April General Update

good afternoon, everyone!

I know it’s already the last week of the month, and I hoped I’d have a chance to have more updates sooner for some behind the scenes stuff. This month has been heavily a catch up month as so many of my tasks in March also rolled into April, hugely as a result of us doing our taxes and well, let’s just say it’s painful. 😅 essentially all the profit we make for the next 2-3 months is going straight to the IRS. Then I’ll have to work hard the rest of the year to anticipate the amount we’ll surely owe next year. 🥲 and trust, we’re not the only creators you’re supporting that are in this same boat—one very big maker friend of mine told me they had to pay their entire 4th quarter earnings last year for taxes. 😭

Most of you know that it has been a main goal of Taka and I to try to get a house, and to do so we have to look like we make a lot of profit in order to qualify for a very big loan (because even crappy houses don’t go for less than ~600k around here). So unfortunately, to achieve the “income” we wanted to make to qualify for a good bank loan next year, we had to not claim over half of our expenses from 2022. Of course the IRS sees that number and says “oh wow, big money, plz give it all to us.” And sadly, since any bank loan we apply for will want to see 2 years of high profits, that means I expect to pay at least the same amount in taxes next year too. 🙃 You better believe the moment Taka and I move into a house imma be claiming every single legitimate expense after that!!

storefront?

In other news, although I’m terribly stressed by how I’m gonna have to work pretty much every weekend at pop ups (which I really planned to NOT do this year) in order to pay off our taxes, Taka and I are starting to also get serious about trying to find a permanent home for both Shishido Creative and Ryuki Irezumi. We already have one spot we can foresee using as both a private studio and storefront, but we’re gonna go check out some store only and studio only options for both of us this week as well.

A big motivator for us to get our own space is that I am personally just exhausted from working pop-ups. It’s so time consuming to prep inventory, update new signs/boards, keep track of what inventory is online and in person, and not to mention drive to and set up 1-2 hours before an event and tear down and drive home. Even a short 6 hour event is really like 12-16 hours of work between prep time, travel, and vending. Not to mention the cost of tabling/vending is expensive! When I was doing my expenses for last year I was shocked at how my expenses for tabling were close to 8 months of rent for a permanent storefront!!

This time on our hunt for a shop, we are working with an official Seattle C-ID broker who knows the building owners and community, and we have the eager support of some mainstay organizations in Chinatown trying to help vouch for us to get a spot in some of the historical buildings. As much as we are known for our beautiful and detailed designs with you all online, in the local community I have been working hard to network and be a part of strengthening the local AAPI community as much as I can. I'm proud to say that a good handful of Asian museums and gardens around the country have begun carrying us, and we've even gotten multiple invites to vend private corporate events for May's AAPI month.

As difficult as it can be to run a brick-and-mortar shop, I have been so touched by the amount of support we have gotten from locals as both customers, fellow creators, and community leaders over our two years in Seattle proper who want to see us get a physical shop. While I’m not trying to get my hopes up too much, I still am excited for the possibility of having a store by the end of this year, as well as for Taka to have his own studio that’s not based in our home. The ability to also separate work from home is really appealing. Not to say I won’t be sketching/illustrating new designs at home, but to be able to lock up all the products in the shop at the end of each day and not be surrounded by all these shiny pretty things in all spaces of the home, yelling at me to work harder, is going to be nice. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly manage that work-life balance as I know most of you tell me to rest more than I allow myself to, but I’m trying and that’s gotta count for something. 😂 This month I even took one entire day off—aren’t you so proud?! 🙈

Leaning into Print
On a more fun note, we have been working on creating more new riso designs. For those unfamiliar with this printing method, it is easiest to describe it as digital silk-screen. Each color is printed one at a time, and you have to layer colors if you'd like to mix them. For example to get that dark purple line on the fish print above, I layered the blue over the red. In many ways, the way you have to think about layers is a lot like woodblock or lino printing if you're familiar with those techniques. And just like traditional woodblock/silkscreen printing, you always have the risk of registration (the way the image lines up) being off. This can sometimes look really cool, but sometimes it's really off like when you wear 3D glasses at the wrong angle.

As we are still trying to master the riso printing skill, I've been revisiting some older designs from our 2020 pin club. While I initially said those would be exclusive, I still feel that I'm honoring that because I've changed the size of my designs to larger size prints, and have a new style of printing, thus changing the colors, paper, and size. I hope any of you who have been with us since 2020 pin club won't mind this. :)

Right now we can only get into the riso studio 1-2 times in a month since they only have two open studio slot times a month, but I talked with the owners about getting into their monthly pro memberships and that will likely be available in June. We are thinking we’d like to start making our freebie mini prints that we send with each month’s designs for the club into riso prints rather than the trading card. The prints would be thinner, since we’ve chosen to use high quality washi paper for riso, but it would be hand printed by us, making it more special for you all! And since we'd be printing them ourselves, I don't have to worry about having more than I need for fulfillment. Currently I get stuck with a bunch of extras since I have to order bulk amounts of 100/250/500 with the printer we use. So I end up putting a random extra mini print with purchase in person.

We are also working on designs so we can revamp the Zakka club and make a larger print club option as well. Though I insisted with Taka if we really do that, he better set aside at least 6 months of designs in advance because I don’t need any of this last minute pin design vectoring business he puts me through each month! 😂 I think we would do an original and fan art print club since I already have a really cute series of designs planned out for fan art themes.

NEW POLICY FOR EXCLUSIVE EXTRAS
I think you've all seen on stories if you follow us on IG, but I've without a doubt noticed a decline in sales and memberships for pins. I do believe the demand for pins has gone down now that life is going back to more in-person shopping, makers are dropping from creating, and funds are more limited for so many of us. This is a big reason why we are trying to add different types of product lines to our brand. That said, while last year many of you wanted us to create more exclusive designs, like the Sailor Princesses, to be truthful, the sales hasn't met the demand we projected to make producing exclusive designs worth our time and investment. I will plan to finish out the Sailor Princesses, but I cannot afford to have an extra 20-30 pcs collecting dust since it would seem not nearly as many of you lovely collectors are actually collecting the chonky pins as we thought.

So with that said, I do plan to offer the exclusive designs at my in-person events. It will still be limited online to only pin club members, but I hope you will not mind if I offer the extras of the princesses at events. I feel it is still a fair thing because while you all pay for access to things the public cannot get, most the events I table at are also pay-to-attend. So being able to offer something others cannot normally get to those people who paid to be at an event I feel is a fair enough trade-off. This will still allow me to create exclusive designs for pin club members who aren't local (which is almost everyone in the club), but ensure I'm not sitting on extras for years to come. If anyone has any issues with this or a better solution, please let me know because I hope you all know that it is always my biggest priority to give you all the very best experience! :)

WHY HAVEN'T YOU SENT OUT THE BOXES YET?!

And finally, I am working to finally get all the pins that came in late last month packed up. I promise I've not been ignoring this. It just turns out that I didn't realize I hadn't ordered the trading cards and backing cards for February's designs and I'm waiting on those to come in. I finished them months ago, but didn't realize I hadn't actually placed the order for them. So please forgive me for my absent-mindedness of not ordering those when I thought I had. So rest assured all the pins are graded, but I just have to get them onto their backing cards and fold up all the boxes to ship 'em out to y’all! I think while we're stuck waiting for the backing cards, what I'll do this week is get my product pics taken so you can all order any of the extras and have them added to your box when I ship out instead of waiting til the next box. Thank you all for being so crazy patient with the slowness. I do promise we are working hard to ensure things won't be as slow in the future and I've already made sure to order March-May's backing cards and trading cards so they're in before the pins even!

I believe that is all the news I have for you at the moment! I'll be using the time that I'm waiting on the backing & trading cards to come in to spend time working on my vectors for May, so stay tuned for a more artsy update in the next few days! As always, thank you all so much! We appreciate you immensely and can't wait to share more news and art with you soon!

- Mandy & Taka