“Focus on what you love, focus on what makes you happy. What makes you wake up in the morning?”
Kathryn Lawrie is the VP of Marketing at Springs Creative, and their newly spun-out company Springs Digital. She focuses on leads and revenue generation and handles corporate marketing and corporate communication for the company.
Interview
Transcript
Kathryn Lawrie
I’m Kathryn Lawrie, and I currently am in Rock Hill, South Carolina, which today is somewhat considered a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, and I’m originally from South Carolina. I actually was born and raised in between, well, really, starting in Pawleys Island and then Columbia. And then, I’m a Winthrop University graduate. I moved away from Rock Hill and just happened to be back in my alma mater city, so.
Haley Hansen
That’s really one of the fun things about South Carolina, you ask someone where they’re from and they always have, “here’s where I am now, here’s where I was from originally.”
Kathryn Lawrie
But South Carolina born and raised, I am a Grit and proud of it.
Haley Hansen
Can you please tell me what you do for work and where you are currently working from?
Kathryn Lawrie
Yes. So, I am currently in Rock Hill, South Carolina, I am the VP of Marketing for, really my focus is on leads and revenue generation, but I handle all the corporate marketing, corporate communications and everything for the company as well.
Haley Hansen
And the name of the company is…
Kathryn Lawrie
Springs Creative, Springs Creative. But interestingly enough, we just spun out a separate company. So Springs Creative is a very robust moniker with a very long history in textiles. The Springs name has been around for more than 120 years. And it’s still a family owned and run business. There’s many divisions underneath that Springs Creative moniker, and just recently, we spun out one of those divisions into a totally separate company. So now I’m really kind of straddling two separate companies, if you will, and that includes Springs Creative and Springs Digital. And you could almost talk about one of our divisions, the Baxter Mill Archive Design Center as a separate company as well. So it’s kind of an umbrella of brands, if you will.
Haley Hansen
Yeah, I saw on your guys’s website that you were started in like, the 1800s by Samuel Elliott White, I think it was?
Kathryn Lawrie
Right.
Haley Hansen
I remember reading about him in my history class.
Kathryn Lawrie
Really?
Haley Hansen
Yeah.
Kathryn Lawrie
Very cool. Yeah, we are, we are right here in cotton country on the textile track, no doubt.
Haley Hansen
How long have you been working there?
Kathryn Lawrie
So in one seat or another, one hat or another, about 18 years. I actually started with a different division that was a subsidiary of Springs, it was called Scene Weaver. And it was a textile business, but very, very much based on like, gift and specialty independent accounts. So we sold to, like, 5000 mom and pop shops, like Main Street stores, gift stores and boutiques around the US, and did some private label development for some of the major outdoor companies like Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s, Gander Mountain and Tractor Supply and those guys. So that’s really where I began my career in textiles, in product development and in marketing. And over the years, that business was slowly consolidated into Springs as the parent company, and then I’ve assumed multiple roles and kind of gone up, down, and sideways across the ladder over those years.
Haley Hansen
How did you end up in that field? You said that was where you started in textiles, how did you get there?
Kathryn Lawrie
So that’s an interesting story. I actually studied art at Winthrop. And I had a double minor in art history and psychology, I was very interested in pursuing a career in art therapy during the time that I was in school. But when I got out of college with that student loan debt, it was quickly time to go to work. So when I moved away from Rock Hill I went back to Columbia, and was kind of working some different jobs here and there, I was in a jewelry business for quite a while, which I really loved because I loved the customer interaction of just, you know, being customer facing. But there was also a full time jeweler at this particular retailer, and so I was really able to learn a lot from him and bring some of my skills from college to that opportunity.
Kathryn Lawrie
I realized that I liked working with my hands and liked that creative practice and almost wanted to sit in the jeweler seat more than I wanted to be on the sales floor. So I just decided that I wasn’t really using my degree to its full potential and that there was something else out there for me and I walked away from the jewelry job. And, to be quite honest, for a couple of months there I was walking around town handing out my resume to every art gallery and museum and graphic design contact that I could make and basically saying, “I have a degree in unemployment. Can you help me?” Because I wasn’t sure where I was going next. And I wasn’t sure what my niche was really going to be. And I just happened to meet a fabulous graphic designer who was running her own studio and she said “well I don’t need any help right now, but I’ve actually got someone that I’m doing some work for who may be interested.”
Kathryn Lawrie
And that’s how I got connected at Scene Weaver, I started in the graphics department and was really focused on the metadata and tagging of all of the graphics files, and how to resize and rescale things and just maintaining that graphics archive. And slowly but but surely, I got more involved and ingrained and like the graphics aspect of it. And that kind of came to developing logos and branding and packaging. And along the way, I really honed my skills in Adobe Photoshop and the Adobe Suite. And yeah, that just kind of like, set the trajectory for my career. So I mentioned I’ve kind of climbed the ladder, the old American Dream way, and just started in product development. But then that evolved into this packaging and more of a marketing role. And then I established a marketing department for that small company. And that gave me the experience of building e-commerce websites, both B2B and D2C, and then what those marketing strategies looked like, and with my hands still on the pulse of product and product development, I was able to take multiple trips to China and visit factories, and it’s been a very lucrative and fulfilling career for me. And I never knew this was where I would be, nor that it would bring me back to Rock Hill, South Carolina, but I couldn’t be happier to be here.
Haley Hansen
It sounds like a really good mix of the customer facing stuff and the hands-on art stuff you said you enjoyed.
Kathryn Lawrie
Absolutely, absolutely. I found my happy balance.
Haley Hansen
That’s awesome. What was the biggest adjustment or challenge that you faced in starting your current role?
Kathryn Lawrie
Current role, like present day, I would say it’s probably just the, you know, as I described this company earlier, it’s somewhat segmented. I don’t really want to say fragmented, but definitely segmented. And so there’s a lot for me to, there’s a lot going on in the company, for me to really keep my hand on the pulse and make sure that, you know, as my role in Shared Services, that I am connecting the dots between the divisions and keeping everyone engaged in communication and keeping our communication flowing to all of those respective teams, versus having these very siloed departments. So I would say that that’s probably my greatest opportunity in the seat I’m in today.
Haley Hansen
Making sure no one’s wandering off on their own.
Kathryn Lawrie
That’s right.
Haley Hansen
Can you please walk me through, like, your typical workday? Like what you did yesterday, maybe?
Kathryn Lawrie
I don’t know if I even remember what I did yesterday! I think half of my to do list from yesterday moved over to today. So it’s been one of those weeks. Let’s see, this week, we have been focused on relaunching our websites. So if you went to springscreative.com, you should definitely check out springs-digital.com.
Haley Hansen
That was the one that you emailed us?
Kathryn Lawrie
Yes, I think so.
Haley Hansen
Yeah, I checked that.
Kathryn Lawrie
We just launched that one last week, just in time for really follow up to High Point Market and our team going to the Interwoven Market, which they just returned from today. And then simultaneously, been running kind of parallel path, have had a team in the digital division working on that website build. And we also have a team working on the Springs Creative rebuild, because now that Digital is a separate company, we’re really able to clean up and get much more intentional about our communications and messaging on each one of those platforms. So that has been the bulk of my work this week, I would say. It was just working with my content development teams, building our go to market strategy, working with the other stakeholders in the company, in terms of what content and call to actions are most important for those websites and what events we want to feature and how we’re building community and in some cases, reestablishing or re-engaging community now that we’re splitting that into multiple directions. So that has been quite consuming this week.
Haley Hansen
Sounds like it. Do you have a defining moment in your creative journey, such as a particular project that made a significant impact on you, or something you produce that really showcased your creativity?
Kathryn Lawrie
I would say that over the past 10 to 12 years, I’ve had the opportunity to really be the lead and creative director on a number of videos. And those are in some cases like product release videos, but they were filmed almost like a commercial, an advertisement that we used in our trade shows and in our permanent showrooms as well as shared them with retailers. Oftentimes, it was to showcase, you know, the functions and the features of a product, but there’s a little more storytelling that goes into it than that. So I’ve really enjoyed being that creative director behind the scenes in terms of the videography work that we’ve done across the different business units. And that storytelling journey is something that I’m very passionate about. So I think that would be a highlight.
Haley Hansen
That’s also really cool. That’s even different from the graphic design stuff, that’s awesome. Do you have any cinematography training? Or did you kind of figure that out as you went along?
Kathryn Lawrie
Kind of figured it out as I went along. So as I kind of molded into that marketing role, with Scene Weaver, I was actually working with some contract photographers. And so I was overseeing, you know, still shots, lifestyle shots, contracting models, doing the set staging, and that sort of thing. And I think that having that one on one with professional photographers, and just being on set really opened my eyes to opportunity of, you know, how to, how to better showcase a product detail, or how to get the warm and fuzzy from this baby picture. And, you know, engaging with the talent as well as with the product was something that I really loved. And the more I got involved in the photography aspect of it, I did more and more with like the full catalog layout and design. And, so from there, I started doing the photography myself, I just read about it, studied about it, and started doing all of the product flat shots, but was still calling in external help for videography, because there’s only so many hours in the day. Just you know, getting to I guess, interview different videographers look at their portfolios and understand, you know, kind of their style. And what style fit the message that we were trying to utilize in our campaign was always a good process, a fun process that I enjoy just finding the right match. And still to this day, that’s really how I work through videography.
Haley Hansen
Can you recommend any specific skills or skill set that someone aspiring to your position should acquire, if they want to land a role in your field?
Kathryn Lawrie
I think soft skills are essential, and I think they’re harder and harder to come by today. Because it’s not really something that we can train ourselves on, or that we study in school. But I think just to be your authentic self is so important. And especially when you’re storytelling, or you’re looking to be in a marketing field or a branding field, I am very passionate about defining the why behind the what. I always want to know what the purpose is, and I look for a greater good or a greater reason to come to work than just for a paycheck. So I would say just honing those skills in the areas that you enjoy, like, do what do what is fun to you. Because if you’re having fun, then you’re not really working a day in your life, right?
Kathryn Lawrie
And for me, that looks like a lot of different roles and responsibilities, which I love about my current job, because I am kind of all over the place. But when it’s time to focus, you know, I can sit down and focus in those areas that I have strengthened and know that I can sit down and get the job done versus hiring out other help, you know? So I would say that, you know, just focus on focus on what you love. Focus on what makes you happy, like you know what makes you wake up in the morning and hone those skills. And then, just be true to yourself and be true to the people you encounter. And that will help you get a long ways in a career.
Haley Hansen
All right. Sounds like great advice. Are there any organizations or programs or events that you would recommend for young people interested in your field in South Carolina?
Kathryn Lawrie
Absolutely. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to anyone from South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, but it would be great to tap in there and I’d be happy to make an introduction because, the video clip that I sent you? I don’t know if you noticed, but that was actually sponsored by the SCMA and the South Carolina Arts Commission. And they are starting a new website. I don’t know the exact name but it’s something along the lines of Future Creative Workforce. And their mission is really to share with middle school, high school and college level students that there are creative jobs in South Carolina, and when you drive past a manufacturing plant, don’t just think about the folks that are running the machinery and working on the manufacturing line. There are designers, graphic designers, illustrators, all types of creative brains within those manufacturing roles. So I would say that that would be a good connection for you and they do a lot of events and things as well. And I know that there’s going to be, you know, a big push with their new website and other videos of other creative companies that they have interviewed around South Carolina. I think they may still be in the process of that.
Kathryn Lawrie
Additionally, I would say that Springs Creative is always open to internships. And so anyone that’s in a creative field, you know, could definitely contact us with their resume and portfolio. And we could discuss opportunities for interning here at Springs. And we are getting ready to relocate, in Rock Hill still, literally just across the street from where we’re sitting today. We are moving our 1 million piece textile archive and our offices. So we will have a new headquarters not far from where we’re sitting today, but in a much more creative building, it’s going to truly be a world class facility, and a great place to just be inspired to look at the history of textiles, dating back to the 1800s and see how our teams scan those original vintage textiles and then recreate them by re-coloring or changing the scale and motif. And then we digitally print textiles today that mimic that original from, you know, 1819 or whatever the year may be. So there will be several release parties and opening celebrations. We’re not doing a huge grand opening, but there will be multiple opportunities on the horizon for students to come through to tour and we actually do student guided, er, we do designer guided tours through the archives today for student groups, especially those that are in the study or practice of like interior design and product design.
Haley Hansen
Final question: do you have any advice for current students or young adults who are pursuing a career in the creative world?
Kathryn Lawrie
Go for it. Don’t let people shy you away from it. Right? Like, that whole younger me walking around saying “I have a degree in unemployment. Can you help me?” It’s so not true. Don’t ever feel that way. Don’t think that. It’s okay to be an aspiring artist. There are ways to make money, there are ways to utilize your skills and your talent and find a lucrative career. Especially in the state of South Carolina with all of the manufacturing that’s coming to the state. So I would say just go for it, you know? Don’t don’t feel like you’re going to be a starving artist, because that’s a cliche term. Like there are numerous ways to make money as a young professional with a creative talent.
Haley Hansen
Is there anything else you think that you should share while you’re here?
Kathryn Lawrie
Come see the Baxter Mill Archive, whenever you can! Come be inspired!
Haley Hansen
All right! Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
Kathryn Lawrie
Thank you.
