Claudia Pearson is an illustrator and textile designer who turned her lifelong passion for art into a thriving business.
After years of illustrating for magazines and books, Claudia launched her first Etsy shop in 2008 with a small line of prints. Two years later, she tried her hand at tea towels — and sold out her first batch in minutes. That success inspired her to grow her own product line, expand into wholesale, and eventually launch her own online store.
Since 2013, ClaudiaPearson.com has run on WooCommerce. Woo allowed her to create a site that reflects her artistic touch — from watercolor-textured buttons to custom product galleries — while seamlessly managing fulfillment through ShipStation. Today, her designs are sold in museum shops, boutiques, airports, and major retailers like West Elm.
In our interview, Claudia shares how she’s grown her creative studio sustainably, what she’s learned about balancing art and business, and her plans to expand her direct-to-consumer ecommerce channel.
🎨 Explore Claudia’s website: https://claudiapearson.com/
💜 Learn more about WooCommerce: https://woocommerce.com/woocommerce/?...
📦 ShipStation for WooCommerce: https://woocommerce.com/products/ship...
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Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)
Hi, my name is Claudia Pearson. I'm an illustrator and textile designer, and I am the owner of ClaudiaPearson. com. I've been illustrating my entire life. I think I've just always wanted to draw and design, and I moved to New York from London when I was 25, and I started out as a commercial illustrator, so illustrating for books, magazines, advertising, that kind of thing. In 2008, I launched my Etsy shop and I started with a small line of prints for kids' rooms. In 2010, I decided to try a new product, which was my first tea towel. It was digitally printed, it was sewn by a friend of mine. I only made a hundred, and in the space of like five minutes, sold above and beyond the amount that I'd made. So in that moment I realized I had a viable product. I'm very inspired by the environment that we live in, and I feel like people are very connected to their spaces, whether it's an urban environment or a natural environment. And I love trying to encapsulate that within my designs. The city and state themed towels have undoubtedly been my best sellers over the years. I've had people who collect my towels, who collect all the cities, states, and that's just very fun to kind of hear. When I started the business, I was approached by a few boutiques and shops, and so I realized very quickly that I had the capacity to do wholesale, and still to this day I'd say my business is primarily wholesale. So I sell to museum stores, airport stores, small boutiques, large online shops. In 2016, I was invited by West Elm to collaborate on my first project with them, which was really fun. It was a line of dogs illustrated in funny outfits that was then reproduced onto plates and prints and tea towels, and that collaboration's been going for years now. Like we still work together. So when I launched my business in 2010, it was very small. I had I think five tea towel designs and I was doing everything on my own from my apartment. And then slowly, gradually, I've kind of expanded year on year, I've added new components to the business. I wasn't a business owner, I am an artist and I had to learn the business like on the fly. I was very determined to really grow the business organically. Like I didn't want to get over in over my head with debt or borrow money. So I've always grown the business as I see I can. And within the first two years, three years, I was able to bring on an assistant, and then um a few years later we brought on a full-time printer. A few years after that, we brought on a fulfillment center. In 2013, I launched ClaudiaPearson. com on WooCommerce. What I love about WooCommerce is the ability to customize and use textures that come through in my work on the site. For instance, all the buttons are all hand-drawn watercolor textures. So that's on the design side. And on the back end, I love how easy it is to always add product, take products away, change the slides on the front end, feature different new releases, new collections, and also integration. Having that flexibility has been great, yeah. Shipstation is a platform we use for our fulfillment, and everything's extremely seamless. Product goes straight into ShipStation, and our fulfillment centre can access from there and do all the shipping and handling from there. So it's been brilliant. Having sat down and looked at the data, I've realized that I'm sort of sitting on a gold mine that I haven't really been fully pursuing enough. So having primarily a wholesale business, I've been very lucky that I've been able to kind of keep my retail business kind of flourishing, but without putting much effort into it. So I've hired an SEO manager. We're looking into specific data and we're gonna start um advertising a little bit and really kind of working on building customer loyalty, repeat customers, and really growing the ecommerce business. I have been really trying to, and this sounds corny, but practice gratitude. Because I feel like we can move through our days sometimes without really truly looking at what's around us. And in these uncertain times, with the world being a little bit crazy, I want to constantly remind myself how fortunate I am to be in this position and to have run a business for myself. I don't have to be here at any given time. I can choose when to come to work. I can take a day off if I need some inspiration and go to a museum or a gallery or go hiking. I knew early on that my being present for my family and my kids as they were growing up was really important too. And being from England and not living there anymore, I wanted to be able to travel as much. Very, very grateful for all of it, really. It's a journey.
