A little message to the universe...

*delivered by a pee cloth.

Dear Kula Diaries,

In the very early days of Kula Cloth, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Ok… let me rephrase that: I still don’t have any idea what I’m doing (do any of us?)… but I’m a little bit better at figuring it all out. Today I’m going to tell you a story about a blooper that happened a few years ago… and then I’m going to tell you about a more recent story… and hopefully, in the space between, I’ll be able to find something that I didn’t notice before.

Ok… let’s set the stage: I’m a solo-founder of a gear company with absolutely zero experience in the textile industry and/or at product development or production. I’m working out of my home office and attempting to coordinate production with textile mills, factories and artists. I’m in the process of attempting to launch our very first artist series Kula Cloth.

It probably sounds pretty obvious, but one of the things that is relatively important when you are printing a lot of fabric is having a procedure in place so that you can proof your designs before you sublimate thousands of yards of fabric and make a mistake. In the early days of Kula, I didn’t have anybody else to help me, so that meant that I was sending the art files to the printer on my own — without the help of a designer. Well, unbeknownst to me, my particular fabric printer was also relatively disorganized. It’s important for you to know that when you print a repeating pattern on fabric, you use a single small tile in order to print the entire roll. What do I mean by a tile? This is an example of a seamless tile:

This is our seamless ‘Critter’ print, featuring original art by Amanda McIntyre!

You can see how the head of the Fox is on the left… but if you put another tile directly adjacent to this tile on the right, the Fox would be complete. Now, imagine that this tile just repeats over and over again — for the whole width and length of the fabric… and that’s how a repeating pattern is printed. When the fabric is finally cut into Kula Cloth, it ends up looking like this:

The entire roll of fabric is basically made up of squares that just repeat endlessly, to create a seamless pattern.

I did not know a lot about doing this, but I bumbled my way through, and in the midst of submitting the art for our first artist series collab with Nikki Frumkin, the tile sizes were incorrect. So, I told the printer that I had sent the wrong sized file… and they deleted it (or so I thought)… and then I re-sent a new file and saw a correct proof in the right size… and then… my fabric went into production. After the fabric goes into production, it’s shipped to my manufacturer, who cuts it and sews them into Kulas.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when this stunningly beautiful repeating tile….

…arrived at my house after having been made into Kulas looking like this (the galaxy Kula is just for scale… the fabric behind it is how the Kulas were printed… with the entire design blurry and in miniature):

But this is how the design was supposed to look:

Now, we obviously ended up printing the correct fabric eventually… but I was still left with over 1,200 Kulas that had been manufactured wrong. I didn’t have a system in place to check the fabric prior to my factory receiving it, and so, when it arrived, they assumed it was correct… and they went ahead and made 1,200 Kulas in a print that was, in my opinion, completely unsellable. It didn’t represent the amazing art that Nikki had created… and it definitely didn’t meet my standards for an artist series Kula. Instead, it was a Misprinted Artist Series Kula… and now, I owned 1,200 of them.

In the early days of Kula, something like this felt like a huge blow — spending thousands of dollars on the manufacturing of Kula Cloths that were not sellable seemed like a tremendously devastating error — and I wondered how I’d be able to re-coup the costs. Amidst the fear-and-lack-based-anxiety-fit that I found myself drowning in… I somehow stopped myself from descending to the depths of the over-thinking rabbit hole. I remember sitting on the floor in my office, looking at the boxes of un-usable Kula Cloths. I sat, quietly and closed my eyes and I made a simple request: Something incredible and important is trying to happen through this chaos… please help me see what it is.

Overthinking is the root cause of almost every amount of suffering that I’ve ever experienced: the nauseating parade of thoughts about imaginary circumstances and catastrophic what-ifs and fake conversations and hypothetical scenarios… these things are not helpful. In those early days of Kula, it was very easy for me to overthink everything… and, quite honestly, it was playing music with The Musical Mountaineers and my daily meditation practice that gave me enough of a break from the compulsive thinking that allowed me to keep moving through the moments of distress.

As I sat on the floor that day, I had a strange sensation of peace and I immediately felt myself overwhelmed not by thinking, but by a specific thought: this opportunity is a gift. In the history of Kula Cloth, I had never had a ‘marketing budget’, and now, with nearly 1,200 Kula Cloths that I couldn’t sell — I realized that I could do something even more important with them: I could give them away. And so, that’s what I did. Energized with the excitement of the infinite abundance of the universe itself, I started reaching out to non-profits all over the country and asking them if they wanted me to donate Kulas to their programs — I sent Kulas to The Venture Out Project and CLAW … and many other non-profits. It was exciting and exhilarating to let go of the Kulas, without any expectation at all — simply to experience the joy of giving. I also created an experiment called ‘Kula Connect’ — where I nominated one person to receive a Kula… who chose another person to receive a Kula… and so on… and so… so on. I ended up giving away over 50 mis-printed Kulas that way to humans all over the country, and it was so exciting. It was through this experience that I learned something very important: you can choose the lens through which you look at the world, and that lens will determine how anything unfolds… things are neither good nor bad… it is only our thoughts about them that make it so (to paraphrase Shakespeare).

In the end, giving away 1,200 Kulas turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to Kula in the early days — it helped me grow the business organically, without any ‘fancy’ marketing skills or advertising, and it connected me to many humans who have continued to be dear friends throughout the past 6 years. When I look back on that ‘incident’ now, it makes me smile — and I cherish the incorrectly printed Kulas, because I can see them for what their true purpose was: creating more good and more love in the world. If I had been angry about the misprint and had spent my time being frustrated at the printer for their mistake (which was also my fault)… would I have seen this opportunity? Honestly, I don’t think so. It was only in that moment of stillness that I was able to see what was hiding just underneath the surface.

Between that moment and this very moment, a lot has happened. Kula Cloth has gone from being a company in my guest room… to a company in my garage… to a small company in (part of) a whole building. Kulas are sold all over the world — and you’d think that by now, things would be going smoothly and easily… you’d think that the Kula wheels are always greased perfectly and that the cogs are always spinning… but if you thought that… you’d be wrong.

A few weeks ago, we had a another blooper. And this was a big blooper too. It was a 2,337 Kula Blooper to be exact. And it’s funny, but I think that a few years ago, I would have completely freaked out about this… and created an imaginary scenario in my head in which things were going, ‘wrong’ — but Kula has taught me that nothing is ever wrong. Sure, sometimes things don’t go the way that I thought they might go… but, maybe… just maybe… things are going how they are supposed to go.

She loves me - ha!

When you run a business, it can smother you. And really — it’s not the business that smothers you… it’s the overthinking about the business that will smother you. The business itself is nothing: it’s really just a bunch of stuff, some numbers, and some things that you do. It’s where I go each day when I leave my house and drive, while listening to a brilliant podcast from Selected Shorts in my car. It’s where I spend my time, at my standing desk… surrounded by squares of fabric. It’s the place where I eat my salad while chatting with my husband about our plans for the never-ending quest to capture Jasper the cat. It’s a place where I move around in each moment and do tasks… and then drive home at the end of the day when it’s done. The business itself is not difficult… or bad… or, really, anything at all — it’s just there, holding the potential for whatever lens that I want to use to view it through. It’s me who makes it hard — because it’s so unbelievably easy to spin up a story around a 2,337 Kula Blooper in which something has gone wrong… and in which I have lost something… and in which things are not going well… and in which my day is ruined… and in which I am a disappointment and a failure. It’s so easy to slide into that place of fear and worry… and, sometimes, I still do — but not always.

Me, circa 2018 at an Arc’teryx Holiday Market… you can see the misprinted pink mountain print serving as my ‘table cloth’ - ha!

And in those moments of not always, that’s where I discover the something else that exists. That’s when I can see that maybe the blooper isn’t a blooper at all — maybe it’s just leading me to somebody or something that never would have otherwise happened. It’s hard to stay curious when you feel like things are closing in on you, but it is exactly that curiosity that keeps me hopeful… and keeps me open. In the early days of Kula, I stopped saying, “Why is this happening to me?”, and I started asking, “Why is this happening for me?”. And do you know what? The question always gets answered. And it’s always surprising. And it’s always in those moments of truly surrendering to that chaotic flow of the universe that I’m led to the most beautiful things.

I found this in the Kula Instagram Vault — this is an actual IG post that I made in 2019… and it’s hilarious that I tagged REI… LNT and Cabela’s… all three of whom I am now working with (and was not at the time). Doesn’t the universe work in wild ways?!

I can’t wait to give away 2,337 Kulas. In fact, I’ve already given 100 of them away — to a non profit. Each little blooper Kula isn’t a mistake. Instead, they take on a new shape and a new form… a new purpose. As they travel out into the world for 2,337 different adventures, each one of them is a little telegram — a love letter to the universe and a tiny, silent message that simply says, thank you.

Friends — thank you so very much for being here, I’m so grateful to have a place where I can share random things about Kula Bloopers and life with all of you. I hope that, similarly, the ebbs and flows of your own life can bloom into something special and beautiful. Trust that you are where you are supposed to be — you are loved, friends!