Meeting The World: Online

The first test of our branding strategy came about on the morning of August 2008, when Indu casually logged in to look at our email. Our e-commerce site had launched a few weeks ago and so far, the site had floated along in relative internet obscurity. All of a sudden that morning, the inbox was almost at maximum capacity with orders from new clients, pouring in by the minute! In a few days we cleared our first stock of fabrics and soon our site boasted the banner: Sold Out! How this this happen?

The singular reason: Design*Sponge. The incredibly well-curated design blog by Grace Bonney had done a little feature about our work the evening before (well, the day before, according to US time). And suddenly our brand and online store was in the spotlight!

It all started when, in early 2008, I emailed Grace to share with her our website (with a pdf catalog) to get feedback about our work. She was very encouraging but felt an e-commerce option was needed as her clients would want to shop immediately. Over the next few months Indu and I worked to set up a payment gateway with abcpayments.com, the Indian company. I connected with Grace again and she responded enthusiastically; a few days later we were featured on her site!

The days after that article, our make-shift office in Sreedevi's home looked like the command center of a mini-war. Everyone, including my father (in the picture above, along with Indu, Sreedevi and Surya), had been recruited into folding, packing and mailing off hundreds of packages of our hand-woven fabrics. With that one post by Grace, Kara Weaves was a reality and thousands of people around the world were getting excited about the work!

 To Indu, the anthropologist, and me the graphic designer, this was a sign that our instincts were right: it was unbelievable to see so many folks respond to our brand and support what we believed in (the picture above has Indu and Surya taking a break from the packing and shipping, still in a daze over the aftermath of the design*sponge feature). It was also a reaffirmation in continuing with an online strategy, something we had toyed with as we tried hard to figure out a niche for the product. By going online, we could reach out to the world, yet continue to work locally.

The design*sponge feature had a domino effect for our publicity as various design websites like Apartment Therapy, Daily Grommet (a super-fun video segment), Katy Elliott, Lucky Mag, Travelicious and print features from large publications like in Better Homes and Gardens, Plenty Mag and Hobby Farm Home started to happen. This rolled out during the next couple of years, all the time building our faith on the impact of independent design journalism.

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A few weeks ago (in September 2011) when Grace Bonney launched her new book in Boston, I stood in line at the book-signing event to meet her and personally thank her for how she had impacted our work. After all these years, it was wonderful to finally meet the person who had helped jump-start our work and get this wonderful fabric the attention it deserved! Thanks ever so much, Grace and the d*s team!