Wicker By Design announces that it will begin a blog about portrait photography and photography studio props.  In introducing this blog, we thought we would say a few things about us and about the business.  As many of you know, Susan began working with wicker over 25 years when she taught herself how to repair wicker.  In 1982, we moved from Greensboro, NC to Durham, NC where she had to rebuild her wicker restoration customer base.  This was convenient because we soon had two children to take care of, Celeste, our daughter, and Spencer, our son.

As Susan's restoration business grew and the children got older, she became impatient to do more.  Susan and I (Thad) had one of our most memorable "fights" when I urge her not give up on wicker.  I felt as though she knew more about wicker than anyone in the state.  "Build on what you know!"  In this case, my advice was worth it (there are plenty of other exceptions the other way).  Susan started making her own pieces with no market except interior designers.  As it turned out, a local photographer saw her pieces in a a brochure and asked to make some custom designs.  We attended our first PPA show in NC somewhere in the mid 80's and her pieces were an instant hit.  Other photographers gave her ideas for more pieces.  One thing grew into another, and she was off to the races. 

The initial hit was all high key and all of our props were white.  Over the past 20 years, lower key and old master looks have become more popular.  With that change, expanded our color range to include walnut and whitewash and to include metal, willow, wood and fabric props.  Almost every prop has our custom design and copyright.

There was one problem with our growth, the race was taking orders and coming back to make them!  We knew that the skill in making wicker in the USA had long past.  So, we secured the services of a broker to have our photography props made in the Philippines.  We have been very lucky with this company.  They are completely honest, make a top notch product and treat their employees well.  Susan was initially concerned about their quality but her concerns have been more than alleviated.  Their quality stands head and shoulders about the quality you commonly find in retail shops on even in some of the other prop companies. 

Out of concern for the fact that we benefit from cheap labor in the Philippines, we strive to tithe 10% of our profits back to the Philippines for poverty relief.  We also prominently feature links and advertisements to non-profit and religious agencies that do hunger and poverty relief in Asia.  Finally, we also endorse a campaign to cancel much of the third world debt that burdens so many poor countries.  Their interest payments alone account for huge portions of their budgets, money that could be spent in education, hunger relief, AIDS prevention, economic development etc.

In our future blogs, we will talk or feature more about ourselves, trends in the portrait industry, new product announcements, wonderful images using our props, ask for your input on prop ideas, announce specials, refer to links in other sites with interesting ideas ... among many other topics.