A direct line to the studio.
Quietly listed on product pages as 1891 ProPrioritized builds. Co-creation rights. The capability of 1891, on retainer. We take a small number of partners each year.
The retainer relationship with the workspace.
Studio Partner is the retainer relationship that gives an organization, brand, or institution a direct line to the 1891 studio — the same workshop that built Parliamentarian, Organizations, Imagination Town, Heart Space, Game Lab, Visual Quiz, Interpreter, and Tree. It's capability-as-a-service made tangible: prioritized custom builds on top of any 1891 product, early access to new product surfaces before they are ready publicly, co-creation rights on something that doesn't exist yet but should, and a named spot in the case studies that follow. One admin, in Frederick, who reads the brief himself.
Admins who want the studio behind their room.
Organizations and institutions who have used a 1891 product and want to go deeper — a Deaf school whose PSA runs Parliamentarian and wants a rollout to its alumni association; a museum whose Imagination Town install has been successful and wants a custom scene built around its own architecture; a hospital network whose Heart Space waiting-room demos work and wants the wellbeing track expanded for the oncology floor.
Also: brands and institutions who haven't used a 1891 product yet, but want the studio to build something net-new with them.
The thing missing in the middle.
Most software vendors sell you a product. If you want a custom build, you file a feature request, it gets prioritized against everyone else's feature requests, and in eighteen months you find out it didn't make the roadmap.
Most agencies sell you a custom build. They don't have a product behind it, so every engagement starts from zero, costs proportionally, and ends when the contract ends.
The thing missing in the middle — a studio that makes its own products and also takes custom work on top of those products for the partners who matter most — is what Studio Partner is.
A conversation, then a scope, then a build.
We start with a conversation. You tell us what you'd want if there were no constraints. We tell you which 1891 products you'd build on top of (or whether you'd commission a new product surface entirely), what the scope shape looks like, and what we can deliver in the first ninety days. Partners get:
- A direct line. Slack channel, email thread, whatever you prefer. The founder reads it.
- Prioritized custom builds. Your scope jumps the public roadmap.
- Early access to new product surfaces and tracks before they are ready publicly.
- Co-creation rights on anything we build together — your name on the case study, your input baked into the downstream product.
Every engagement honors the universal-design contract and the same standards we hold our own products to.
Retainer is the floor. Scopes go on top.
Retainer-based, scope-by-scope. The retainer is the floor — it covers the direct-line access, the prioritized queue, the early-access track. Specific build scopes are quoted on top of the retainer, with a fixed deliverable, a fixed timeline, and a clean handoff. Quarterly review. Most partners scope two to four discrete builds per year on top of the retainer.
Pricing is conversation-led. We talk about what the room is supposed to do, what the year looks like, and what the partnership has to deliver to be worth both of our time. Then we write the number down.
We do not take more partners than the studio can serve well. The number of active Studio Partner slots is finite.
A few things to clear up.
It's not a support tier. (Every 1891 product has its own support.)
It's not a discount on the public product. (List price stays list price.)
It's not "premium." We are not adding tiers to our public products. Studio Partner is a separate relationship, parallel to the products — the studio behind the products, on retainer.
Send a note. Tell us what you'd want to build.
We'll reply within one business day with whether we're a fit, what the first scope might look like, and where we'd start.