Hello and thanks for reading!
My name is Leigh and I’m a Jimmy Buffett fan (title reference). I’m also the person behind WearPanda. I’ve been at the helm since 2016 and run the show from my home in Ballard, Washington where I live with my partner and our two cats (Temi & Tigar).
I’ve been wanting to write more/at all about life behind the scenes of ecommerce, and seeing as I’ve got time on my (recently washed) hands now it seemed like a good time to just get started.
Awkward but necessary introductions done. Thanks for bearing with me.
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Up until 2020, everything was on track for the 2020 collection. How’s that for irony? Our inventory had arrived on time and to our specifications, we had a plan in place for gathering photography, we had some cool marketing lined up.
Then came the ‘rona.
Unlike many small businesses, we have been extremely fortunate in our ability to respond to the pandemic (as we’re already a remote, work-from-home team), but we didn’t quite make it this far (too soon to say ‘out’!) unscathed.
For one, it’s hard to get photos of happy groups of people wearing sunglasses and maintain social distancing.
And those great big festival marketing partnerships? Canceled.
Our retailers? Closed.
Normal life? No more.
But we are scrappy. I’m pretty vocal about how content creation is one of my least favorite things, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We have two new styles this year, Rey and Cooper, and two new limited editions (plus a new collection of blue-light blocking glasses. More on those later). So for each of those we needed product and lifestyle photography.
For the product photos, I used the Amazon Basic lightbox because it was cheap and well-reviewed #basic. As I live in Seattle, the available natural light was pretty minimal which put me at a disadvantage as far as getting the proper lighting. I used snapseed to brighten the images afterward which helped.
For the lifestyle photos, I initially tried my hand at setting up some flatlays. Unfortunately, I lacked the closet necessary to really make these look the way I wanted. Nothing left to do but take a selfie. So I packed up my collection of panda sunglasses and headed out to wander my neighborhood in search of cool backgrounds and better lighting. Back to snapseed for editing.
And that, if anyone is still reading, is the overly long explanation for why ‘that one blond woman’ has shown up in all of the new photography for Panda sunglasses.
Now. Go check out the cool new bamboo sunglasses.
Shop Rey
Shop Cooper
Shop Monroe in Grey Ombre
Shop Joyce in Grey/Silver
Shop Blue Light Blockers
