Creators: Kristen Wentrcek

Kristen Wentrcek is the founder of Wintercheck Factory in Brooklyn. Kristen and her team think up cool products — furniture, clothing, shower curtains, you name it — design and make them, and sell them on their website.

Help them grow by voting for them in Dell’s small business contest right now — they could win $50,000.

1) What have you been making lately?

I found a metal stamper in Williamsburg about six months ago and we’ve been working on a family of nesting steel barware pieces that have finally been put into production. The first product is a shot cup, which should be released latest Monday, and the after that is a Double Old Fashioned cup. They’re super industrial and heavy but also elegant and simple.

I also found a manufacturer in South Carolina who is remaking our Lizzie Sunglasses but using solid glass in the lenses rather than polycarbonate, which is somewhat rare these days. I’m also playing around with some fiberglass furniture designs, which will probably be the most complicated product I’ve tackled so far…

2) What’s your favorite and/or newest tool that you use for work?

My favorite tool is digital calipers, hands down. When you’re having anything manufactured, from rings to desks, you have to constantly double check measurements. It’s so easy to just misread the markings on a ruler, send them out to a production facility and then have it create total chaos.

3) What’s your favorite and/or newest tool that you use for fun?

At home, it’d have to be my old school aluminum ice tray. It’s made with the most complicated lever-rail-grid system but produces these large parallelograms that take forever to melt.

4) What’s something great you’ve read lately?

I’ve been working on a tongue in cheek sportswear line called (Wintercheck Factory) BRKRM that should be out next month sometime.  The graphics for it are pretty playful so I’ve been letting dump.fm run on my desktop.  I’m also attached to my 3fram.es app and voyeuristically enjoy combing through their database of permanently uploaded gifs.

5) Who should I interview for this series?

Jon Vingiano (http://okfoc.us/ & Is the L Train F-ed?). His brain is the most up to date database of cool, new stuff.

Photo of Kristen by Meg Wachter Photography.

“Creators” is a new SplatF feature, highlighting my favorite creative-types and the tools they use for work and fun. Previously: Chank Diesel, font designer and painter.