We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kristen & Lindsey Archer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kristen & Lindsey, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Our last name is ARCHER, so our company’s name is a slight variation of that. ARCHd originally stood for “Archer’s Recycled Creative Home Decor.” When we first started our business in 2012 (as a hobby), we went “curb shopping” around our neighborhood for wood to use to create art. We live in a historic district in Midtown Memphis, where there were always home projects and renovations happening. Those constant home projects often resulted in scrap wood discarded on curbs. We would drive around and load up any wood we saw in the trunk of our Mazda sedan and take it home to use as practice pieces for our image transfer process. Recycling wood provided us an affordable way to hone our craft. Since then, we have grown the business to the point where our need for wood far surpasses what we can find on the curb. However, we still recycle older art pieces and keep waste to a minimum by sanding down old artwork and transferring new images to them.
Kristen & Lindsey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
ARCHd is a women-owned and operated creative company by sisters Kristen and Lindsey Archer. We’ve been roommates (by choice) since 2012, when we started our company as a side-hobby/creative outlet for our photography and design. Living together allowed more time for us to grow ARCHd in the margins. Outside of our day job work hours and on the weekends, we were constantly brainstorming new ideas on how to market our business. We showcased our art for the first time in 2012 at one of the largest outdoor art festivals in our hometown of Memphis, TN, — Cooper Young Festival. From there, we spent the next 7 years developing and expanding our product lines and creative services into a business that now supports the two of us, as well as a production manager, full-time.
With backgrounds and professional work experience in photography, videography and graphic design, the transition into having our own company that heavily relies on these skill sets came naturally for us. Our business is one-half small batch goods featuring iconic women, cityscapes and original photography and one-half creative services (video, photography and graphic design) for other small businesses and organizations. We also love being the go-to company for our customer’s gift giving.
Our series featuring original illustrations of iconic women fuels our passions for women’s equality and reproductive freedom, as we are able to use our creativity to create handmade, meaningful (and functional) products featuring women who share our values. The women in this collection have paved the way for us, empowered us, inspired us and challenged us to help forge a more inclusive world. We believe in equal rights. We believe people should have the right to make their own choices when it comes to their bodies. Love is love, and equality should apply to ALL, not some. Black lives matter. Women should NOT be consistently paid less than men. All of these values shine through our collection of small batch goods and our customers love gifting them to their like-minded friends and family!
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
Opening your mailbox to a letter addressed from the Supreme Court of the United States is a great way to kick off your first day of being a full-time entrepreneur – especially when the back envelope flap reads, “Chambers of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” More than three years later, we still vividly remember that day. Pre-COVID, we started a monthly documentary club of all women. Similar to a book club, each month’s host chose a documentary for us all to watch, and then we’d meet up for dinner, wine and a full discussion about the film. In November 2018, we watched RBG, the documentary exploring Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life and career. Soon after, we all met up for a screening of On the Basis of Sex, the biographical film based on her life and early court cases. While we had always known of RBG, learning more about her life’s work fired us up and inspired us to create our first ARCHd illustration – the RBG dissent collar trio. As a tribute to RBG, this illustration features three of her jabot collars. The first is her notorious “dissent” collar, which she wore when sharing a dissenting opinion for the Supreme Court. The second was one she openly considered her favorite – and one she happened to wear to President Barack Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress. The second collar is paired with the copy, “When there are nine,” which was RBG’s response to the question, “When will there be enough women on the Supreme Court?” The third collar is our favorite of hers, with its jeweled tribal pattern. We paired it with the quote, “Be your own person,” which stemmed from a piece of advice her mother gave her, encouraging her to be an independent woman.
We turned this first illustration into a piece of wood art and set of marble coasters. And because it was inspired by the Notorious RBG, we decided to send a sample of each to her Supreme Court office, along with a letter telling her how much she had inspired us and thanking her for all her work in fighting for gender equality. We figured there was a slim chance that a package of wood and marble would actually make it through the Supreme Court security, much less to RBG herself. But, why not take a chance? As soon as we saw the return address, our hands started shaking. And as soon as we tore open the envelope and read RBG’s handwritten message to us, we both cried. THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG wrote us a HANDWRITTEN note, thanking us for the art we had sent her and saying she would be displaying OUR art at her home and in her chambers.
We had mailed our package to her on a Monday, and the letter was postmarked back to us by that Friday. We will always remember how a woman who had the weight of the world on her shoulders took the time out of her day to hand write a note to two women in Tennessee. Talk about “empowered women empowering women.” Receiving a note from her taught us the importance of being kind, appreciative and thankful to those you inspire. Whether it’s taking the time to personally thank our supporters who leave us positive reviews; including thank you notes with every order; giving back to organizations who are making a true difference; or creating a full collection featuring various women who motivate us, that small act of appreciation from RBG has inspired us in so many ways across our business.
Looking back, one of the texts we sent our friends after receiving her letter that day read, “Immediately changing our business model to art of cool women.” Her letter inspired us to create and focus on our feminist illustration collection, which of course started with RBG herself. Practically her entire life, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a warrior for women’s rights and gender equality. Her passing was a devastating blow, but her legacy will live on. We will always celebrate her and continue her fight for equal rights by loudly voicing our dissent when others try to infringe on those rights. And, we hope to inspire others to join us in that fight.
9/10 times when we share this story with a customer, they buy the piece of art!
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
We spent 7 years building ARCHd on the side to get to the point it could support us both full-time. We started our company VERY slow, participating in a few local markets a year while selling our products on Etsy, all while holding down full-time jobs. At the start of ARCHd, we didn’t first envision it as leading to full-time careers as small business owners. It was a creative outlet that gave us something fun to do when not at work. But year by year, as we added on new markets and built our following on social media, we started to realize ARCHd could be more than just a “side hustle.” In 2017, we came up with a 2-year plan to transition out of our 9-5s to full-time entrepreneurship. We shared this plan with our current employer at the time (we happened to both work together, in the same department) and were extremely lucky with the support we received from our bosses and colleagues. Having an employer who supported both our journey and overall business was a huge factor in allowing us to scale ARCHd at the pace that worked for us. We officially went full-time in August 2019 and it was the best decision we’ve ever made.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://getarchd.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getarchd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/getARCHd
- Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/getarchd/
Image Credits
ARCHd Kim Thomas (last two photographs with “Handshake” in the title)