{"id":64900,"date":"2018-03-12T03:36:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T07:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oliverands.com\/community\/?p=64900"},"modified":"2018-03-12T06:17:25","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T10:17:25","slug":"were-celebrating-10-years-of-oliver-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliverands.com\/community\/blog\/2018\/03\/were-celebrating-10-years-of-oliver-s.html","title":{"rendered":"we’re celebrating 10 years of oliver + s!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, ten years already! Today we’re kicking off our big ten year anniversary celebration for Oliver + S. Have you seen the special anniversary homepage<\/a> for the website yet?<\/p>\n

\"10th<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of you have sewn with us for most, or all, of our ten years. But many others have only joined this sewing community recently. Today, to kick off our anniversary celebration, I thought it would be fun to talk a walk down memory lane and remind (or introduce) you to some of the milestones in our growth and development as a brand and a company.<\/p>\n

Thirteen years ago, when S born, I was working as a clothing designer in New York. After graduating from design school at FIT, I started working at Ralph Lauren, then worked a bunch of free-lance jobs (including a exciting stint with Esprit in San Francisco), and then landed at Tommy Hilfiger when I was done sowing my wild oats. I loved my work and my colleagues, but I was also eager to spend time with our new baby.<\/p>\n

I’ve told the whole story of my creative journey as a new mom over at The Longest Shortest Time podcast<\/a> if you ever want to listen to it. But long story short, soon after I left my job the lovely people at Purl SoHo asked if I would teach sewing classes at their new fabric store. It was through teaching those classes that I realized that there was a need for well-designed, professionally-drafted sewing patterns for kids with clear and detailed instructions. And that’s how Oliver + S was born. (My second baby….)<\/p>\n

\"S<\/a>
S wearing our very first pattern, the Tea Party Sundress, and our 50th (and most recent) pattern, the Girl on the Go Dress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While at first I thought this little project was something I could do during my free time during naps and evenings (Todd was traveling four or five days a week, so I had a lot of time alone back then), I quickly realized that this would be a more-than-full-time job.<\/p>\n

A year later, Todd left the demanding job that kept him away from home so much, and we made a lifestyle decision that he would join me in growing this company. This decision has given me the freedom to spend the majority of my time developing patterns, writing tutorials and blog posts, and taking on other projects I wouldn’t have had time to do because Todd has taken on the responsibility of running the company and doing all the analysis it takes to keep us going. (We don’t make a lot of money in this business, so our margin for error in decision making is small. We need to be really careful with all our business decisions. We talked about this at length in Creativebug’s Building a Creative Brand class<\/a> if you’re interested in learning more.)<\/p>\n

As a couple, working together has allowed us to take advantage of opportunities I couldn’t have pursued otherwise. I’ve been able to write two books<\/a>, travel to teach classes and workshops, record on-line<\/a> and video<\/a> classes, and design fabric collections<\/a>. It’s also allowed us to travel and to live abroad!<\/p>\n

\"10<\/a><\/p>\n

During these past ten years our business has also been located in four different locations. At first, like so many businesses, it started on our dining room table. When that quickly became unfeasible, I moved to a rented studio space a few blocks from our New York apartment. A year later we moved to a larger space in Brooklyn, and now we we have a two-floor combined live-work space here in the center of Madrid. I’ll admit I preferred working from our studio in Brooklyn, but I’m learning to adjust to working from home. It’s convenient, at least.<\/p>\n

\"our<\/a><\/p>\n

And in the past 10 years we’ve accomplished quite a bit! Here are a few statistics:<\/p>\n