Introducing Source
Once upon a time, Nicole Schmidt dropped a box of stone on her head. She was 7 months pregnant in a dusty supply closet that doubled as a materials library in an architecture firm. She swore, loudly. [If you’re in a dusty supply closet and no one is around to hear you, does your “fuck” really matter?].
Yes, it does.
It matters when you’re an enterprising person who has seen both sides of a complicated industry, and become convinced that the industry functions poorly. It matters when said box of stone is the final straw on the proverbial camel’s back. It matters when one little “fuck” galvanizes you into action, and that action becomes a company.
Nicole created krowdsourced in April 2018 with one ambition: Get all the people in commercial architecture + design out of their silos and collaborating better. It immediately struck a chord with the design community. As the business grew over the next 16 months, Nicole learned many things. Helpful things about what the community needed. Difficult things about what they didn’t. Among them was that the name was really confusing. The last thing this industry needs is more confusion, so in August of 2019 the company decided to rebrand.
It was good timing. After recently closing a 1.2M seed round, krowdsourced was also taking a hard look at long-term vision and undertaking a wholesale rebuild of the technology powering the business.
New name, new look, same ambition.
krowdsourced is now Source.
Source stays true to our roots, but people no longer think we’re a bank and it’s way easier to spell on the phone. More importantly, our new name captures the scope and nuance of our ambitions. It’s both a noun and a verb; a point of origin for choosing commercial design products. The primary place that members of our community come to connect.
Our logo, in turn, reinforces human connection and the design process. One of the first things an architect or designer learns is how to draw a straight line by drawing two dots and then connecting them.
Similarly, Source exists to facilitate communication and collaboration between all the many many stakeholders in a commercial construction project. Too often, our industry looks like this:
We think there’s a better way.
Source is keeping design human by building technology.
Find out more about what we believe.
Over the last 6 months, we have completely rebuilt all the technology powering our company. The shiny new website that we rolled out today is faster, cleaner, and easier to navigate than our old site. Under the hood it’s way more powerful.
The source for A+D.
On our platform, verified architects and designers can browse products from over 450 brands and find rep information for over 2,000 brands. They can save material selections into projects, order samples directly from their reps, export product information into spreadsheets, and more. Members can also connect with our product experts to consult on material selections and find niche products. In short, we’ve made it easier to find and keep track of product specifications without cutting out all the humans that matter in the process.
The source for reps.
Source is a team of seasoned industry veterans - architects, designers, and reps- who understand the way the design process works. We know, from experience, how important reps are to the process and how frustrating it is for reps to do their jobs well. We’ve built a system that empowers the relationship between reps and designers and keeps reps at the center of sample ordering. We’ve also built some new features: a way for reps to track whether their products are still under consideration for a project and to get their products in front of architects and designers at the time they’re selecting materials.
The source for manufacturers.
Source is committed to being an objective resource for designers. We let manufacturers fulfill their own sample orders, enabling any manufacturer to have space on our platform. We’re especially excited about our local maker program, which features artisanal producers that can deliver commercial-grade materials. We also allow architects and designers to filter by product impact attributes that matter to them like Women-Owned Businesses, Made in USA, or Red-List Free.
The source for community.
Source currently has a central material library in downtown Portland, and is opening libraries in Seattle and on the East Coast in 2020. Our libraries are staffed by product experts who can help find niche projects, and our spaces are available to library members to hold client meetings and attend community events. Our libraries also offer services like sample reclamation and material board production, and we offer library members free, unlimited Lyft codes to travel between their offices and the library.
It takes a village.
We have been honored to work with incredible partners to complete this work.
Each London was our brand partner, the creative motor behind our new name, logo, and visual identity.
Kickstand was our technology partner, working tirelessly to accomplish a stunning amount of work in a very short amount of time.
Our team worked around the clock to bring you Source. We’re only mostly powered by rosé.