The San Francisco warehouse headquarters of textiles and housewares firm India Rose is like some fantastic fabric bazaar. Bolts of brilliantly colored fabric engulf chairs and spill across tables. Mannequins sport wild-hued aprons and towels. Ornately textured shower curtains cover the walls. Hundreds of additional swatches fill shelves and cubbyholes.
At the eye of this storm of color, perched behind Mac laptops, are India Rose’s founder and head designer, Carter Bolick; her partner and husband Mark Bolick, who handles marketing, business development, and hard-goods design; and product development coordinator Anu Vaalas.
“Textiles aren’t a medium—they’re many mediums,” says Carter. “They’re everything from hand-weaving to machine-weaving to printing to natural fibers. When I come up with a cool print, my mind starts spinning. Do I print it? Do I make it into a bath mat? Do I have it woven? Do we do it in metallic? My head goes crazy with all the possibilities!”
India Rose does more than design eye-catching fabrics and housewares—they manage an entire vertical business, including an international manufacturing operation. Import/export logistics and sales are as central to their work as creating great designs.
“I spend 99% of my time on a MacBook Pro,” says Mark. “We use Macs to design, develop, and sell our products. We are constantly in communication with our clients, our factories, agents, and of course each other.”
The company relies on Macs for every aspect of their business. They generate new design ideas, track products during manufacturing and shipping, and oversee sales and accounting using a variety of Mac applications, including Apple Mail, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and QuickBooks.
“Apple has created a complete user package,” Carter adds. “From the Apple Geniuses at the store to getting customer service with AppleCare, it's all taken care of. Apple makes the whole experience easy.”
Small Company, Global Business
Carter and Mark met a decade ago while working as designers for Pottery Barn. Carter founded India Rose in 2003, and Mark joined the firm last year after a stint at Restoration Hardware.
Today, the India Rose staff of six manages multiple lines of private-label brands, a wholesale line, an overseas manufacturing venture, and an active consulting business as well as their own online store. They also plan to branch out into non-textile products such as furniture, which Mark will design.
The company is comprised of three different facets, Mark explains: “The first part of our business is our private label brands. We design, develop, and manufacture products for clients like Crate & Barrel, Anthropologie, Harry & David, and Jackson & Perkins. The second part of our business is wholesale—the stuff you see for sale at www.indiarose.com. And the third side of our business is freelance consulting. We can help someone take a concept from a cocktail napkin sketch to an actual object on the shelf.”
The private label and wholesale enterprises follow different business models, Carter says. “When Pottery Barn sells our rugs or curtains, the label just says ‘Pottery Barn.’ We make it, they buy it, and we earn a margin on it, but there’s no actual investment in goods for us. On the other hand, the stuff you see on our website is an import investment. We want to be diversified that way.”
Most of India Rose’s retail products are manufactured in India, where the company maintains an office. “When we have a design we want to make, we send it to our agents and have samples made at one or two factories,” says Carter. “We decide which one came out best, tweak it, and then place our purchase order with that factory.”
The Mac is a crucial tool for maintaining India Rose’s production quality, enabling them to quickly and easily correct manufacturing problems from half a world away. For example, says Mark, “If a sample of a tea towel comes in from India and the print isn't correctly aligned, we can scan it or take a picture, load it into Illustrator or Photoshop, add text and arrows that identify the problems, and email back a JPEG so they can see what needs to be fixed.”
