How Do We Find New Designers?

I am always looking for new blog subjects to cover. As such, I have started to compile a list of topics for the future. With that, today, I want to discuss one of the questions that comes up fairly frequently. That is, how do we find new designers at the Jaftex Companies?

Let me start off by saying that it isn’t as easy as you would think to find new designers. The process definitely takes time. At first, you need to see if the designer is a viable option to produce the significant amounts of art needed to make quilt collections for the length of the contract term. Then you have to figure out if the designer is the right fit….and for which of our brands. Each of the brands has its own following, niche and specialty so we need to find the designer the right home. After all that, we have to work on a contract and agree to all the major terms. Doesn’t sound like much, but the negotiations and such can take 3-6 months before terms are finalized. After that, it can take close to a year before the collection from this designer comes to market.

Here are some of the ways we find designers:

• I am going to start off with this one because it is recent, very relevant and a rare situation. Going back to last summer when we at the Jaftex Corporation were fortunate to buy the assets from Blend Fabrics, we hit the jackpot in that we were able to get around 15 new designers in one shot. This was a real coup as it didn’t require as much time as normal to get everyone signed up and going. The team at Blend made the transition seamless by speaking with all the designers beforehand. Thereafter, if the designer wanted to work with us, all they had to do was sign the new contract agreement and the rest is history.
• Recently, I discussed how a freelancer in Japan copied one of Kaffe Fassett’s designs. That freelancer worked with one of the mills in Korea to offer her designs for printing to a competitor of ours. In that case, the mill gets to print the designs and they get some extra money to pay the freelancer for their designs too. Every so often, our mills do have some wonderful designs that we sell under one of our brands. We do pay them extra for the artwork. This is not a common practice and I would say this happens less than 5 times a year across all the Jaftex brands put together.
• Prior to Covid, we would often have design studios visit our offices to offer different prints and patterns to our team. The prices for this type of art varies from around $500-$1500 per piece. Typically, we wouldn’t buy a piece unless it had enough substance to build an entire quilting group around it. Usually, an elaborate design has lots of elements that we can pull out to make a full quilt group with a lead print, sub-lead prints and a supporting cast of coordinates. If it doesn’t have the substance, we don’t often make the purchase unless the design is being bought to be used as a 108″ quilt back design. In that case, it becomes worthwhile as we usually can make the design in many colorways and that allows us to cover the cost of the design more easily.
• Being that our offices are in New York City, there are often many different art shows that our stylists attend to seek out new licensed designers. Whether it is Surtex, the Stationery Show, the Licensing Show or otherwise, there are a lot of these shows to choose from. It just requires a lot of time and patience to attend these shows and then locate the next top designer.
• I can’t begin to tell you how many emails we get from people wanting to design quilting groups. A lot of times, it is people who are designing for another industry that often find their way to us as it is often a perfect segue from one medium to fabric. For example, as I mentioned above, stationery designs and fabric designs often are interchangeable.
• We are in touch with lots of different licensing agents. They often have a treasure trove of designers to offer up for fabric licensing. It just has to be the right art as a lot of times the designs don’t work for fabric.
• Oftentimes, one of our current designers refers one of their designing friends to us.
• Sometimes we are approached by designers who are not happy with the current company they are working for and we then have to determine if they are right for us. In this case, we need to do our due diligence to make sure this person’s stuff actually sells as we don’t want to pick up a designer from a competitor whose stuff doesn’t really sell.
• We get lots of suggestions for customers and consumers alike. People will contact us and say they saw a certain designer at an art show or online that they thought would be a good fit for us. We often do take the time to look into the leads because our customers and consumers know what people like to see on fabric.

There you have it. Those are the great majority of ways that we find new designers. I hope that answers the question. Have a great week!