We Turned Two!

The Pixelpaint crew celebrated it's 2nd Birthday last Thursday and we found ourselves getting kind of emotional. It wasn't just because we were sipping on the good stuff out of plastic champagne flutes or because the cake was so tasty, it was because we've actually come a really (really really) long way in the past two years, and it's been a wild ride.

We wanted to share a bit of our story, because we're proud of ourselves and we couldn't have done it without all of you! Massive shout out to all of our customers and friends for your support, help and encouragement over the past couple of years.

Not many people know this, but when Pixelpaint started we didn't even have our own office space. In fact, we didn't have our own phone line, workshop, or even our own Internet connection. We were a laptop on a desk in the middle of someone else's office, with a single printer and a lot of enthusiasm.

We used to laminate our canvases by hand, and hang them up in an old commercial meat freezer to dry. We had to hand write all of the addresses on each package and write down every tracking number. We sold over a thousand canvases with our first Treat Me promotion, so as you can probably imagine, things got out of hand pretty quickly. We were challenged daily to change, grow and improve our systems in order to process the amount of orders we were receiving which seemed to be growing at a phenomenal rate. Back then it was hard to imagine that we would ever be where we are now!

We currently occupy our own entire building, which we renovated and decorated DIY style ourselves. We have a workshop, an office, our own bathroom and even our own beer fridge. We've implemented some awesome systems in our workshop to streamline production, and we've automated a lot of our processes to make everything run like clockwork. We also actively practise lean manufacturing and KANBAN, both are working for us like a dream.

We thought it was important to celebrate our progress like rock stars, so obviously we ate sushi and cupcakes followed by an afternoon of video games at the Game Masters Exhibition at Te Papa (which was amazing, go along if you can!). It was magical. At the end of the day we sat around and did what we do what we do best (apart from creating beautiful canvas from your amazing images), we drank some beers and toasted to the last two years. Here are some photos from our Birthday party, check us out!