The second bedroom in our apartment home is our current studio space for kiwi & WILLOW. It has seen a lot of changes in the span of almost 3 years since we've moved here. It's our production space, where we make our collars and bandanas and soon to be embroidery products; our packaging area, that houses our mailers, boxes and shoppings bags; it's our inventory storage for all of our finished products, bolts of fabric and keychains; administrative and customer service area with just a computer and desk space; and most importantly, Kiwi's sleeping zone with a cute little pink and green mini cat tree.  

Mornings are always the same, with the rest of the day playing out differently depending where I need to focus my attention. Mornings consists of checking for any orders and emails. Orders that are ready to ship get labels printed and packaged for a trip to the post office later in the day. Our collars, keychains, toys and bandanas for example are all ready to go next business day. If a painting or charm is ready to go, it gets photographed first for social media and then packaged. We ship out the same day the label gets created because we understand the need for your order to get to you as soon as possible.  

The rest of the day varies. Some days are sewing days that can include cutting, folding, ironing, and creating the pet collars. Other days are photo/content days, so products that require new photos, creating product pages, adding inventory and creating barcodes. Occasionally there are restocking days - either for a market or for Cosa Collective, the store we sell our products in. So before a market I check our inventory levels for collars and keychains that may have sold at the market before. If we sold a lot, this can take the whole day - it's a lot of work to see what's missing, grab the new ones, print the barcodes and fix the barcode to the correct item. Thankfully, our new system for our Pet Keychains makes this process a lot simpler than before. Getting market ready is a whole other type of post...

Moving the business from a studio apartment in California to a second bedroom in Florida wasn't too bad since we didn't have much in the beginning. A couple of tables, a computer and screens, and the tools we used to sew and paint. The space we have now slowly evolved based on our needs and is a space where we can work and organize in order to run a business effectively. While some spaces have been 'upgraded', some things remain the same. We still use a foldaway table, a white 18x24" ripped canvas and the standard eggshell white wall in our apartment to take photos. Nothing fancy at all, but the photos come out perfectly each time (with some photoshop magic). 

Jamil and I are always thinking of how to better improve or grow k&W so there's always talks of things to post, things to fix, things to create, it kinda feels never-ending. I think it's so much fun to be able to use my creativity to grow something that is ours. Having the space to be engulfed in the business and all its creativeness helps to push out genuine items that we love, and that we hope you love too.