Vintage-inspired. Designed in Chicago. Handcrafted by fair trade women’s cooperatives & artisan groups in India & Nepal.
Mata Traders
Archives: Websites
eCommerce Websites
The Flourish Market
Emily Sexton launched The Flourish Market in the fall of 2015 in a uniform delivery truck, selling fair-trade clothing and accessories.
Max Wanger Print Shop
Max constructed his first camera out of paper and scotch tape when he was seven years old. To this day, he is fond of simplicity and negative space, to less is more, to the beauty in the unexpected. Max’s photographs have been exhibited and recognized all over the world. He currently resides in LA with his lovely wife and business partner, Margaux, and their kids, Dash & Quincy, a.k.a Rocket.
Zero Waste Club Shop
Feeling frustrated and let-down by the extent of the damage we have done to our environment, two friends – Rishi and Pawan – went in search of answers. While the markets are changing slowly, they noticed that many products that are eco-friendly are given a luxury label. They also found that many products sold under the “eco” label tend to stretch the definition of sustainability. Thus they decided to start their own journey to produce truly eco-friendly, sustainable, beautifully designed and ethical essentials at affordable prices.
And here we are!
We want to do more than just make beautiful eco-friendly products. So we are going to change how supermarkets and online stores operate by making a service better than all of them. Hopefully this will inspire other shops to do refills as default.
DIY Print Shop
Ryonet, a leader in providing ultra-premium equipment to the screen printing industry, joined forces with Print Liberation, an independent design studio known for their bold printed T-Shirts, to offer you the best of both worlds with our collaborative line of kits, DIY Print Shop. These high-quality Do-It-Yourself screen printing kits embody the notion of Made To Make It — making it easier for you to grow a dream, create a brand, share a voice, or even inspire a movement.
Variety Hour
Helmed by textile designer Cassie Byrnes, Melbourne-based Variety Hour creates print-focused pieces produced in thoughtfully small batches.
Georgia Perry
We make accessories that we believe our customers will love and treasure for many years to come.
Moth
Moth Chicago offers a curated selection of minimalist home goods, clothing, and accessories inspired by Nordic and Japanese design. Their products include housewares, candles, jewelry, and personal care items, all characterized by craftsmanship, simplicity, and functionality. Moth emphasizes quality, featuring unique, thoughtfully designed pieces that blend beauty with practicality, making it a destination for those who appreciate clean, modern aesthetics.
Neighborly
Handmade & indie-made home goods, gifts & artwork from Chicago.
Ork Posters
Ork Posters sells typographic neighborhood map posters and prints, founded in 2007 by designer Jenny Beorkrem and made in Chicago. Beyond the core map line the catalogue extends into country and anatomy prints, apparel, custom canvas, framing and gift wrap, sold through a WooCommerce storefront built on the Storefront WordPress theme.
Website Design
DIN for body copy, Futura for callouts. The theme’s stylesheet loads an uploaded DIN typeface for body text and buttons, while a second uploaded face, Futura, is reserved for the announcement message near the top of the page.
A cyan accent family on black and white. Link and highlight colors sit in a consistent cyan range, roughly #0AA6CC to #36cbe2, against plain black text on a white ground, rather than a single fixed brand hex.
A custom child theme, not a stock template. The site runs a modified WooCommerce child theme named internally “Ork Posters IN USE,” layered on the standard Storefront base rather than a from-scratch build, a practical rather than a polished choice.
A long-running platform choice. WooCommerce and the Storefront theme date back many years as a WordPress ecommerce pairing, and the site’s plugin list, shipping tools, PayPal checkout and product bundles among them, has been layered onto that base over time rather than replaced.
Shopping Experience
Maps organized by geography and by type. The main menu splits Shop Maps by City into US, Canadian and European sections plus Countries and Regions and Anatomy, and separately offers Shop by Type for brewery maps, street maps and typography-based designs.
Framing and apparel as cross-sells. A Products For Hanging section sells frames alongside the posters, and a Besides Posters section adds apparel, custom canvas prints and gift wrap to the core map business.
No pricing on the landing pages. Neither the homepage nor the top-level category pages display prices; shoppers need to open a specific map or product to see cost, and a separate Sale Posters category surfaces current discounts.
Brand Storytelling
A founder-led, dated origin. The brand credits designer Jenny Beorkrem and a 2007 founding directly, rather than an anonymous “our story.”
An originality claim stated outright. The site describes itself as “the original home of the city neighborhood map posters in the typographic style,” positioning the format itself as the brand’s invention.
Local manufacturing named specifically. Materials and production are described as sourced and made in Chicago, tying the “Made in USA” claim to one specific city rather than a country-level generality.
Notable Features
Custom canvas as a personalization option. Shoppers can order a custom canvas print in addition to the fixed poster catalogue.
Gift certificates sold as a standard product. A gift certificate option sits in the main navigation rather than being buried in a footer link.
Product thumbnails shown in room context. Rather than plain product-only shots, several thumbnails show the poster framed and hung in a room, letting shoppers judge scale and color against a wall before adding it to cart.
Niche sub-verticals beyond city maps. Brewery maps and anatomy diagrams extend the typographic-map format into adjacent, narrower audiences.
Ork Posters Shop Category page example
Ork Posters Product page example
Ork Posters Checkout page example
Ork Posters footer example
Blackwing
Legendary Grammy, Emmy, Pulitzer and Academy Award winners have created with the Blackwing 602 pencil. The list of known users includes John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Chuck Jones who proudly used Blackwings to create Bugs Bunny and many other Looney Tunes characters.
A Peace Treaty
A PEACE TREATY was founded on the belief that things made by hand, imbued with the story of their maker, are the most beautiful and luxurious in the world.
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