Welcome to Damn Good Doormats: art you can wipe your feet on.
I'm Spoon Popkin, the OG Doormat Maven. That's me in the Oval Office. Okay, the House of Cards set, playing Madam President.
My spouse Lee and I invented the funny doormat business in 2009. 17+ years later, I'm still excited about doormats.
How the funny doormat business started
In 2009 we got married and bought a house. We went to Target for our first doormat and found four styles of blah. Lee said I should just make one.
I had a DIY spot at a craft fair coming up and no idea what I'd sell. So I designed four doormats, and the viral doormat business was born. Every rude, personalized or funny doormat you see out there traces back to me. Thank me or blame me, your call.
We hand-painted and shipped 50,000+ doormats worldwide. By "we," I mean me. I painted and packed almost every single one, with holiday help from my elves.
Then technology caught up to my skills, so I put down the brushes. Our mats are now UV-printed, which means I get to bring back the complicated designs I loved in the first place. It also means we can make custom door mats with your own saying.
Why our funny welcome mats are simple
I started with extremely complicated designs, because that's my nature. People wanted simple sass instead: FUCK OFF and the reminder mat KEYS WALLET CELL PHONE.
The first Damn Good Doormats show at Artscape, summer 2009
The funny doormat that started it all: KEYS WALLET CELL PHONE
This one went viral on Facebook, long before Instagram and TikTok. Gizmodo put it in its 2012 holiday gift roundup for people who can't or won't get out of bed, next to national brands. That launched us.
Novelty doormats are now one of the things people go to Etsy for, according to a 2024 New York Times article. In 2009, nobody was looking for one.
Where you've seen our quirky doormats
We've been featured on Gizmodo, Tosh.0, The Huffington Post, The Daily What, The Wall Street Journal, Laughing Squid, Thrillist DC, Apartment Therapy (a few times!), Trend Hunter, Time Out New York, Better Homes & Gardens, Buzzfeed and more.
Our mats have placed on the sets of Gossip Girl, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, Hemlock Grove, Law & Order: SVU, and HBO and BBC productions. Our first doormat in a book was in The Big Lebowski: An Illustrated, Annotated History of the Greatest Cult Film of All Time (Voyageur Press, 2012).
Who is Spoon Popkin?
I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1990 and have been a solopreneur ever since. I designed hats (my kitty-eared hat came 20 years before the pussy hat), made my own art, and toured through the 90s playing accordion in Womyn of Destruction and Estrojet.
Life before doormats
Before I was the Doormat Maven, I was the accordionist in the punk band Womyn of Destruction. Starting in 1990, we stormed the stage at CBGB's in NYC with our own outrageous, funny take on politics. We came before Riot Grrrls and told a generation of teens to take no shit. That's us with local hero John Waters, and with Joan Jett the first time she came to see us at CBGB's.
Browse our funny welcome mats, our rude doormats, or our best sellers. Our mats are made with coir and recycled rubber, so the joke doesn't cost the planet.
DGD is an independent, LGBTQ+, trans and woman-powered business.
Ready to shop? All 1000+ doormats are here.