Funny story really, but back in March 2025, while chatting to an artist friend at First Thursday (as one does), we found out our canvas frame supplier was closing shop.
Cue mild panic!

So what to do?!
Well… instead of finding a new supplier like normal people, we called up the owner (who had already moved to a sleepy coastal town), asked a few bold questions, and before we knew it—we’d bought the whole business.

Here’s the twist:
We thought we were just buying a frame-and-stretching gig (handy for our print studio).
Turns out, the REAL magic was in handcrafting primed artist canvases. And better yet, the two incredible artisans, Richard & Ashley (who’ve been at it for almost 20 years!) could make all sorts of beautiful things for artists.

So, we rebranded from The Artist’s Friend (previously homed in Salt River )to simply Artist’s Friend, gave the logo a glow-up, and brought it under our Zone One Creative Studio wing (run by us, mother–daughter duo Pene & Chelsea).

It’s been a wild ride of steep learning curves, sawdust, paint splatters, and late-night pricing spreadsheets. But here’s the thing: artists are loving it, we’re loving it, and each month has been better than the last.

Sometimes the best stories start with “so there we were, and then we accidentally bought a business…”