Ello There Print Co. Interview

We tend to be pretty lucky with the level of talent our friends typically have. Our friends Seth and Maddy Lucas are no exception. They are a married, creative duo that graduated from BYU-Idaho with Krystal and I. Now they are running their own successful creative studio called Ello There, where they make and sell products ranging from wedding invites, space patches, and national park maps. Click through to see what they had to say about their growing business in an interview.Seth and Maddy started their creative venture on Etsy with wedding invites, but now have expanded into a bunch of new product lines. And now you can find their products all over the country in over 50 stores. If you are the adventurous type, you surely will enjoy their love of all things travel, outdoors, and a hint retro. All made right here in the USA.It is inevitable that you are going to want to purchase something from their shop, so they were kind enough to offer 10% off anything in their shop! Just use the promo code: bravethewoods and go nuts!We asked them a few questions about the inspiration behind their new products and how they both contribute to Ello There. Here is the interview:Q: It seems you two are a couple of wanderlusts. How do you go about incorporating your experiences into the products you create?A: We actually went about that sort of backwards, so that our product actually influenced our experiences. Maddy told me she wanted us to go to all the National Parks in our lifetime, and that she wanted a map to keep track of it. By setting this goal we discovered that we loved visiting the National Parks, and all the camping and hiking that goes along with it. Now it’s just part of what we do, we’re actually about to head out of town to go to Acadia this weekend.Q: What type of ideation process do you go through to produce new products for your shop?A: We try to create work that we love and would want to have first and then cut out the ideas that aren’t feasible. We try to balance that with what’s sold well for us in the past. Usually we start with a poster and make patches, cards or other products that fit in with that theme.Q: What creative roles do you both play? Or better yet, how do you divvy those up between the two of you during projects?A: Maddy and I come up with most of the ideas together, she is much more organizational than I am so she runs most of our correspondence and social media, and she does a lot of custom design work for our retail shops and invitation customers. I do the original design work,  but I’m definitely trying to make something we’re both excited about.Q: Do you have any single project that you are most proud of?A: Our National Parks poster has definitely been the most successful, so I love thinking about how many homes our poster is in, and how many people have been able to track their park visits with stickers and have hopefully gotten excited about going to more National Parks as their own lifetime goal.Q: What steps do you take to insure you create quality products?A: At a minimum we make all our products in the U.S. and beyond that we try to stick with smaller companies that we know our audience loves (Mama’s Sauce, Vahalla). When I see a product I love I try to ask where it was made in a polite way and most designers are pretty cool about sharing their manufacturers if they haven’t already mentioned it online somewhere. Working with printers that have built up a kind of cult following is great because they share our posters with people who love print as much as we do. Q: What are your future plans for Ello There? A: We’d like to create more usable and wearable products and step beyond print.