Browse a great collection of tips, tricks and shortcuts from Northcott/Monarch Marketing Coordinator Patti Carey in the September/October 2003 (#93) issue of Quiltmaker magazine.
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Excerpts from the Experts
Interview with Patti Carey
Marketing Coordinator Patti Carey keeps more than busy creating sales samples, trade show displays, quilt patterns and other marketing and advertising promotions. Learn more about Patti's career at Northcott/Monarch, and her insights on quiltmaking -- from a fabric company's viewpoint.
How did your career with Northcott/Monarch develop? Besides making quilts that feature specific lines of fabric, what other job responsibilities do you have?
When I started at Northcott 16 years ago, we sold fashion fabrics --printed rayons and polyesters, and co-ordinating suitings -- no quilting fabrics at all! The fashion market began to slow down, and we found that quilters and crafters were using our summer cotton prints for their projects. We then started designing fabrics with quilters in mind. My primary responsibility at Northcott is making the samples for the sales people -- designing and printing the shade cards and working with my assistants to swatch them. I am also responsible for designing displays for trade shows. When we changed our focus from fashion to quilting, I changed my displays from garments to quilts. I had not quilted before then, so I learned as I went. I am also responsible for any marketing tools, such as quilt patterns, that will help the sales people and shops sell our fabric. Finally, I am responsible for co-ordinating the advertising program to promote our new fabric collections. In short, anything to do with marketing and advertising.
What inspires your work? How do new ideas come to you in quiltmaking?
I find the fabrics so inspiring! When we print a new collection, yardage of every new fabric comes to me so that I can design the sales peoples' samples. I get to fondle the fabric before anyone else! It's so exciting! While I am doing this, visions of quilts using these fabrics dance through my head. I can hardly wait to finish laying out the shade card so that I can calculate the yardage for the chosen quilt! I subscribe to all of the quilting magazines and also seek inspiration from them.
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