SARAH JOHNSTON

The Club of Odd Volumes is a textile print business committed to helping independent artists bring their creativity into the world on apparel & homewares.

It features an online community with twenty illustrators designs on selected garments. Working together online, this community helped to boost each artists individual brand, generate an income for themselves and inspired new creatives to join with over 300 applicants for each rotation (held every 6 months).

While the artists provided the artwork, The Club of Odd Volumes manufactured all the apparel and homewares in-house, investing in a digital direct-to-garment textile printer and vinyl cutter. My role as do-it-all, self employed director – with little (to no) budget to outsource – required self taught skills and a can-do attitude to drive all aspects of the business including: technical print operator; design + branding; photography + styling; artist management + art direction; buying; sourcing, sampling + manufacturing; ecommerce sales; customer engagement; retail; website design + build; social media and all marketing promotions including campaigns from concept to execution.

As well as the artists designs, I featured my own designs on a range of products. In 2014 after months researching and sampling with offshore suppliers I launched photographic bed sheets with a pre-order campaign on kickstarter and raised $45,000 to fund the first print run. I saw a gap in the market for patterned bed sheets rather than patterned bed covers and after this success I created three subsequent bedding ranges, launching one a year until 2018. Read more about the The Club bedding here.

In early 2018, I successfully sold The Club of Odd Volumes before returning home to New Zealand.