We were super excited to begin our four-week Grove Giveaway this past Monday! To enter, simply visit our Giveaway page and get all social with us by signing up for our newsletter through our special contest page, or sharing the contest via Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. We’re offering a different prize at the end of each week-long phase, so get your Tweetin’, Facebookin’, Pinterestin’ shoes on!



This week’s prize is our beloved “Tree” Bamboo iPhone Case, which definitely has a special place in our hearts. We’re keeping the next three prizes a mystery (for now), because we know you just love the suspense. We might even throw a new product in the mix!

Oh boy! We can’t wait to pick the lucky winners!  

Written by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

Designer, illustrator, and screen printer, Graham Erwin offers up our newest addition to our Artist Series. Calling Columbus, Ohio home, Graham works for a custom t-shirt shop by day as pre-production manager and designer. At night, he explores his own brand of detail obsessive illustration. His work is heavily influenced by the screen printing process, and features flat shaping, fine vector lines, and loads of personal iconography. Time spent in front of video games as a child inspired Graham's illustrations to have a quirky geometric quality - instantly recognizable as his own.

Graham’s work has caught the attention of MondoTees in Austin and Gallery1988 in Los Angeles, where he is currently exhibiting several officially licensed posters paying tribute to a range of pop culture characters. His work can be explored through his website. Graham’s blog is also updated often, and some of his pieces can be purchased through his Etsy shop. 

Grove is incredibly proud to present “Lucky Cat” by Graham Erwin on the iPhone bamboo case and leather back. “Lucky Cat” bamboo iPhone case will be $20 off this week!

Written by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

Last week the Compound Gallery in downtown Portland opened a group show called Lazerz! -- artwork made by and about the laser. Of course, that’s right up our alley!  

We here at Grove were happy to exhibit several laser cut pieces from our wall art series by some of the awesome artists who design images for our hand made iPhone and iPad accessories. Grove artists featured at the show include Cole Gerst, Christopher Bettig, Jonny Wan, Ryan Bubnis, Jonathan Calugi, and Amy Ruppel.

Enthusiastic art lovers showed up in droves for the opening night of the exhibition during the monthly First Thursday art openings. Amy Ruppel made quite a splash with this beautiful custom piece made with wenge wood and white wax:

Also among Grove’s favorites was “Tupac Jesus”, made especially for Berto to which he added a 14k gold foil halo!



All of Grove’s limited edition wall art is laser cut and engraved from 1/4” thick bamboo plywood. Check it out here!

Written by Mike Schultz. He is an oil painter from Ithaca, New York.  When he is not working for Grove, he’s painting and drawing to his heart’s content.  You can see his work on his blog and his website.

The art of Andrea innocent tells quirky and bizarre stories through detailed illustrations.  Melbourne, Australia is Andrea’s home base, where she has served as a committee member of Illustrators Australia since 2009. Andrea’s character-driven work often explores various aspects of Asian culture through imagination and playfulness. Color, texture, and pattern are emphasized in her pieces, which can be explored on her blog and website, otoshimono.org.

Girl with a Mirror by Andrea Innocent (Part of a series of illustrations inspired by Japanese folktales)

Andrea has worked with an extensive client list to design advertising and packaging. Editorially, her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Nylon Magazine, and Creative Magazine, among others. Recent exhibitions of her work include Amalgamation at Compound Gallery, Illustrated Type at Gallery Nucleus, and The Hideout at C3 Contemporary art space. 

Grove is thrilled to feature “Cloud Girl” by Andrea Innocent on our iPhone bamboo case and leather back. Make all your daydreams come true with the “Cloud Girl” bamboo iPhone case, which is $20 off this week only!

Written by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

“I believe, I see, I shoot, I draw, I love...things...simple things.”

Chris Leskovsek, founder of NadaMeansNothing, is the newest artist collaborating with Grove! A full-time art director, graphic designer, and photographer, Chris is a native of Santiago, Chile, living and working in Auckland, New Zealand. 

Here in Portland, his work has been featured at Gigantic Gallery in the shows “Two Thumbs Up: Movie Posters” and “El Dia De Los Muertos”, but Chris’ reach as an artist is recognized internationally. A 2011 Cannes Finalist and collaborator with Ogilvy, EMI, Hurley International, Warner Music, Euro RSCG, and many others, Chris has also been shown in the Kentucky Museum of Arts & Crafts and the Mira Que Lindas album cover exhibition, among other international projects. His abstract illustrations, often employing a singular eye, hand, or human silhouette as a focal point, evoke both a vintage feel and that of peeking into an otherworldly dimension.

Chris’ ethereal illustration “See Through” is now available as a Grove Bamboo iPhone Case. Take advantage of the Design of the Week promotional discount of $20 off, this week only! 

Written by Sylvia Choi. She is a member of the Customer Service triumvirate with a penchant for correcting spelling errors. She wishes she had superhero powers to fight against modern day slavery. For now, she aims to be a voice for the voiceless.

We wanted to share one of our fun traditions here at Grove! Once a month, we have a barbeque for lunch, prepared and cooked by a member (or two) of our team. It’s a great way to feast, relax, bond, and nourish ourselves for the rest of the workday. That’s us in the photo below, chowing down on the loading dock right outside our woodshop.

Despite the raging appetites of some of our growing boys in the shop, there’s always plenty to go around and mouthwatering options for our team-members with dietary restrictions. We cook outside on the grill on our loading dock, rain or shine, but are definitely not limited to the typical burgers and hotdogs. Last month, Ariella made lamb meatballs and falafel complete with pitas, homemade hummus, all the fixins, and even a chocolate wafer cake for dessert. The previous month, Schultzy and Sean prepared tacos with soft corn tortilla shells made from scratch. At our next BBQ, Wendy, Ellie, and San are going to prepare a Korean BBQ extravaganza that will go down in history.



Our BBQ tradition started with our beloved Charlie, our former Production Assistant by day and talented chef by night (check his grill skills out in the photo below!). Charlie has since moved on to sunny SoCal, while we’re stuck here trying to top his legendary Grove BBQs of days past. 

We rotate “chefs” each month for shopping, prep, and outdoor cooking, and the whole team helps out by lining up all civil-like and chanting things like “meat, meat, where’s the meat!?!”. We all like to do our part; it often takes the whole crew to prevent Barrett, our CNC machine master and unofficial competitive eater, from eating himself into an afternoon food coma.

All kidding aside, it’s really amazing to work with a tight-knit group and a company that cares for its employees. Go Grove! 

Written by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

Team Grove is growing! Meet our new Production Assistant and photographer, Lauren. She’s already been busy working with the shipping crew and rubbing oil into your iPhone cases. At the moment, she’s focused on product photography, like the Leather Back and Wool Felt iPad Cases, for our website.

A native of sunny, southern California, Lauren moved to Portland last August. She graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in English and Art, and a concentration in photography. In her past life, she worked at a “nerd camp” in Los Angeles, teaching physics and math to highly gifted youngsters from around the world.

Here are some fun facts about Lauren:

• She currently lives in a co-op with seven people, six chickens, five rabbits, and two spiders named Stephanie and Onion, the guardian of the onion basket.  
• Running, writing, and photography are some of her favorite hobbies, and she also plays the piano and loves to travel.  
• Her favorite destinations thus far are China, Vietnam, Slovenia, and Ghana. 
• Lauren recently crocheted her first hat with orange and white yarn, and just painted her whole house, left handed, even though she’s a righty.  
  

Go Grove!

Written by Mike Schultz. He is an oil painter from Ithaca, New York.  When he is not working for Grove, he’s painting and drawing to his heart’s content.  You can see his work on his blog and his website.

The new About page is our co-founder Ken’s baby; he spearheaded the concept, and wrote the Story and bios with Schultzy. Yuji built the page in Django, and Max designed it to match the new, more organic look we’re striving towards with our whole website redesign. We wanted the About page to be easy to update and super fun to read and look at. The Grove Story is also an important feature of the page, because we are passionate about our company and take pride in what we do.

C’mon, everyone loves to look at pretty pictures and mouthwatering illustrations, and you know you want to read through each and every one of those truly informative bios... maybe even click on some of our team members’ personal websites. Grove bios are the new Pinterest. Eeeeeeeee!

Written by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

Here at Grove, we like to keep a positive and creative atmosphere in our Workshop. Hard work is often balanced with birthday celebrations, tasty employee-cooked meals, and good conversation. One such innovator is Arty Johnstone, an iPhone bezel-sanding champion who also happens to be a prolific artist. Currently, he’s working on a series of life drawings in our wood shop.

A recent Reed College graduate, Arty fills sketchbooks with images of people and their environments. Here at the Grove Workshop, that often translates into beautiful line drawings of our team sanding iPhone cases or one of our CNC machines precisely carving out bamboo cases for iPads - all rendered in ink or colored pencil.  

Arty finds time to draw during lunch and midday breaks, sketching during the quiet times of the day.  “I like to catch people unaware, when they’re settled and their guard is down,” he says. “No facade. That way, I can capture the personality of my subject.”

Research shows the majority of new iPad (third generation) owners are satisfied with their purchase and have few complaints. A survey by ChangeWave Research found that 98% of the professional and early-adopter crowd were “very satisfied” (82%) or “somewhat satisfied” (16%) with the new iPad. This compares with a 95% general satisfaction rate for the iPad 2 last year.



Problems with the new iPad are few and far between, with price being cited as the biggest issue by 26% of ChangeWave survey respondents.  The infamous “heat issue” was only recognized by 11% of respondents, with the majority of users never encountering the problem. Wireless data costs and storage capacity were among other minor complaints.



Consumer Reports, which placed the new iPad at the top of its tablet ratings, described its performance as “superb” and its retina display as “excellent,” applauding its impressive battery life to boot. They wrote the following about the heat issue:

“We also carried out further tests that confirmed the new iPad is warmer in its hottest spots than the iPad 2. But we didn't find those temperatures to be cause for concern (see our post, The new iPad can get very warm, further tests show, but is still safe).”

It makes sense that 51% of U.S. households now own an Apple product! This is a result of CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey.We were super excited to open our iPad 3 the day it arrived at Grove, and it’s been performing as smooth as Christopher Walken ever since!

CNN loves Grove!  Yes, they do!

Recently, Grove fans, you may have noticed that we were featured on CNN Money. Jose Pagliery posted a step-by-step series of ten photographs and captions to help illustrate Grove’s elaborate and old-fashioned design and production process for the new iPad case. He was intrigued by our small local company of “youngsters” who really are working from the ground up - from sketching out designs to piecing together our cases with lots of personal attention and finishing touches.  

Even though the article centers on how we create and make our cases, this is the first major article that focuses on Grove as a company rather than putting the spotlight on our wonderful products.  We hope it gives you all, patient customers and fans, a little glimpse into our emphasis on hand craftsmanship, and perhaps a bit more understanding behind our lead times (which we’re always improving, of course)!

Grove on!

Written by Sylvia Choi. She is a member of the Customer Service triumvirate with a penchant for correcting spelling errors. She wishes she had superhero powers to fight against modern day slavery. For now, she aims to be a voice for the voiceless.

It’s April in Portland, which means the cherry blossoms are in bloom and excitement is in the air for the warm, sunny days to come! Portland’s Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park, home to one hundred ornamental cherry trees, separates downtown from the west bank of the Willamette River. The trees’ pink bloomage gives Portland the perfect pick-me-up during the last stretch of overcast winter.

Portland’s tie to its sister city Sapporo Japan is especially potent this time of year. This connection is celebrated with The Friendship Circle memorial at the north end of the Park (the memorial includes two 20-foot stainless steel towers that generate electronic tones!). The Japanese American Historical Plaza is located south of the cherry trees and is dedicated to Japanese immigrants and US-born citizens of Japanese descent who were deported to inland internment camps during World War II.

Ken Tomita, one of Grove’s co-founders, and Yuji, his brother and Grove’s web engineer, are both Japanese-American. They were raised here in Portland by their mother, Machiko Tomita, who helped them maintain a strong connection with their Japanese culture and language. (Machiko is also a part of Grove, hand-oiling cases with care!) Ken makes sure the Grove team makes it down to “hanami” at Waterfront Park each spring, which is the important tradition of picnicking, singing songs, and drinking sake under the blossoms.

In Japan, cherry blossoms can symbolize the ephemeral nature of life - extreme beauty, transience, and mortality. These are interesting ideas to think about during Spring’s new beginnings and sunny adventures.

Written by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

We’d like to introduce an integral member of our team, Ginger! She’s the iPad Master, the Queen of the Bamboo Backs, and we’re lucky to have her with us.

Ginger aka Danger Pennsylvania aka “Gingembre”, hails from central PA. She’s a dedicated sun worshipper and devoted motivator (some might say mastermind) of all outdoor activities. Her closet is brimming over with Springtime games like badminton, a glow-in-the-dark frisbee, and the ever-dangerous lawn darts!

Last month marked her one-year anniversary at Grove which she celebrated by playing kickball with mascot Sam 2 in the street.

Important facts about Ginger: She’s a cyclist who eats cheese like it’s candy, rocks Swayze Crazy Patrick Swayze Night with her buddy Aaron, and knows the real deal about Paul Newman. Also, her beau has a dashing golden mane, and above all she loves summer evenings and grilling on the porch.

In the shop, she keep things smart and upbeat with talkies, like Radiolab and Stuff You Should Know. She also rocks out to Loretta Lynn, Bob Dylan, and local Portland bands like Run On Sentence and Sean Flynn and the Royal We.

The backstory: Back in the olden times, Ginger was the barista who made Grove founders Ken and Joe the coffee that fueled their iPhone case dreams. This was back in the day when Ken’s woodshop was still in a humble dungeon below a coffee shop, and Joe was engraving out of his bedroom.

Way back when, she worked for the infamously well dressed woodworker, George, and slowly began to help Ken and Joe out in their shop when Grove was just a baby company. The rest is history!

Currently, she is scheming to construct a piñata of an enormous wiener dog. Good luck with your endeavor, Ginger!

Written by Mike Schultz. He is an oil painter from Ithaca, New York. When he is not working for Grove, he’s painting and drawing to his heart’s content. You can see his work on his blog and his website.

Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nando Costa is a prolific illustrator, animator, and graphic artist living in our fair city of Portland, OR. Nando serves as a director for the design and live-action production firm Süperfad, and has been exploring the frontier of laser engraving in art. Nando’s art is featured on our Cellular Interference iPhone 4/4s Case and Leather Back.

Since he was 15, Nando has been dedicated to illustration. His education at Rio’s Parque Lage and his relationships with the creative people close to him served as strong inspirations during his time as a young artist. Since 1997, Nando has worked with several unique design firms, including Sphaera Design (Rio), WDDG (New York), Iconologic (Atlanta), Digital Kitchen (Chicago), and Modernista! (Boston).

Nando founded Nakd.tv with his talented wife, Linn, in Brazil, as well as Nervo.tv here in Portland, which merged with Bent Image Lab in 2009 to create such works as the “Whale Song” music video for Modest Mouse. His dynamic, versatile illustrations, graphic designs, and animations have also been utilized by Absolut, Adobe, Apple, Cartoon Network, Coca-Cola, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lexus, Microsoft, MTV, Nike, Nintendo, Samsung, Showtime, Timex, and Zune among others.

We’re so thrilled and honored to work with amazing creators like Nando. Stay updated on his current laser engraved animation project, “The New America,” an animated short film with each frame engraved in wood! And don’t forget to visit his website here!

Here at Grove, we not only do it all ourselves when it comes to our products, but also with our website. Thanks to our amazing web engineer, Yuji Tomita, a self-described Energizer Bunny, we have seen constant improvements. Our entire Grovemade.com web wonderland, front-end (what the customer sees) and back-end (what we see behind the scenes) was imagined and created with pride by our team.

As Yuji put it, “The needs for every business are so unique that we've gained a certain efficiency by building it all ourselves instead of parting it out to 10 vendors and integrating solutions that were never meant to coexist.” Just as Ken and Joe were developing the business from scratch, Yuji was teaching himself to program based on what needed to get done online. That’s right, he’s a self-taught mastermind - but that’s a whole other story.

A day came when Grove had so many orders they could not be sorted through by hand, and that’s when our site was born from the framework of Shopify’s shopping cart solution. Our site is run in Django, which means it’s fast, powerful, and much sexier than a PHP site (it’s a fact).  Django is an open source project Yuji regularly supports, because he believes in the free sharing of knowledge. We wanted to build our site just the way we’d like it from the ground up, and it couldn’t have been done without Yuji and Max Brown, our lead graphic designer.

Max is the mastermind of styling and illustrating the site, with art direction by Joe. You may have noticed that, page by page, the design of our website has evolved continually since day one. Take a look at some of the before and after photos!

Max’s main goal with the re-design - the “fundamental leap” - is to simplify the site and make it more organic in feel and appearance. We want the site to be easy to use, requiring fewer clicks to get where you want to go. The color scheme largely reflects the vibe and mood of our products, and we’re taking the site in a direction that further reflects our partnership with our artists. Taupes, creams, and oranges have stepped in where greys and greens used to lie. Max says it’s a less Matrix-y feel, in other words, “Free your mind!”.

Stay tuned everyone and thank you so much for taking the time to read some technical bits of the Grove Story!

Remember to check out Yuji’s site here and Max’s site here!

Article by Mary Yajko. She is a Grove customer support rep and crazed blogger originally from upstate New York. She enjoys opened minds, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and large amounts of french fries with ketchup.

Flavio, the Italian artist and founder of IDRO51 Creative Design Studio, masterfully displays his trademark “hypnotic art” on a variety of mediums. You can find his art on bicycles, car roofs, print, paintings, and even on our Grove “Wild Things” iPhone 4/4S case.  

His colorful patterns both draw the eyes in to the artwork and simultaneously out over the edges of the whole piece, where the viewer feels the designs extend - one feels as if what’s being shown is only a small portion of a larger picture.  It’s impossible to tell where the overlapping loops and squiggles begin; his fractal-like designs convey motion and depth as the shapes seems to evolve and interact with one another. His artwork is not chaotic, however - it instead feels balanced and abounding with energy and life that’s expressive of the artist’s own “madness” as he calls it. “I like to create a visual harmony using many colors together, each element develops in something more complex.”

Written by Sylvia. She is a member of the Grove Customer Service triumvirate with a penchant for correcting spelling errors and a love for languages and world cuisine.  She wishes she had superhero powers to fight against modern day slavery and human trafficking.  For now, she aims to be a voice for the voiceless.

We’d like to introduce the newest member to Team Grove, Ariella!  Earlier this month, she started her position as a production assistant, and is already sanding her heart out and sewing the leather covers on our iPad cases with gusto. 

Ariella aka “The Songbird” aka REI aka “Sticky Fingers”, hails from the piney meadows of Limerick, ME, a quaint hamlet nestled in the Northeast’s most cherished state.  Recently, she graduated from Reed College with a Bachelors of Art in Anthropology, and wrote her thesis on “Human Zoos”.  

Already, she’s known around the wood shop for her good humor, enthusiastic spirit, and bursting into cheerful song at a moments notice. She appreciates the relaxed atmosphere in the workshop, as well as the emphasis on making the Grove community a healthy environment to work in. We here at Grove are very deliberate about our company growth, and strive to maintain a positive culture in the workplace!

Important facts you should know about Ariella: She took karate for 8 years, and is ready to kick some tushy if you badmouth Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.  She’s a bloody Mary enthusiast, a French macaroon lover, and owns a notorious cat, Moxie.    

She’s also been singing her entire life, and has been performing her unique blend of R&B, funk, and folk, for seven years.  Her band is called “SlowClap AfroNation”, and you can peep them here on Sound Cloud.

We welcome Ariella to our community with open arms, as Grove enters a vibrant expansion stage.  As she said on her first day of work, “We’re halfway there, livin’ on a prayer!”  Indeed... go Grove!

Written by Mike Schultz. He is an oil painter from Ithaca, New York.  When he is not working for Grove, he’s painting and drawing to his heart’s content.  You can see his work on his blog and his website.

Who’s ready for an onslaught of healthy living?  

Team Grove has declared March as “The Month From Health”, and we’re pulling out all the stops.  What started as one lad’s simple wish to eat better, has spiraled into a company wide, no holds barred, face full of HEALTH!  

“It’s all about breaking old habits, and replacing them with something positive,” said Ginger G, woodshopper extraordinaire.  “Hopefully it will change into a regular routine by the end of the month.”   

By checking in with each other daily, we are helping one another reach our own personal goals.

 

Wholesome highlights include: a raw food cleanse, daily yoga classes, walking to work, nutritious breakfasts, morning chin ups, homegrown alfalfa sprouts, working out at the gym, organic apple cider vinegar drinks, evening jogs, Ken’s cilantro juice fast, and of course, bikes!  goGrove!

What healthy practice will you pick up this month?  Let us know!

Written by Mike Schultz. He is an oil painter from Ithaca, New York.  When he is not working for Grove, he’s painting and drawing to his heart’s content.  You can see his work on his blog and his website.