Creativity or chaos? Depends on the day.
Pros
- Unique environment with lots of interesting, creative people who keep this place running some days through sheer passion and motivational alone. - Spoonflower has a flexible approach to internal movement within the company. A hard-working employee hired even at the very bottom can get opportunities for cross-training. Many longtime employees have served in multiple departments, bringing their unique perspective and experience along the way. - Two especially good benefits: solid health coverage and the creative allowance, which gives employees a monthly stipend for free fabric. - This company has so much possibility and the future looks bright. The new CEO seems dedicated to making great improvements and fixing past inefficiencies.
Cons
- Pay adjustments need to be seriously considered. The pay on the operations side is embarrassing and it seems the only way to make a future here is to get transferred as soon as possible into an administrative role. This is strange considering this company is nothing without our print staff. There are also discrepancies in pay in various departments. And if you come up through operations, they will continue to underpay you even when you take the initiative and take on new responsibilities. Pay ranges need to be more transparent across the board. - Ergonomics and safety are not taken as seriously as they should be. For example, adjustable cutting tables, automatic cutters, or automatic rollers would be a huge benefit. There is always pressure to get stuff out the door as fast as possible and sometimes that is at the cost of their workers' backs. (Not in any malicious way, it just never seems to be a priority.) - There are many inefficiencies baked in to the “Spoonflower way”, which can make things vibrant and exciting or unnecessarily stressful depending on the day. Across the board, whether on the website or in the factory, there are plenty of times when following industry-standards instead of “how we have always done things here” would improve workflow or prevent some of the minor disasters that have popped up along the way. Much of the chaos I have witnessed could have been prevented if someone had been able to take the time to just fix the thing seven years ago instead of putting duct tape on it over and over again, metaphorically speaking. It is hard to work methodically when everyone is constantly putting out fires. - Even though the staff is packed with kind and thoughtful people, Spoonflower is full of cliques. While I love the progressiveness of the staff, that does not mean people are very welcoming. A lot of departments are very insular, self-protective, and not open to new ideas. There is a lot of internal criticism of other departments, which can make for a very toxic environment depending on which group you happen to be a part of. - This company has a serious, serious lack of diversity on the admin side. Higher ups are finally taking this seriously but it is definitely a working progress.
