various manufacturers’ equipment and consumables, I invested into a full dye-sublimation printing set up which arrived in the studio in July of that year.
It then sat gathering dust as a welcome steady increase in demand for YSD’s traditional design services filled my working week.
Then came 23rd March 2020 and for countless UK small businesses, including YSD, the world literally changed overnight.
What better time was there to put this wholly underused kit to the to the test…but printing what? was the next question.
I thought back to a visit to York in November 2018 and remembered one particularly busy street vendor selling printed drinks coasters adorned with artwork from well-known musical albums. Now there was an idea.
After some in depth trawling of Tim Berner’s Lee’s finest creation, I eventually found a website where talented music loving digital artists from across the globe were depositing ever more remarkable remastered scans of album covers. Accessible crystal-clear high-resolution images...perfect for dye-sublimation printing.
I hit on the concept of offering sets of four coasters, collections by specific artists compiled in a way to make them as appealing to fans as possible. I tested the water with couple of sets which surprisingly gained traction quite quickly, particularly on Amazon. It seemed I might have found an ideal product for the time. A population in lockdown, a significant number of whom were music lovers, able to buy sets of high-quality reproductions of their favourite artist’s album covers in coaster form…all from the safety of their front room. I added a couple more.
I was soon getting requests from buyers suggesting additions to the range, so they could start...or complete a collection.
As I was the sole employee of my own limited company with limited turnover, there was no 'furlough' or financial support available...and this was potetential lifeline
Downloading images, carefully 'curating' collections, formatting the artwork for print, creating images and copy for listing online, processing orders, printing, packaging and the daily masked visit to the post office began to fill the working day, and I was possibly charting a navigable course through the ongoing otherwise small business unfriendly pandemic.
I added a few more sets of four (and six) then another idea sprang to mind. What about giving customers the option to collate their own collections from mixed artists…their favourite albums?
I could then print them out on 5cms square Unisub® panels (an incredibly versatile hard surface dye-sub printing substrate) and float mount them into frames to create a unique personalised gift that importantly no one else was offering?
A matter of days after this idea went live I was pleased to receive my first 'bespoke' order. A customer wanted a collection of her father’s nine favourite albums presenting in this way as special gift for his 60th birthday. I managed to obtain the requisite artwork and put together what turned out to be quite a stunning piece.
One week later and a glowing review on Etsy confirmed my belief that this really was a winning idea. The following day my naïve optimism was quickly dealt a devastating blow.
...Part 2 to follow