Huong Nguyen Wolf, co-founder and CEO of Quilling Card, introduces the company
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Tell us the background of Quilling Card – how did it come about?
I was inspired to start Quilling Card because of my desire to preserve and share the lost, ancient art of quilling. I grew up in Vietnam and began my career in marketing, but after dedicating years to advancing the dreams of others, I decided to leave the industry and pursue my own. I would go on to use the valuable entrepreneurial experience I had gained over the years to build a foundation to share my love of quilling with others. In late November of 2011 while at our apartment in Saigon, my husband Raphael and I created Quilling Card, which would come to be a flourishing greeting card company.
What did you do before you started the company?
Prior to starting Quilling Card, I worked in marketing throughout Southeast Asia and the US for large corporations such as Unilever and L’Oréal. I have to say that Unilever seasoned me as a marketer and L’Oreal trained me as an entrepreneur. I was able to leverage these experiences to shape Quilling Card to what it is today.
How do you produce so many cards when they are all handmade?
In the beginning, we were a one-woman show. We quickly multiplied to 10, then 100 and now 1,000 quillers. Today we are very fortunate to have such a remarkable team of talented artisans across five factories in Vietnam, my native country, with 90% of our quillers being female.
And what is the aim of the company?
Quilling is still a long-lost art in many places around the globe and we are proud that Quilling Card has become the premier source of preserving and sharing this beautiful art form as it is our mission to keep it alive and flourishing.
Tell us about your artists/designs.
We are proud to have given jobs to hundreds of locals, most being young women from rural areas surrounding Ho Chi Minh City who have little education due to a lack of resources. We have a complete training programme that provides all the tools necessary for those interested to become experts in quilling. Each artisan comes to truly enjoy the craft and meditative state that quilling provides, spending approximately one hour to complete each design.
What about new ranges?
We are always thinking of new ways to push quilling to its limits. Most recently, we have developed our Quilled Artist Series, which uses the art of quilling to translate the paint strokes of famous works of art into quilled masterpieces of their own. The collection currently includes 12 designs depicting works by Klimt, Van Gogh, Seurat, Monet, Renoir and Hokusai.
What do you offer other than cards?
Although we started as primarily a greeting card company, our passion for this art has led us to explore quilling for all kinds of gifts – we have launched specialty gifts such as journals, sticky note covers, jewellery, hair accessories, decorative wall art, DIY quilling kits, ornaments, and custom designs. Our goal is to make quilling a staple piece in homes across the world!
Anything in particular you are especially proud of?
We have so much to be proud of; we have won multiple Louie awards for our greeting card designs in various categories over the past 10 years. We also have received the People’s Choice Award for Global Goodness at the Las Vegas Market in 2017. We were awarded second place for the Best Local Company by Ho Chi Minh City authorities in 2019; and in 2020, our Quilled Braille Greeting Card was awarded the MSA Buyer’s Choice Award for Paper Products.
The biggest accomplishment of Quilling Card is most certainly our Guinness World Record titles for Most People Quilling Simultaneously and The Largest Quilling Paper Mosaic Image. We set these records in honor of our 10 year anniversary in spring 2022. The 15ft tall and 19ft wide mosaic depicts Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The piece took more than 300 artisans nearly 3,400 hours of quilling to complete. Our hope is for the mosaic to become a travelling art piece.
