Tracy Kendall makes amazing wallpapers. I went to one of her talks where she spoke about her wallpaper business. I find it really interesting how different everyone is when it comes to running their business, creating their designs and their general attitudes towards these. I think when students (including me) leave university and want to set up their business feel that there is a right approach to designing and running a business but there are so many different ways and it is important to find out about these as much as possible to find the right way for you.
Tracy talked about enjoying restricting her business to wallpaper rather than expanding in to other products. For her this means that she can push the boundaries of wallpaper creating interesting and unusual results. She also likes to use as little digital technology as possible, only using it where she feels necessary to create screens/repeats etc. at the final stage. I was surprised to find that all of her wallpapers (except the digitally embroidered) are completely hand made using cutting, folding, appliqué and screen printing techniques.
She has a very small team of people that work for her who are trusted with making the wallpaper. While talking to her I was interested to find out that she isn’t fixated on her employees qualifications. She says that she employs people to carry out very specific tasks the way she trains them to so attitude and dedication are much more important. She does as much in house as possible so that she has full control and she can easily change things.
Designing for Tracy is an evolving process, developing from previous designs or even designing through conversation. She does not spend time sitting down designing.
It was very clear from her talk that she is a business woman as much a creative one. She runs her business tightly and can account for every minute and pound spent/made. I think that sometimes creative people aren’t always so business orientated and people do it for the love of it, but it is important for a business to be sustainable too. Her business focus is on production and money. She was saying that labour is her biggest cost which is the same for many creative businesses so this is something she works on. She will often make a new design 3/4 times to enable her to cost the labour once she knows how quickly it can be made. All of her work is made to order so there is no wastage or stock being held.
I was very surprised that she does not brand or advertise, all of her business is from word of mouth. She has been put on the front of magazines etc. but not by paying for it. It was also lovely to hear her so grateful to be put on the front of a magazine, she is very down to earth.
Wallpapers (tracykendall.com)
All of the wallpapers I am going to talk about are on the above website.
Another Colour
Her colour designs are based on random colours (50) and use space dyed thread for stitching the paper together. I would have thought that random colours would become a mess but Tracy has proved otherwise. She didn’t want to get hung up on colour and shade so random worked for her. A lot of what she does is based on random effects but she spoke a lot about making things look random. As she says if you start putting things down randomly, they start looking less random when you are trying to cover a huge area, this is just human nature. In many of her deigns she uses a screen print to lay down a structure on which to place the design ensuring a random look but even spread. All of her 3D wallpapers are made in this way.
Pleats
All of the pleat wallpaper was made by two of her employees. They choose random gaps for the pleats and stitch them in, finishing each row with a knot. This wallpaper is extra narrow and was first made for a cruise ship, the widths made specifically for the space.
Abstract
Her abstract wallpaper is created by painting with a squeegee. This is one of her most cost effective wallpapers only taking 15 minutes to produce 10 metres and costing £189.