Snapshots of the many the cool things we did this year! (Scroll for photo credits.)
It’s hard to believe another year has gone by since we last recapped all of the awesome projects we’ve been working on. But 2018 is here—and that means it’s time for us to reflect once again on all the good stuff we’ve accomplished over the last 365 days.
This year, our Pro business has been huge focus for us. We brought on some amazing new partners whose work inspires us every single day. We also launched our Shopify App, which saves our Pro trade clients the step of having to manually enter their customers’ orders into our system. The feedback has been phenomenal, and it has inspired us to look for other ways we can streamline and make things more efficient for all of the artists, photographers and designers we work with.
Over on SimplyFramed.com, you might have noticed that our website got a nice makeover (thank you Hamish and Cleo). We’re excited to showcase tons of art from artists and photographers we work with in our frames—so you can get a better sense of how our products come to life. And with our new collection and individual frame product pages, it’s much easier to understand more of the details about each frame style we offer.
That’s a good thing, because we now offer more frame styles than ever before (hopefully in the least overwhelming and most simple way possible). In June, we partnered with our friend Maxwell Ryan at Apartment Therapy to launch our Max Plexibox frames. We love having this super modern yet also super old-school option—in fact, this was Andy Warhol’s go-to style for his screenprints in the 70s—and we think it looks especially amazing for textiles and ephemera. We were also thrilled when superstar blogger Joy Cho selected Max Plexibox to frame a rainbow spectrum of cute postcards.
We now offer 3 collections of metal frames—14 new styles total. Our metal frames boast super narrow profiles, come in amazing shades—like Rose Gold and Bright Silver—and can be taken apart and put back together with just a screwdriver—so you can easily switch up artwork at any time.
Great partnerships are something we’re always up for, and we embarked on some fantastic ones in 2017. We teamed up with dreamy online kids’ retailer Maisonette to offer a co-curated collection of custom framed works from artists we love. We partnered with premier furniture consigner Viyet to envision how some amazing artwork from their marketplace might be reinvented with our custom frames. And we designed and produced custom frames for over 1700 Polaroids by Ryan McGinley and a series of never-before-seen-photos of Basquiat for two incredible shows at MCA Denver.
I also had a couple fun opportunities to share my experience with two groundbreaking women entrepreneur networks. First, locally in Denver at a Women Who Startup Basecamp where I shared the Simply Framed founding story in an interview with Women Who Startup founder Lizelle Van Vuuren. Then recently, I presented my favorite Google apps tips and tricks at Sophia Amoruso’s Girlboss Rally in NYC. The highlight? Members of team Google themselves told me that they learned something new about Gmail from my presentation (!).
Simply Framed was also a sponsor at Altitude Summit out in Palm Springs, where we connected with amazing bloggers and social media gurus—and picked up a few tips along the way. And once again, we were in awe of some of the lovely spaces in the blogosphere that featured our frames, from Joanna Goddard’s Brooklyn home to Sarah Sherman Samuel’s design for Palm Springs modernism week to Max and Margaux Wanger’s nursery.
Giving back is an important part of our business. This year, we sponsored the UNICEF Next GenArt Party and collected donations for Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Harvey relief, the ACLU and the National Parks Foundation. And in honor of Earth Day 2017, we did away with the kraft paper we had previously shipped our frames in to save approximately 30 trees and 28,600 gallon of water per year.
Our team grew too—and in a few sets of two, no less. We’ve been working with two lovely gals at Saturday Social, a rad Denver-based agency, to come up with gorgeous content and stunning images of our frames. We continue to expand our crew at our Ohio frame shop (shout-out to Allison and Olivia!). And finally, we welcomed two new littles, Greydon and Peter, to our extended Simply Framed family. Needless to say, these cuties have given us lots of great material for our Print & Frame services 😉.
To boot, we have some incredible stuff coming up in 2018—and we’re just way too excited to keep quiet about it. We’re opening our first showroom in Denver. We’re launching a gorgeous new collection of handmade frames that is currently completely unmatched online. And we are working on an in-store collaboration with a mass retailer that we LOVE—so stay tuned!
Wishing you a wonderful New Year filled with peace, joy, and beautiful art.
xx,
Dara & Team Simply Framed
Photo credits (L-R, Top-Bottom): The team poses in front of Ryan McGinley’s custom framed Polaroids MCA Denver; The Wanger family’s Print & Frame gallery wall; A Wilder California print in our Old School Metal Frame in Rose Gold; Artwork at the UNICEF NextGen Art Party; Block Shop Woodblock Paper Prints in our Natural Gallery Frames, featured on sfgirlbybay; Apartment Therapy’s Maxwell Ryan having a moment with his beloved Max Plexibox frames; A never-before-seen series of photos from Basquiat at MCA Denver, custom framed in a new collection of handmade frames we’re launching in 2017; An assortment of Color Factory postcards framed for Joy Cho in our Max Plexibox frame; Dara takes the stage at a Women Who Startup Basecamp in Denver.
Banner credit (previous page): All works by Ryan McGinley, courtesy the artist and Team Gallery, New York and Los Angeles. © Ryan McGinley. Installation image by Kelly Shroads Photography.