May Updates & June Preview

Good afternoon everyone!

It's almost the end of the month so I wanted to give you all the preview for next month's designs as well as tell you what we've been up to in May!

BUSY, BUSY

May has been a very busy month, but also, somewhat restorative, too. While I've had waaaaay more events than usual since I had events every single weekend as well as many weekdays thanks to all the local corporations wanting to create AAPI events for their workers. Also, as most of you may know if you've read the more recent updates in the last month, you'll know we have been trying to get ourselves a proper store/studio. Unfortunately, the dream spot we found looks like it may be just that. We didn't do anything wrong on our end and it seems as though the landlord would be glad to have us there if, as always, he wasn't so stubborn/hadn't pissed off like literally every real estate broker in Seattle. He currently has no broker representing him but doesn't want to move forward without one. The Seattle Chinatown-International District (C-ID) consultant we've been working with has also informed us that he's really trying to get her to convince us to make an offer on some of his other not very good available spaces. He wants to fill those up before he fills up the one we actually want. :/ Obviously we aren't going to take a space that is not a good fit, so we're semi-back to the drawing board. Taka and I agree it's pretty much time to wash our hands clean of this guy since he's been difficult to reason with even since we tried almost two years ago.

That being said, the C-ID consultant did inform us that the only current tattoo shop in C-ID is moving out of his space within the next month or so and that the current landlords (which is a non-profit business association for Chinatown) thinks it's a no-brainer to put Taka in that space. The only stipulation is they promised that space to a small health clinic for a temporary 6 month lease when the current tattoo shop moves out while the clinic renovates another space a couple doors down from the tattoo shop. So most likely that would mean Taka can't be in that space for about 6-8 more months. It's a long time to wait considering Taka has been getting busier and busier these days with multiple consultation requests per week, and moving up from 1-2 appointments a week to closer to 2-3 per week. We're glad Taka is getting busier, but in case you all didn't know, he runs the private studio currently from our home. While his space is in the most private area of the home, it can still be unsettling to invite strangers for consultations and appointments. It wasn't as big a deal when most his clients were friends or friends of friends, but now he has people from all over consulting him, which is why it is really essential to get him into a shop ASAP.

But good news is that it sounds like he's a shoe in for that already established tattoo studio and we will be looking at the space and possibly some other backups on Friday. The bad news is the space really is only big enough for him to run his studio and not big enough for me to have a storefront. This kinda means I am unlikely to get a store front at all, even if a good space comes available because realistically, while we could have afforded a dual space splitting rent together, I don't think Shishido Creative could afford to rent a space on its own. :/ It's a lot cheaper to get a 1500 sq ft space and split it up for dual use, than to get two ~600-800 sq ft spaces and pay for them individually. So unless a space comes available that is roughly the same cost as it would have been for me to be in the dual space we wanted, it looks like it will be only be the exhausting work of  tabling at events for me for the unforeseeable future. 🥲😕

I wish so much I was better at/had more time to create a stronger online presence/better social media content that might actually go viral because I'd love to be able to rely on online sales alone. In person has really saved this brand for the past year, and it looks like I will need to continue to do that until online sales either go back to what they were like in the heart of the pandemic when everyone was bored online shopping or until I can get a permanent store front. >_< I adore all of you who support us here in the pin club for years now as you really help us keep this going. But it's definitely been a lot harder to get the random new customers who don't already know our brand. It may not see like much, but the random 1-2 sales on a week day make a huge difference on our end for paying bills. Whether that customer buys only once or comes back to support us later, every sale directly helps pay for business and living costs. We both agree that there's no lack of new products on our end either, though I'd still like very much to expand our product types, too, especially to maybe bigger price point items like more apparel, as well as smaller price point items like stationery.

So that mixed news aside, we also have been taking some downtime this month to obsess over the new Zelda game. We both just take turns playing, usually I explore and gather items, find shrines and korok, and Taka kills baddies and ignores the plot line of the entire game. Seriously, we didn't even get the paraglider for over a week of playing. Taka would just make up creative ways to get to places if he needed to fly over/create a bridge, rather than just go and follow the storyline quests. haha Which honestly, I don't mind. Taka and I aren't really gamers, so when we DO play a game, it's fun for us to take it slow so we can enjoy it. The last game I played was Okami last year and it took me about 9 months to complete since I'd only play every now and again. So what does this new-found obsession of Zelda mean? It means we are finally vectoring the old Breath of the Wild designs!! 😱 😆

It hardly feels relevant now that the looks have changed a bit for the characters, but whatevs, they're still good! I don't think Taka will have time to do the other characters since he hasn't even in 3-4 years of me telling him to make a Winking Ganondorf, Mipha, Impa, Daruk, Sidon, etc. So likely I'll be taking over if we do a small collection, and be adding some of the new characters, too, because excuse me but Lady Riju and Chief Payu are too pretty not to pin!

And in final May news, I've been hustling on designs for next June (and actually already started vectors for a couple other months) because the next two days I'll be busy taking a motorcycle class! What?! 😬 I'm really excited for the class, but I'll likely be exhausted since the class starts at 7:45am, and even without traffic the class is 45 min away from where we live. So ummm, that means I have to wake up at like 6:15am at the latest each day. 😖 Which y'all know me by now and know that I don't wake up earlier than ~11am if I don't have to be somewhere. In any case, I'll certainly spend my few evening hours the next two nights working on wrapping up the vectors for June, which is just as well, because I'm waiting on Taka to finish the final lines for the Pretty Winkers for Minako & Iron Mouse.. So, speaking of that, let's move onto the June designs! :p

MOUJUU DESIGN

This month's moujuu design is the graceful tanchozuru, or red-capped crane. The red cap will be screen printed, so that's why you don't see it in the line work vector yet! This design is over 2.25" so it's definitely the largest original pin we've made to date. We had considered the possibility of it being pin-on-pin even though I usually find POPs to be unnecessary, but we opted against it because we don't think the average non-pin collector would want to spend $30+ on a pin when we bring it to events to sell, and to be honest, I don't think outside of pin collectors and fandoms, original art as a POP would be appreciated as much. But if any of you thinks otherwise, please feel free to try and convince me because I do honestly think it would be a pretty POP. 👀

PRETTY WINKER: SG

June is my birthday month, and just like last year, I selfishly picked one of my favorite characters to pin! 😜 Lin/Rin was always my favorite Spirited Away character so I really wanted to pin her even if she's a more obscure character in the way of fan art. I also wanted to pin Kamaji, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually have eyes to wink back at you with, so Taka suggested I put him at the bottom like we did the smol mirror of Zirconia for Nehelenia's design. Kamaji and Rin seem to have a working friendship between them so it makes sense, and I included the bath tokens that are sent down to Kamaji as well. I also added the konpeito (star candies) and susuwatari (soot sprites) so that Rin's design will tie in well with Sen/Chihiro's. Sen, being the main character was facing forward, while Haku with the white hitogami (the flying purification omamori) tying into the Sen design, faces towards Sen from the left side. This way anyone who is collecting them all can put them together as a set. But don't worry, I'm not done pinning Spirited Away as there are still more characters I want to tackle!

PRETTY WINKER: PS

Yet another selfish character choice was Iron Mouse as the baddie for June. I just love this adorable little mouse girl and can't wait to see her pinned! The sketch is rough, but Taka anticipates being finished with her and Minako tonight!

And speaking of, here is the Minako design, extra playful this time with her tongue sticking out as an homage to all the manga illustrations Naoko did of her like that.

It's a little bit hard to tell from the sketch, but she's wearing her frilly red cardigan. As always, it was kind of hard to choose which outfit to put her in, but we opted for this one! The background is the city scene from when she talks on the bridge with Artemis at the end of her famous episode where she two-timing dates Hawk's Eye and Tiger's Eye.

PRODUCTION UPDATES

I wanted to quickly let you all know that I just got a package from our manufacturer a few days ago that include the following new designs:

• An & Ail (February Pretty Winkers: Beautiful Soldier)
• City Ami & Tiger's Eye (March Pretty Winkers: Beautiful Soldier)
• Hawk's Eye (April Pretty Winkers: Beautiful Soldier)
• Ursula (March Pretty Winkers: SG)
• Nezumi/Rat (March Moujuu)
• Princess Venus
• Princess Pluto
• Koinobori Blue & Red restocks
• Prince Endymion freebie gifts from last year (omg why did it take them 6 months to get to me?!) 😡

So I'll also be working on getting all that unpacked and graded and hopefully out the door within the next two weeks or so.

Oh and by the way, I want you all to know I will resume the Sailor Princess designs this month too! I wanted to wait for Venus & Pluto to get in before doing another pre-order so no one is anxious that it was taking a bit of time. :)

FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Thank you for making it this far in the update! I wanted to let you know that we also are preparing a really big celebration because June 1st is officially the 5 year anniversary of us creating Shishido Creative! 😱 As you all know, we usually only prepare promotions for my birthday (6/23), Taka's birthday (3/15) and Black Friday, but since we are reaching 5 years in two days, we are planning to do something bigger than my birthday sale this month. I'm still really busy with events and finalizing vectors this upcoming week, so we will plan to have most of our promos starting around the week of June 15th with plenty of giveaways, freebies and promos, so please stay tuned for that! And with that also being said, a HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU who have supported us and gotten us from day 1 of our brand all the way to YEAR 5!!! We always expected some success when we began our brand, but we never anticipated that Shishido Creative would ever replace my freelance designing or stop being a side hustle and it quickly did that after only about 1.5 years, so thank you for continuing to support us, cheer us on, and share in our excitement and growth. Please stay tuned for more announcements in the next few days as well and in the meantime, have a great rest of this week and I'll be in touch with the fully vectored art shortly!

- Mandy & Taka