I'm Tristan Sopp. Everything you see here on this site is designed by me and produced in Pittsburgh, PA - a great town that I'm not originally from but I wholeheartedly endorse as a wonderful city.

I wrote a lot below so here's the summary if you don't want to read it all: I've always been into making things and everything I sell here is about getting high quality design work in your hands to make into something wonderful for your home.

There is something wonderful about seeing the physical results of effort you have put in. Too often we are stuck on the computer and a full days work is hard to see. Not so when you are building with your own hands. I've loved making things since I was very young. I remember learning to knit and crochet from an after-school daycare I went to all throughout elementary school. I spent a ton of time in high school doing pottery and film photography. In college I studied Architecture and I found myself enjoying making the models much more than designing them.

I'm not an architect but I think like one. I found the scale of architecture to be too big. I just couldn't wrap my head around a space that large. I also didn't want to be tied to a desk for the next ten years doing construction drawings for a large firm before I'd get a license. I didn't see a good path for me to do the things I wanted to. So I graduated and tried other things for a while before I founded Resident in the summer of 2015.

I probably would have been working with wood if I had a choice. But I had an apartment with no access to any woodworking tools and a need to keep my hands busy. I was working on a massive knit cardigan when I started working with paper. In school there was another student who did a stunning project with folded paper. I started exploring and came across a paper moose head online that I really liked. I made it and at the end went - "Hunh... that was WAY more complicated than it needed to be. If I hadn't done all that model building in college, there's no way I could have made that." Then my task was pretty straightforward. How could I simplify that basic idea? Could I make something that a much larger percentage of the population could do? And most importantly - is that something other people would be into and willing to purchase?

Yes. Yes. Yes. I've learned a lot from going to craft fairs and interacting with people in person. My design work keeps getting better and the way it's put together keeps improving. Everyday I'm working to make everything simpler, easier, and more fun while keeping the quality of the design as high as possible.

The future is going to be expanding product lines, creating new ones, and building up the online store. Feel free to shoot me a message and ask anything you're interested about!