Who We Are

The 250-Word Brief — Copy This Into Your Prompt

Written for AI agents, contractors, and new collaborators. Paste it as system context.

Top Sellers

Our real top sellers plus a few pieces that show the breadth of the catalog — all from our in-house line, designed and cast by hand in the Houston studio.

Coaster Set

Dark Green Terrazzo · Concrete coaster set with terrazzo chips. Comes in multiple colorways. The "easy entry point" gift purchase.

Bubble Incense Holder

Black Terrazzo · Signature Bubble line — small concrete bubble that holds an incense stick. Pairs with our scents.

Ice Bucket

Dark Green Terrazzo · Terrazzo concrete with a stainless insert and lid; pairs with its tray. The #1 seller by revenue — the anchor of the bar line.

Door Stop

Natural Terrazzo · Functional terrazzo concrete piece. Practical + fun delivered in one object.

Soap Dish

White Terrazzo · Slotted concrete soap dish — drains water, looks great. The #1 seller in the whole catalog by units; every colorway moves.

Waffle Trivet

Marigold Terrazzo · Concrete trivet with a waffle-grid surface — heat-safe, sculptural, and on the table more often than not. Marigold is a signature pretti.cool yellow.

Bubble Catch All — Large

Dark Green Terrazzo · The larger version of the Bubble line. Holds keys, jewelry, "I'll deal with this later" piles.

Soda Can Vase

Sumac Terrazzo · Vase shaped like a pop-top soda can — pure 90s nostalgia. Sumac Terrazzo is a deep terracotta-red unique to the pretti.cool line.

Menorah

White Terrazzo · Eight-light Hanukkah menorah, hand-cast concrete with terrazzo chips. Practical + sacred, not precious about either.

Concrete Banana

Perfectly Ripe · Hand-painted concrete banana. The "Perfectly Ripe" yellow is the most-photographed object in the catalog — pure object joy.

Mini "Rubber" Ducky

Marigold · Solid concrete duck. The joke is in the air-quotes around "Rubber."

Tissue Box Cover

Dark Green Terrazzo · Slides over a standard tissue box. The quiet workhorse of the bath line — top five by units and revenue.

Pretti.Cool Incense Sticks

Ain't My First Rodeo · 40 incense sticks in our flagship scent line. Branded packaging, signature scent names.

Brands We Carry

Alongside the in-house line, the shop carries a rotating roster of other independent brands — currently around 20, heaviest presence from Atelier Saucier (table linens, via Shopify Collective), Piecework Puzzles (puzzles + cocktail napkins), Bell Mountain Naturals (terrazzo-look soaps), Ware of the Dog (pet toys), Barfly (bar tools), Palermo Body, Sunbeam Candles, Meshwork Press, and Mater Soap. Anyone writing product copy: these are carried, not made by us — see the attribution warning in Brand Identity.

Top sellers across the carried catalog (last 12 months)

• Ice Bucket Tongs — Barfly · the attach-rate champion; rides along with our own Ice Bucket
• Corn Cob Candle — Sunbeam Candles · food-shaped beeswax, frequent gift add-on
• Mix-and-Match Chroma Napkins — Atelier Saucier · top carried item by revenue (currently between restocks)
• Mini Gem Soaps — Bell Mountain Naturals · terrazzo-look soap, natural pairing with our soap dishes
• Agave Placemats + Les Trois Napkin Holder — Atelier Saucier · the tabletop attach

The Vibe, At a Glance

Logo & Lockups

Source files available from Kathrine. Use the appropriate version for your background — the logo should always be legible and never compete with a background pattern.

Wordmark — Color Variations

Primary — on light backgrounds

Reversed — on dark backgrounds

The 2023 Mark System

The current identity, as applied across the 2023 brand & packaging refresh — an updated wordmark suite, supporting marks, and brand graphics, paired with the geometric packaging pattern. This is the live system; build any new work on it.

The 2017 Originals & Favicon

Where the identity started — the original lowercase wordmark and the original icon, plus the squiggle favicon still in use on the site today.

• Never stretch, skew, recolor outside the brand palette, or add drop shadows
• Don't place on low-contrast or patterned backgrounds without testing legibility
• Logo source files: contact howdy@pretti.cool

Typefaces

Three faces, three jobs. Montserrat Bold carries the brand's energy — big, confident, a little blocky. Instrument Sans keeps body copy clean and readable on screen. Pinyon Script adds warmth for moments that need a handmade feel — use it sparingly, never for body or buttons.

Type Roles & Hierarchy

Every role in the system, with the exact spec. If you're building anything — an email, a social graphic, a landing page — pick from these rows instead of inventing new sizes.

Full Typeface Specimens

Our Colors

Bold, playful, and rooted in 80s/90s energy. The palette is now organized into Core (the colors used everywhere — a designer's daily kit), Extended (accent colors for variety and seasonal moments), and the Theme Color Schemes as configured on the live storefront. Bright Pink and Muted Lime remain the primary brand accents.

Core Palette

The 7 colors used everywhere — nav, CTAs, type, backgrounds. If a designer learns nothing else about the brand, they should learn these. Bright Pink and Muted Lime are the primary brand accents; Pale Cream is the dominant section background across the live theme; Light Mauve is the soft warm accent.

Extended Palette

Accent colors for variety, seasonal moments, and product-specific applications. Use sparingly — they punctuate the core, they don't compete with it. Grouped roughly by color family.

Theme Color Schemes

The 6 color schemes actually in use on the live Shopify theme — the ones applied to real storefront sections. (Scheme numbers map to the theme's scheme IDs; the theme's configured-but-unused Scheme 1 and Scheme 8 are omitted here.) Each scheme is a coordinated palette. Schemes 2, 6, and 7 are the most "on-brand" — they use the full Bright Pink + Muted Lime + Black system.

Terrazzo & Concrete Patterns

The full terrazzo library — each colorway applied to our concrete formula. These are the actual surface patterns used across the product line.

Terrazzo Colors

Black Terrazzo

Natural Terrazzo

White Terrazzo (Chunky)

White Terrazzo

Peach Terrazzo

Coral Terrazzo

Sumac Terrazzo

Lilac Terrazzo

Light Blue Terrazzo

Cobalt Terrazzo

Cobalt Terrazzo (Chunky)

Dark Green Terrazzo

Marigold Terrazzo

Multicolor Combinations

Terrazzo Grey Scale

Terrazzo Neutrals

Multicolor Terrazzo

Terrazzo Primaries

PC x Atelier Saucier

Marbled Colors

Black & Grey

Cookies 'n Cream

Grey & White

Jawbreaker

Pink & Coral

Coral & Mauve

Packaging

The box is part of the gift. Packaging voice is minimal · named · trustworthy: product name, "made by hand in Houston," care instructions — and let it breathe. The scent line carries the loudest packaging in the catalog; the geometric pattern from the 2023 refresh ties everything else together.

Scent Line Packaging

Incense boxes, cone tubes, and candles pair the pun-forward scent names with terrazzo-coded pattern panels. Every scent gets its own color story.

Scent Label Artwork

The label art for the scent line. Each name follows the product naming system — puns and attitude required.

Ain't My First

Far Out

Take a Hike

Get a Room

In Your Dreams

No Problemo

Peace Out

The 2023 Packaging Pattern

The black-and-white geometric repeat from the 2023 refresh — for tissue, wrap, and box interiors. It reads as pretti.cool even with no logo in sight.

• Every package carries: product name, "made by hand in Houston, TX," and care instructions
• Concrete pieces ship wrapped — the unwrap is the reveal, don't bury it in filler
• Packaging copy follows the same voice rules as everything else: short, warm, no overselling
• Print colors: match the Core Palette specs (Cobalt merch print is PMS Blue 2728C)
• Source files: contact howdy@pretti.cool

How We Sound

Casual, warm, not corporate. Short sentences. Humor is core — puns are welcome, cringe is not. We don't oversell. We're vibing with our customer, not pitching to them.

Copy in Practice

Names & Puns

Product names should be puns, food references, or cultural nods. The name should make someone smile — or groan. Either works. If it could be a generic product name, it's not the right name.

Scent names

Colorway names

Millennial Melon = the take on Millennial Pink, with a minty green swirl. Colorway names do double duty: they name the color and set the mood.

• Puns and food references are always welcome
• The name should stand alone — no product type needed to get it
• 80s/90s cultural references are fair game if they're recognizable to a 30-year-old
• Avoid generic descriptors: Modern, Elegant, Artisan, Premium, Luxe
• If the name could belong on a Restoration Hardware shelf, start over
• The name should make someone smile — even if they don't immediately get it

Finished Copy Examples

The fastest way to get the voice right. Real examples across every context — not principles, not guidelines, just copy that works.

Product Descriptions

Real PDP copy. Lead with what it is and how it lives in someone's life. Houston + handmade as a closer, not an opener.

Email Subject Lines

Instagram Captions

Mapped to the eight content categories from the social strategy. See marketing-playbook.md for the full posting framework.

UI Microcopy

Where personality leaks into the interface. Replace stock e-commerce defaults with brand voice.

Wholesale Pitch (Snippet)

Voice by Channel

Same brand, different register. How the voice shifts depending on where it lives — and what stays constant regardless of channel.

What Stays Constant

Across every channel: short sentences, no overselling, humor that lands without trying too hard, and a willingness to leave whitespace. The register changes. The brand doesn't.

The Six Shots We Make

Every product gets this series before it launches. The cadence runs white-backdrop first (shots 1–4), then context (shots 5–6) — the same product carried through different perspectives, never jumping back and forth.

• Shoot 3:4 with enough negative space to crop 1:1 — every image must work in both ratios
• Center the product; the shadow is a supporting actor, not a co-star
• Shoot every colorway of a product in the same setup, same angle, same light
• Color temperature 4500–5500K with a slight peach/cream tint — never cold blue
• Light retouching only — small surface imperfections are part of small-batch

SHOT #1 — Straight-On Product (Listing Hero)

Light seamless backdrop, soft directional light, one clean cast shadow. Product centered, straight-on or a gentle 3/4. This is the lead image on Shopify, Faire, and every dropship listing.

SHOT #2 — Same Product, Different Angle

The same five products from Shot #1, same backdrop and light — rotated, stacked, or paired so the listing gets a second beat. Profile, steeper 3/4, or a natural companion (a glass on the coaster, stems in the vase).

SHOT #3 — Close-Up / Detail

Still on the white backdrop — get close enough to read the surface: terrazzo chips, concrete texture, ridges doing their job. Hands are welcome when they show function. This is where handmade shows.

SHOT #4 — Grouping / Configuration

Last of the white-backdrop series: the product with its family — colorway spreads, stacks, sets, or the full line in one frame. Shows range without a word of copy.

SHOT #5 — Styled Studio (Context + Scale)

Now the backdrop changes: color, pattern, and props that tell a joke or a story. Studio control with personality — the social feed and campaign register.

SHOT #6 — Lifestyle (Context + Scale)

Products in real homes — kitchens, dining tables, bathroom counters, bar carts. Natural warm light, evidence of a real life. Feels like dinner-party prep, not gallery installation.

What a pretti.cool Photo Looks Like

The creative rules that sit on top of the shot list — lighting, styling, and mood for any image that represents the brand. Shot types and technical specs live in the sections on either side of this one.

What "We Show" Looks Like

Real frames from our own shoots that hit the direction above.

What "We Avoid" Looks Like

The same products, the wrong treatment — simulated on our own shots so the difference is unmistakable. Cold blue tones, crushed "luxury" shadows, washed-out sterile flatness, cranked saturation.

The Underlying Logic

Our customer lives at the intersection of design objects and food. Photos should feel like dinner-party prep, not gallery installation. The product is the hero, but it's a hero in a context — not a hero on a pedestal. When in doubt, ask: would Alison Roman post this?

Photo Specs

The technical numbers, by destination. Shoot big (3:4, high-res), then export per platform from the same master file.

How the Brand Moves on Camera

Video is our biggest open opportunity — the brand has the raw material (concrete pours, studio chaos, products with personality) and almost no footage. These rules keep whatever we shoot feeling like pretti.cool, even when it's shot on a phone. Especially when it's shot on a phone.

Frame References

No footage library yet, so these stills set the target: hands, process, action, and product-as-character — all in the warm grade. The simulated "wrong grades" from Photo Direction apply to video too.

Content Formats That Fit Us

Reference Accounts

Watch how @craighillcompany gives objects character without over-explaining, how @alisoneroman keeps editorial video warm and unfussy, and how @graza stays playful at speed. Steal the instincts, not the aesthetics.

Video Specs

Shoot vertical 9:16 as the master format — it covers Reels, Stories, and TikTok, and can crop to 1:1 or 4:5 for feed.

How the Brand Moves

For developers, social creators, and anyone making animated content. Even a handful of adjectives prevents the brand from feeling like a different entity in motion.

Reference Brands for Motion

Three sites whose interaction language we want to learn from — captured below so you can see exactly what we mean. Each does something specific worth stealing.

Dusen Dusen

Three labeled "Interactive Easter eggs" in the IA. Tumbleweed GIF for the empty cart. Image-as-navigation. Most direct UX peer.

Dan Pelosi (GrossyPelosi)

Scattered campy badges ("live laugh love") that act like interactive stickers. A "GrossyWorld" zone hidden in the IA that rewards explorers.

Molly Baz

Color-coded chevrons that double as visual interest. Filter buttons that feel like part of the design language, not ornament.

Specific Moments to Build

Concrete easter eggs and motion details we want on pretti.cool, ranked by impact ÷ effort:

• Pixel banana cursor globally (~30 min to wire in)
• Animated empty cart state — replace dead text with a banana rolling away GIF
• Hover effects on product cards — slight tilt, color flash to terrazzo, or "PEEK!" tag flip
• Microcopy in loading + cart states — see Copy Library for the canonical lines
• 404 page — currently stock Shopify, big whimsy opportunity
• Hidden /backroom page — a Dan-Pelosi-style weird zone with a surprise discount
• Logo easter egg — hover for 3s, terrazzo confetti rains

Who We're Up Against

These are the brands that share our customer, our shelf space, or our aesthetic. Understanding where we overlap — and where we don't — keeps our positioning sharp.

Hawkins New York

A well-edited homegoods curator with a minimalist, contemporary sensibility — broader range and higher price ceiling than pretti.cool. Where we win: our aesthetic has a distinct point of view. Their free shipping kicks in at $199 vs. our $99, which tells you something about their customer.

Closest Competitor

East Fork

Asheville-based pottery studio, B-Corp certified, cult following. Their tone is quieter — heirloom over humor. We share the handmade narrative; they've leaned into sustainability and provenance while we own personality and pattern.

Closely Adjacent

Poketo

Design-forward stationery and lifestyle brand, now part of Pattern Brands. Colorful, playful, design-literate — probably the closest brand voice match in this set. Their range skews toward planners and paper goods; we share a customer who would buy both without contradiction.

Closely Adjacent

Areaware

A New York-based platform for independent designer goods — puzzles, objects, gifts. Strong design credentials and retail shelf presence. Less a direct competitor (curator, not maker) but they've occupied the same gift shop shelf and discovery channels we're in.

Shelf Neighbor

Block Shop

Block-printed textiles and apparel with a botanical visual language. Different aesthetic (organic vs. geometric) and product category (soft goods vs. objects), but the same customer: design-conscious, independent-brand-loyal, willing to spend. Their newsletter community is a model worth studying.

Same Customer

Fredericks & Mae

A Brooklyn-based gallery and shop curating goods from 40+ independent makers. They stock other people's work rather than making their own. Worth monitoring as a potential wholesale account — their buyers are exactly our people.

Potential Stockist

Piecework Puzzles

A brand we carry — 1000-piece puzzles with playful, food-and-cocktail-forward imagery (Bloom, Butter, Cocktails, Stripes). Founded by Rachel Hochhauser and Jena Wolfe; strong founder-voice presence on social. Their mood-based collection naming and "Founder Favorites" format ("Rachel says: ___") are patterns worth adapting for our own channels. Important distinction for anyone writing about our catalog: cocktail napkin themes (Caesar Salad, Sardines, Toucan, Tomatoes) are Piecework's, not pretti.cool's. They appear in our Shopify store under vendor: Piecework.

Brand We Carry

SIN Ceramics

Brooklyn-based handmade ceramics and lighting by Virginia Sin. Small-batch, founder-made, named collections with cohesive stories (Stria, Obel, Gami) — the production model is nearly identical to pretti.cool's. Voice is poetic and aspirational where ours is playful, but two things are worth stealing: their collection-as-narrative structure (50–100 words of story per line, not just a product type), and their pricing signal — handmade table lamps at $1,698 confirm the category fully supports premium pricing when the storytelling is tight.

Production Peer

The short version: no one else is doing terrazzo + Memphis + humor + handmade at our price point. The category has plenty of "nice design objects" brands. There's only one pretti.cool.

Brands We Look To

Brands we admire from adjacent categories. They're not on our shelf — but their voice, design instincts, or audience teach us something about who pretti.cool wants to be. Inspiration, not benchmarks.

Flamingo Estate

LA garden-turned-lifestyle brand (Richard Christiansen) — pantry, apothecary, and home goods sold as a whole sensory world. The masterclass in storytelling: every product ships with a narrative, the homepage reads like a magazine, and the brand's place (the Estate itself) is a character. What we take: world-building — pretti.cool's Houston studio can play the same role their garden does.

Storytelling Benchmark

Craighill

Brooklyn design brand making brass objects, puzzles, and precision desk accessories. Dry, confident humor that trusts the reader — no exclamation points, no sales-speak, products treated as characters in an ongoing story ("the newest member of the Summit family"). Opposite visual aesthetic (brass + neutrals vs. rainbow terrazzo), but the instinct — wit as design language — is exactly what we're reaching for. Steal: pun headlines from our own colorway names, product lines framed as families, captions that show without explaining.

Voice Peer

Dusen Dusen

Brooklyn-based lifestyle brand (textiles, ceramics, accessories) with bold pattern and a Memphis-flavored sensibility. Closest direct aesthetic peer in this section, and our top reference for interactive whimsy — their site has labeled "Easter eggs" in the IA, an animated empty-cart state, and image-driven navigation.

Aesthetic + UX

Not Work Related

Curated lifestyle and homewares brand with a leisure-coded, vacation-mindset positioning. Adjacent attitude to our "we're just vibin'" register.

Voice Adjacent

Pigeon Toe

Portland-based ceramics studio making small-batch porcelain home goods. Production-model peer alongside SIN — same constraints, same shelf neighbors.

Production Peer

Tiptoe

French furniture brand built around modular metal legs you attach to any surface. Color-forward, system-driven, design-conscious millennials buying their first "real" piece.

Same Customer

Graza

Cult-favorite olive oil in a squeeze bottle ("Sizzle" and "Drizzle"). Pantry brand, but the playful naming + design-forward packaging is exactly our register translated to food.

Voice Peer

Fishwife

Tinned-fish brand whose entire identity is illustration, design, and editorial voice. Proof that any product category becomes a lifestyle brand if the storytelling is tight enough.

Voice Peer

Great Jones

DTC cookware with playful copy ("Dutchess," "The Holy Sheet") and founder-led storytelling. Their PDP-as-personality model is a template worth studying for our own product pages.

Voice Peer

Misc. Goods Co.

Design-driven small objects — playing cards, candles, fragrance. One of the closest brands to our exact business model: small SKUs, design-as-product, gift-friendly.

Closely Adjacent

Blu Dot

Modern furniture brand with playful product names (Strut, Real Good, Big Easy). More establishment-scale than us, but the naming sensibility comes from the same instinct we work from.

Voice Peer

Voices in Our Orbit

Creators, media, and personalities whose audience overlaps ours and whose voice or humor speaks the same language. We don't compete with these — we listen, we learn, we want to be seen alongside them. The heavy weighting toward food creators is intentional: pretti.cool's customer lives at the intersection of design objects and food/kitchen culture (hosting, recipes, cocktail napkins, dinner-party gifting).

Eric Wareheim

Comedy-into-food crossover (Tim & Eric, Wareheim Wines). Absurdist visual humor — gives us permission to be weirder in product photography and social.

Audience Overlap

Dan Pelosi (GrossyPelosi)

Recipe creator with a "gay male Pinterest Mom" positioning. Campy scattered design with badges and a "GrossyWorld" easter egg zone — also a direct UX/whimsy reference for our own site.

Audience + UX

Molly Baz

Recipe and cookbook author with punchy casual copy ("Gimme Dat Recipe") and color-coded UI. Reference for playful-but-functional design.

Audience + UX

Alison Roman

Cookbook author and creator. Editorial calm, warm minimalism, video-driven — the newsletter + video format we want to learn from.

Audience + Format

Carolina Gelen

Recipe creator with a casual on-camera voice and a strong design eye. Demographic peer for the younger millennial home-cook customer.

Audience Overlap

Samin Nosrat

Salt Fat Acid Heat author. Warm, intimate cooking pedagogy — represents "cooking as care," a vibe the brand sits next to comfortably.

Audience Overlap

Schoolhouse

Portland-based lifestyle brand (lighting, ceramics, apparel) with a modern-heritage aesthetic. Aspirational visual reference for editorial product photography.

Visual Reference

Domino

Interiors media — design taste-maker for the millennial home audience. They've also covered us (see Press & Earned Media); where new launches should re-pitch.

Earned Media

Apartment Therapy

Accessible interiors content with massive reach — meets the customer earlier in their design journey. They've also covered us (see Press & Earned Media); strong repeat-pitch target.

Earned Media

As Seen In

Publications that have featured pretti.cool. Useful as credibility tags on wholesale and retail pitch decks, as warm-list targets for new-launch outreach, and as a reminder of where the brand already has earned-media history.

Some of these (domino, Apartment Therapy) also appear in Audience Peers — they reach our customer and they've covered us. Re-pitching new launches there is the highest-leverage earned-media play.