February Design Preview
Good morning, everyone!
I can’t believe it’s already the end of January! Sorry I haven’t had as many updates this month, but it’s been busy as always and unfortunately February probably won’t be any less busy for us. 
DESIGNS
For the Mugen Floral Pin club, our featured flower is the Camellia (or tsubaki). This month you can choose between two color variants, red or white.
As we’ve wrapped up the Amazoness Quartet, I decided our next villains will be self-indulgent with my very favorite arc and baddies: the Black Moon Clan! And Chibimoon will kick off the outers collection. Esmeraude will have screenprinted lips in case you think she looks a little odd in this vector. These are the mostly finished vectors for those who just want to see those. I mostly just have to clean up the linework a bit and add color and screenprint layers, so I expect to be done by the 1st.
BUSY WORKLOAD
First thing’s first, we are working to get all pin club boxes, plus any order add-ons from the drop last week. About ¾ of shipments have gone out with the rest going out today and Wednesday. It’s been a lot of work for me, between grading, packing, folding boxes, double and triple checking orders for shipping and fulfillment, etc. And that’s on top of preparing files, handling other affairs, and being a homemaker.
I’ve never officially stated it, but even though this company is made up of Taka and I, I handle about about 85% of the workload. I'm not saying this to complain about Taka, but to let you know that even though there are two of us, it's mostly me running it, so this tends to slow down how much I can do. I know many of you will probably tell me to make Taka do more, but there’s a big reason he doesn’t do more. A large part is because I’m fairly certain he’s undiagnosed ADHD (and very anti-drug/medication—he won’t even take ibuprofen or aspirin when he has migraines), meaning he lacks the ability to self-manage, even if he makes himself a schedule, or self-motivate if he’s not interested in the task. Unfortunately, being the type who also hates being told what to do, he can be difficult to manage as well because he doesn’t want to be nagged. 
So while he always begins the upcoming month’s designs at the beginning of the month, he needs constant reminders to finish up his sketches, make changes and complete final lines, which he usually doesn’t do completely til last minute. In some ways, he and I are similar in that when we do put ourselves to task, we need to have time to be uninterrupted and fully focused. Though because Taka can be quite a procrastinator, this puts me in the uncomfortable time constraint of having to vector (which by now y’all know takes another ~15+ hrs each for pretty winkers) within a 2-3 day stretch of time before the end of the month.
This is why, this month, like most months, I’m unable to share the absolute final artwork until after the 1st, because he literally just finished the final clean linework on Friday night. While I was able to vector Chibimoon Saturday, I lost all my time on Sunday to a 14 hour migraine and could only work on basic line layout for Esmeraude late last night. I am grateful that I don’t get headaches and migraines as often as before now that I’ve switched to a better birth control method that works for me, but this month was unlucky for me it would seem.
Back to the task of working together, another reason I’m left with handling all the company management, fulfillment, customer service, etc, is because of language barrier and ability to focus. While Taka is absolutely able to focus, it’s only if he’s personally interested in a subject. He lacks long-term memory for anything he’s not interested in (such as how I organize our inventory, how to understand our postage app for making labels, how our spreadsheets are laid out, admin stuff, etc). Taka is very much a rewards-based person in which he loses interests in tasks if he can’t see a direct benefit in it. But if it’s related to art, automobiles, investments, etc, he’ll study any manual, book, video, you toss in front of him obsessively. There's a reason he's incredibly good at mimicking Naoko's style and that's because he pours over the manga and artbooks for hours when he sketches. He also uses me as his model for most the poses, especially the hands.
Taka actually dropped out of high school twice which was a huge shame to his family given his father was a math teacher there, later the principal, and is now the Superintendent for all of Tokyo. Taka is used to people thinking he is dumb because of this, but he’s actually pretty brilliant when he sets his mind on something and likely neurodivergent. With almost no help, he taught himself both German and English because he had interest in it and wanted to expand his options as a tattoo artist. If you’ve ever been to Japan, most people cannot speak English despite many adopted words and signage in English. Taka speaks English very fluently, and he understands what he reads, but his grammar when writing isn’t perfect, which means he always wants me to go over everything he does, whether it’s for legal documents, emails with customers or clients, etc. this also takes a lot of time for me because I try to explain to him why he should word something differently or the nuances of language. Because he is both a man (sorry male-identifying friends in the club), and specifically a man that is a little rough around the edges for Japanese culture, and he talks very casually and is an expert in slang (like teens who wanna know all the bad words first) his language can come off as rough or too curt, so having to teach him how to communicate diplomatically is also time-consuming. 
Also, another reason why he isn’t the one who answers emails. If he did that, y’all might never get replies. Other than for me or clients, Taka will easily forget to text a friend back for like 8 months, no joke.
Also, another reason why he isn’t the one who answers emails. If he did that, y’all might never get replies. Other than for me or clients, Taka will easily forget to text a friend back for like 8 months, no joke.I know you all are always patient and understanding, so we truly appreciate that. But I just wanted to let you know why we can be slow to finish designs or ideas we've fleshed out but not produced. I know a lot of you are eager for us to do more fandoms (Madoka, Zelda, etc). We’re just in the place where there’s almost too much work for me to handle, but not quite enough surplus income for us to afford help. We are doing well and working towards our goals, but it is a slow and steady path. But rest assured, as always, our focus is always on quality products, good customer service and fulfilling our commitments to you monthly.
WE’RE MOVING (again)
Speaking of the business growing, one of the reasons despite me actually being on top of things and caught up most this month, I’m still just a little behind is because we’ve spent a lot of time here and there in the last two weeks house-hunting (unfortunately still not to buy as we need to save significantly more to actually afford to buy one).
As much as we absolutely love our condo now, and as much as I’m really going to miss my view , thanks to you all for being so amazing and supportive, our company just keeps growing and subsequently, taking up more space. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t escape any of the work because it floods into the living room area. Sad as we are to leave, we have been looking for a new home. Most the spots we found were quite a ways from Seattle which was concerning for us as Taka’s tattoo work relies heavily on being accessible since a lot of Seattle dwellers don’t actually have cars, so we need to be somewhat near public transportation options.
, thanks to you all for being so amazing and supportive, our company just keeps growing and subsequently, taking up more space. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t escape any of the work because it floods into the living room area. Sad as we are to leave, we have been looking for a new home. Most the spots we found were quite a ways from Seattle which was concerning for us as Taka’s tattoo work relies heavily on being accessible since a lot of Seattle dwellers don’t actually have cars, so we need to be somewhat near public transportation options.After multiple viewings and even many application approvals, all of the owners opted for other tenants because they wanted someone who could move immediately. We technically can move whenever as our lease ends at the end of February, but since we still have to pay for February rent, we wanted to wait til at least mid-February. That said, seeing how impatient the market is, when we found a new rental listed on Friday, we immediately submit an application upon viewing it as it was not only still in Seattle proper, had a garage (essential for Taka’s car and motorcycle), had plenty of space for both our businesses, and it’s even almost $500 cheaper than where we are now! :o
We’ll sign the lease on Wednesday since the owners are busy celebrating the Lunar New Year the next couple days. We can move in any time after that, although the couple renting it out would like more time to do renovations which is fine by us since we don’t plan to even start moving til mid February as we still need time to pack, and we have to prepare for an event we’ll be selling at on Feb. 12th.
The quality of the home itself is definitely a downgrade (not as new, older appliances, pretty sad bathtub, no amaaaaaazing view) compared to where we are living now, but we are hoping that with the ability to save, way more space to store product and to work for both of us, that some small sacrifices will help us towards our goal of buying a home in a couple years after the insane housing market bubble hopefully pops. With so much more storage space too, we are looking forward to the opportunity to see expand into larger product lines like the bags we’ve teased in the past, as well as hopefully more apparel type items.
As a side note, we also have to get our car repaired as the condo we live in also had a break in last weekend where someone broke into the secured garage, broke into 3 of our neighbors’ cars and made an attempt to break into ours. Thankfully, they didn’t successfully break into it, but they did enough cosmetic damages that will cost about $2800 to fix—our insurance will cover that as an act of vandalism with plenty of proof from neighbors and police report, but the repairs will still cost us a $500 deductible. One unfortunate fact of where we live right now is that even in the year we’ve lived here, the place has been broken into at least 4 times resulting in twice other neighbors having cars broken into and Taka had a toolkit stolen, the storage units broken into (though not ours), and packages stolen multiple times (once for ours). While all the tenants in our building are fantastic, unfortunately, living in Capitol Hill or any other major neighborhood in Seattle means a higher chance for crime. So we are looking forward to being on the outskirts of Seattle. We’ll be moving to the Skyway area which is actually incredibly diverse, with apparently the most equal amount of Asian, Black, and White members in the community, with still higher proportions of other BIPOC living in the area as well.
LUNAR NEW YEAR
Finally, I spent what little other time I had this weekend creating graphics for the Lunar New Year collaboration we do annually. If I’m being perfectly honest, however, as much as I enjoy the output of this project and respect the heck out of my collab pals, it’s a reminder for me each year why group collab can be a bit difficult. With everyone busy with their own lives, getting everyone on the same page about dates, costs, project roles, etc, and to submit their final designs in a timely manner meant I was left last minute slapping together all the graphics for the Kickstarter page and Instagram posts on late Saturday night. Of course the good point is my role in the project is almost done and I can just kick back and relax during the next couple weeks and fulfillment will be done by someone else this year. In case you’re wanting to back this project, here’s our new chubby tiger design. Their name is Tora Mikan, which literally means Tiger Mandarin because when I asked Taka what I should name it that's what he came up with. Taka is always very direct with names and not terribly creative. haha
PRODUCTION
As you all know if you’ve been pin collectors for a while, which I believe most of you have, February is always the month where manufacturers go on holiday for two weeks and then have to scramble to get production up and running again when they’re back. I believe our manufacturers are back around the 6th, so I’ll be getting Chibi Moon and Esmeraude into production then. The February Mugen design was actually already put into production at the beginning of January. The freebie gifts for 12 mo folk are also still in production as well as the December designs. No updates on those before the manus went on holiday but hopefully updates when they’re back. I’ll also be putting restock order of Civilian Jupiter when they’re back as she’s getting low stock, which means finally I can also get her pastel variant made. I’ll be restocking the Cosmic Kitties as they sold out during the January drop. They’ll also get a pastel variant. And finally since there’s been so much demand for NarUmino and they both are sold out, I’ll be doing a small restock of them. I may open preorders so I can get a feel for how many of them to restock, but do be aware I don’t plan to restock them after this.
I think that just about wraps everything up. I'll post the final colored artwork for February likely tomorrow or on the 2nd. I hope you all are doing well and thank you as always for your support!
Mandy & Taka
I’m so happy I joined the club and your club especially! The upcoming Black Moon clan is going to be amazing and I love them as well! So excited to have added to my collection! Chibi moon is cute but the villains is definitely a must have!
Good luck with the move and pray it all works out. Tbh it sounds like the perfect situation though already. Great location, timing for the move, safer/less crime and more space. You’re right about a few small sacrifices now will help you 2 meet your goal of home ownership soon. It’s a crazy market, trust me I know. I bought a house literally 2 days before 2021. Sorry it made things rough to look for a place to move but it looks like it all worked out.
Thanks for the update! Have a great evening and make sure to care of yourself and Taka _
I wish you and Taka the best of luck with the move!! I hope it will be a better place for you both! Take care of yourselves! You do so much and I appreciate all the hard work you put into these pins! <3
@Mandy I fully support you self-indulging for your bday month, even if it means i have to wait for my best girl pluto 😆 for the DMC will the guys been done as well? I would love to see Prince Diamond and Rubeus ❤
Oh I’m so excited for Black Moon folks, but my wallet is already weeping because I know I’ll probably need most of them! They are also my faves for the Sailor Moon villains. Also Chibimoon! Everything looks lovely and I hope you and Taka have a wonderful Lunar New Years!
@Aarika hehe yes! Black Moon Clan is my favorite and Sailor Moon R is my fav arc. I definitely was self-indulgent in also planning to have my fav outer and baddie be the designs for my bday month in June! :p
@Eden Thank you for all that love! I do tease my husband that somehow he excels at his Chibiusa designs. She was never a favorite character of mine until he started painting her and always making her look so darling and less bratty! haha
@Ewa hehe thank you! We are definitely always trying to one up our designs! :p