Save A Sample! connects unneeded materials samples from design firms to design schools, students and artists.
Every year, design firms throw away thousands of samples. Fabric, tile, veneer, wallpaper, all still perfectly good. Save A Sample! redirects that surplus to the people who can use it most: design students, educators, and working artists. What designers set aside becomes the raw material of new work, keeping quality materials in circulation and out of the landfill.
How a local recycling drive in 1999 grew into a coast-to-coast network supporting art students and design programs across North America.
The first event was held in New York City in 1999. By 2002 it had a name, the Box-A-Thon. In 2008 it became Save A Sample!, and passed $10,000 raised for student scholarships.
Philadelphia and Chicago. Then Boston and Washington DC. Next Los Angeles and San Francisco. Atlanta, Wilmington, Phoenix, San Diego. In 2016 the program crossed the border into Canada. Nineteen cities in eight years, each one built on local design firms, schools and industry participants
Material donations and scholarship checks go out to schools across the country. A new logo for the twentieth anniversary. Event celebration at the HBF Contract showroom in New York with a student hand-drawing competition and prizes for the top design firm donors.
The pandemic stopped the events. Sample libraries emptied, firms went remote, and the boxes stopped moving.
Save A Sample! reincarnates as an on demand, every day sample saving system connecting design firms, schools, students and artists.
Years active
in scholarships raised
of lbs diverted from landfill
Cities (coast to coast + Canada)
Suzanne Swift founded Save A Sample! in 1999, when the design samples she couldn't bear to throw away finally outgrew her closets. What began as a personal storage dilemma became an industry-wide solution: Save A Sample! collects unneeded samples from design firms and donates them to schools, students and artists, putting top-quality materials into the hands of emerging creators. Beyond fueling the next generation of design talent, the organization diverts over 10,000 thousands pounds of samples from landfills every year.
Amy joined the Save A Sample! team to guide our relaunch after a pandemic pause. With a passion for materials reuse and landfill diversion, Amy strives to connect schools and artists to design firms so that materials find a second life.
