Big Cartel Blog

It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating an inconceivable milestone with our 100,000th store. Well, our community of independent store owners is still growing…like crazy. We’re thrilled to announce we’ve now got over a quarter of a million artists using Big Cartel to make money doing what they love.

We’re immensely grateful for the army of artists on the front lines who’ve made bold moves to help get us here, and we salute you for all your hard work.

We’re throwing a block party, just to say thanks. Mark your calendars for October 19, and start planning your pilgrimage to Salt Lake City, because you’re all invited. With all stores and friends of Big Cartel getting the VIP treatment.

RSVP here, and for more updates stay tuned to 250k.bigcartel.com

Here at Big Cartel, we have a lot in common with the artists who surround us. We design, we craft, we knit, we make music, we illustrate, we take photos, we build, and we make. Our creativity is challenged, fostered, encouraged, and then let loose. If this all sounds dreamy, well, that’s because it really is.

Tyler Thompson is the newest member to our Big Cartel family, and, since he’s responsible for the design of our beautiful new jobs page, we’d like to give you a glimpse into his process and inspiration. A little bit of northern Idaho, lake swims, sketchpads, and family.

If our creative environment sounds like the cure to what ails ya’, then check out our new jobs page to get the full skinny on what it means to work at Big Cartel.

Earlier this month we geeked out on Ruby when we hosted the Downtown Utah Ruby Users Group meet-up here at our office. We had almost 30 Ruby lovers join us for pizza, drinks, and some presentations on Rails Engines and Mustache.js in rails. Good times were had by all - so we’ll call the night a tremendous success.

We’ve done it again! Big Cartel has added the incredible Kelley Reynolds to our ever-expanding team. Kelley is our most seniorest engineer of softwares, if you want to get technical about it, but he’s wildly more interesting than just a cool title.

This guy has a music performance degree from Oberlin Conservatory where he mastered the bassoon, he’s twice (TWICE!) swum more than 28 miles for charity in 3 days, and he lives on an old dairy farm in rural Ohio. He truly is one of a kind, and we are so happy to have him and his talents here at Big Cartel.

Processing and shipping orders can often feel sorta complicated. We’re working hard internally to help make that process easier, but we need your help. Please take a quick second to give us some insight on how you typically ship your goods.

Take the poll here »

Just a couple of weeks ago we brought the entire Big Cartel family out to Salt Lake City for a few days of fun and inspiration. We laughed, we cried (from laughing too hard), we explored, and we even managed to get some work done. We’ve got some exciting projects in the pipeline, and we can’t wait to wrap ‘em up nicely to present to you with a pretty red bow - figuratively speaking, of course.

Pardon our giddiness, but we’re a little overjoyed with the newest addition to our Big Cartel crew, Tyler Thompson. You may know Tyler as the former Creative Director at Squarespace, but he’s left the Big Apple for the Pacific Northwest, and a major role on our team.

Tyler’s background is in fine art, print design, and graphic design - with a little bit of street art for good measure. You’ll be seeing Tyler’s fingerprints on all sorts of amazing things we’re cooking up, but for now let’s give him a big warm welcome to the family.

We’ve added a new developer to the Big Cartel mix, and he’s all sorts of awesome! Josh Abbott currently resides in California but spent much of his life in New Mexico, Missouri, “maybe Texas”, and oh yeah, Hungary. After spending his time playing in loads of Hungarian rock bands, Josh returned to the good ol’ US of A where he taught himself web development because, his bands were gonna need websites, right?

We’re very thrilled to add his unique skills to our team of developers. He’s already knee deep in helping to make Big Cartel even better. Welcome to the team, Josh!

We’ve got another new addition here at Big Cartel HQ. Her name is Candace Andersen, and she’ll serve as the glue to keep us all together, aka, our office manager. Candace has always been one of Big Cartel’s biggest fans, and has an incredible shop of her own, so we were naturally thrilled to have her join our ranks.

She’s a Utah native, and staple in the Salt Lake City art scene. When not creating, gardening, or exploring our majestic mountains, Candace is playing mama-bear to her lil’ eight year old son. We’re very happy to have her on our team - please help us give her a warm welcome.

The Big Cartel Support Fort just got a little stronger with the recent addition of Nick Endle. Joining us from Eau Claire, WisCAHNsin, midwestern accent and all, Nick’s background in web design will help answer all of the many coding questions thrown our way each day.

When he’s not offering tender-hearted assistance to our many shop owners, Nick is nurturing his own baby over at deadformat.net. He’s what we call an analog nerd, and we’re happy to have him on board. Please help us give Nick a warm welcome to the Big Cartel team.