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Do you think crafting handmade items and technology go hand and hand? If you answered no you would be wrong as I learned from Lynn. You might be surprised to learn that many items produced by these craftsman and women are created by taking advantage of the technology available today. This was one of the reasons I wanted to create this series. I found about Lynn on the Pikes Place Producers web site and asked her for an interview.
Who are you? What type of business are you in?
My name is Lynn Rosskamp and my companies are PingiHats and Shop Cascadia. I’ve been making fleece animal hats and hoodies with ears under the PingiHats brand since 2008 and I’m now in the middle of branching out with a partner into a second business, Shop Cascadia, that centers on clothing and housewares made in the Pacific Northwest, both produced in-house and from other small businesses in the area. I sell both online and at Pike Place Market in Seattle.
Which MacBook Air are you using?
I am using the 13” MacBook Air from mid 2011
Why did you select that MacBook Air over other models?
Because it is light and portable but has all the features and usability that I want. This is the second generation of MacBook Air we’ve used so clearly it’s been working well. My current physical shop is a small daystall at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, which is the oldest continuous covered farmer’s market in the US. We make our products and do fabric design, accounting, and website building and maintenance in another small studio space across town. With the MacBook Air being so light and portable, it’s really easy to transfer it from place to place. I use a portable hub or my cell phone to provide internet access as the Market does not have wifi available for its daystall area tenants.
How are you using your MacBook Air to run your business?
I use Photoshop and Illustrator a lot for fabric and t-shirt and hoodie design and hook the MacBook Air up to my Wacom tablet for drawing. We use an all-in-one webservice, Shopify, to host our website and provide our shopping cart, so we use their interface online quite a lot.
Which has been the biggest advantageabout using your air to run your business?
I would say it’s the fact that you don’t sacrifice any features for the portability. My businesses are very small and has to be adaptable and agile to survive and I think the MacBook Air nicely mirrors that.