Ponsonby Central was home to Paper Rain for just two weeks last month. What a big fortnight it was!! Auckland, you are amazing!!!
Five beer-fridge-sized boxes of t-shirts, 30 board artworks, a stuffed station wagon and a very loaded trailer wound it's way onto the Cook Strait Ferry and up the North Island near the end of October. We moved in over night and transformed the store in the wee hours of the morning. Our industrial furniture & recycled rimu walls were complimented by great crates, blankets and chairs from Arkade Hire. A huge thanks to the talented and exceptionally lovely artist, Hannah Jenson for lending us a veritable forest of greens for our store!
This pop up represented the official release of our Cause Range which links with eight artists (including two in-house) and 11 social or environmental initiatives. Each new t-shirt artwork is paired with a Cause to donate a percentage of profits to. The Kakī Stilt t-shirt - for example, is a commissioned work from Flox, made from fair trade organic cotton, and screen printed by hand in our garage – is for DOC's Kaki Stilt Recovery Program.
Image: Our Kakī Stilt Flox t-shirt, Rachael Brown Photography
As well as the donation, the Cause range is starting conversations in store and online. It becomes a shared story for us and our customers and will hopefully make people think about the positive spin offs they can achieve through their business or purchases.
The pop up also threw in a launch party supported by Garage Project and Framingham Wines followed by a tasting evening for seven new release rieslings (also from Framingham Wines) in store. Why not, eh?
Collaboration with like-minded people – all of whom believe in quality products and “good” business - is at the heart of The Paper Rain Project. To us, it’s about connection and banding together to get the most reach, the best overall product and the most positive impact with what we do. We all have different strengths, but in a good collaboration, those are condensed into something awesome which would not have been created in that way if it were a different combination of people or ideas. We are super lucky to get to work with our guest artists to create what we do.
A HUGE thank you to everyone who came along to meet us & see our new Cause range in Auckland last month! Special thanks to the crew from Garage Project, Framingham Wines, Bird on a Wire, Arkade Hire, Hannah Jensen, Endemic World, Jo Currie, Josh Edmonds, Kokako Coffee, Women Who Get Shit Done & A Bit More Soul.
Images courtesy of Josh Edmonds Photography & Jo Currie Photography.
