It's not often an interior designer doubles as a tech entrepreneur, but Shane Reilly embodies the two roles like none other. In just five years, she has started and sold two companies: Her design platform Decorati was absorbed by Gilt Groupe in 2011 and this time, her custom fabric source Guildery has been snapped up by online marketplace Minted, which is making a greater foray into the home decor business.
Shane Reilly (right) and designer Sandra Espinet
Reilly launched Guildery as a way to market custom designer fabrics to consumers with collections by Paloma Contreras, Lindsey Coral Harper and Sandra Espinet. Minted has taken a similar collaborative approach to product design by linking consumers with independent artists to produce on-demand pillows, curtains, table linens, lampshades and other products, as part of Minted Home, which debuted last August, expanding from 40,000 unique SKUs to 80,000. This latest deal with Guildery will, in the words of Minted founder and CEO Mariam Naficy, “combine Guildery’s experience in on-demand manufacturing with Minted’s community of independent creatives.” The financial terms have not been made public.
Reilly will join Minted as head of strategic partnerships, and Jeff Marion, Guildery’s vice president of engineering, will lead Minted’s E-commerce Engineering. Guildery creates proprietary designs and develops color-coordinated collections. It also offers on-demand textile printing and manufacturing for every buyer’s order. “Minted’s mission to bring the highest-quality made-to-order designed goods to the world through innovative technology is well matched with Guildery’s vision of online customization,” says Reilly. “We’re thrilled to be joining forces, and look forward to extending Minted’s significant reach and operational capacity to our community of artists and designers so they can focus on creating unique designs.”
Though there aren’t plans in the immediate works for new products or services, Naficy is in the process of evaluating Guilder’s other products to see which will be incorporated into Minted Home. What will change as a result of the acquisition? “I would expect that we will build even stronger capabilities in fulfilling home decor products on demand. Our design, quality, speed, and cost will all continue to improve,” she says.
Existing and recently developed services target interior designers. “Minted highly values Guildery’s relationships with interior designers, and we will be creating ways to further integrate them into the Minted community,” Naficy says. “We currently offer a trade program for wall art, and are exploring the possibility of extending our trade program into home decor in the future. We also recently launched Minted Curators, an e-commerce platform that allows an interior designer to create a store on Minted and curate a selection of favorite Minted products on the store, generate beautiful shareable content featuring those products, and earn commissions off of sales of the products.” (Check out Caitlin Flemming of Sacramento Street’s Curator Store.)
