Supercurious Series: What Actually Moves Product with Arianne Foulks of Aeolidia
This interview is part of Supercurious – a series of conversations rooted in our 2026 focus on curious wholesale: the eagerness to learn, the willingness to experiment, and the belief that getting genuinely curious is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business right now.
Who better to kick off the year than someone who has spent over twenty years helping founder-led brands figure out how to show up in the world? Arianne Foulks is the founder of Aeolidia, a design agency specializing in branding, email marketing, and Shopify sites for creative businesses. She's worked with over 700 brands, grown her team to twenty people, and has a lot of hard-won perspective on what actually makes a product land – or miss – with customers and buyers alike. We talked with her about brand strategy, packaging, photography, and what it really feels like to run a business right now.
Arianne Foulks of Aeolidia
Q. Tell us about yourself and about your work and journey to get where you are.
I married the love of my life right before the pandemic, and together we have three smart and funny teenagers. I live in Seattle, and will walk any distance. Fun fact: I was once bitten by a baby elephant seal (in the course of my marine biology education).
My design agency, Aeolidia, creates branding, email marketing, and super-effective Shopify sites. We especially love doing this for designers and artisans, though we work with all kinds of founder-led, design-forward shops. I’ve been building online homes for fascinating people for over twenty years as Aeolidia, and now what used to be only me, sideways on my couch with a laptop, is a team of twenty. They’re all way better at their particular skill than I ever was!
There are just so many elements you need to pull together a good website. So it was natural to start hiring help for design, branding, photography, illustration, and development. It all kind of snowballed after I got pregnant with my first kid and realized I wouldn’t be able to hyperfocus on building websites for hours at a time with a baby around. I added to my team, one by one, and it’s grown into the best group of people I could ever imagine working with.
I’m a huge fan of creative brands and a lifelong problem-solver, so it’s been super rewarding to support so many businesses (at least 700 at this point!).
Q. As someone who thinks a lot about brand, aesthetic, websites, and packaging... what do you think are the highest impact things an indie brand with limited resources can focus on fixing/improving?
Everything comes back to your brand strategy, which I like to boil down into this idea: what makes your business different from even your closest competitor? If you don’t know, I promise your customers don’t know, and they have a lot of options to choose from.
At least, learn what goes into developing a brand strategy and make the first attempt yourself. If you have the budget, hiring professional help is a big leg up.
After determining a brand strategy, I would suggest investing time or money in professional photography. Photography can truly make or break your website, and if you’re selling to wholesalers on Faire, emailing them directly, or putting together printed promotional material about your products, the quality of the photography will make a huge difference.
Product photography for @loftipop by Aeolidia’s in-house photographer.
Q. What feels different about running your business right now compared to a few years ago?
I used to feel much more confident in my predictions, planning, and goals. Now, it feels like anything could happen, and most of it is out of my control. In the last few years, there have been major disruptions to business, one after the other.
First, a pandemic with shutdowns, a huge surge in ecommerce, and then economic uncertainty, consistently for many reasons. Supply chain issues, wild shipping rates, punishing tariffs. Add in the difficulty in hiring and retaining workers, and shifts in customer expectations, and things feel pretty unstable! Now we have AI to contend with.
All that makes it difficult for me to figure out how best to serve business owners each year, while keeping my own company afloat. We have never had to be more agile and less set in our ways, which is ultimately a good thing, because it keeps the business strong and lively.
Q. What are the most common display or packaging issues you see that stop products from selling – even if the product itself is great?
Sometimes this is the branding! Great branding isn’t exactly a magic bullet that can change your business overnight, but it’s often pretty close. For many of our clients, we’ve found that a new name and a new look for their business can be the one thing that helps them skyrocket to success.
We have an example on our website of a designer who was rejected for a trade show. When she applied the next year with her new name and branding, they were happy to have her, and specifically called out her adorable branding. Ruth, the shop owner, told us, “The gorgeous new branding and amazingly thoughtful new name have shifted my thinking as a business owner from 'my little craft business’ to ‘global toy brand.’”
The vibrant and engaging homepage for @sunbird_spark crafted by the Aeolidia team
Q. If a maker could do just one thing to improve how their product sells in your store, what should they focus on first?
Shop owners have told us that packaging is so important that often it doesn’t matter what’s inside! Your packaging tells your story, lists features and explains benefits, establishes your style, and attracts customers. Without that, your product doesn’t have much of a chance on store shelves.
An example is beauty products like lotion, shampoo, or other liquids. These products barely have a personality without their packaging (they’re often colorless goop, haha), so it’s important to create packaging that gives people a sense of what’s inside and what to expect from your products, and that stands out on the shelves and is appealing.
“The quality of the photography will make a huge difference.”
One thing that comes through clearly in talking with Arianne is that curiosity isn't just a nice-to-have – it's the engine behind good business decisions. Whether she's helping a maker rethink their packaging, nudging a client toward better photography, or navigating her own team through an unpredictable few years, the throughline is always: look more closely, ask better questions, stay open.
That feels like exactly the right energy for 2026. We're so grateful to Arianne for sharing her perspective as we kick off this year of curious wholesale. If you want to explore what Aeolidia could do for your brand, you can find them at aeolidia.com.
Looking for more help with telling your story and moving your products? Check out these free resources…