October Designs + Hot Biz Tips

Hi everyone!

First off, let's get this month's shop passwords out of the way. Shop & Blog access password is:

HBFRC (which stands for Hot Boy Fall re-commences) 🥵 

And the combined shipping code is

PSLSAVE (which stands for Pumpkin Spice Latte savings 'cause without paying extra shipping you can go treat yourself to a sweet drink--unless you're in Seattle and can't find matcha 🍵 or hojicha or boba 🧋 for less than like $6)

Thanks for your patience as I wrapped up the vectors. Since I can't send to production til the 7th when the manufacturers return, I took my time with wrapping up them and kept tweaking Star Fighter's background and adding screen print features for Jadeite's hair since I always liked how moody the shading made him look in the anime.

I've never been a fan of Jadeite, but I gotta say, if he was as handsome as we drew him in the original 90's anime, I might have had a crush on him! So dashing!! As you all have most likely noticed, we always have a design at the base of the pins. Because the reference art for the Shitennou is pretty limited, it was really difficult for us to decide what to use as a base for them. I noticed what all the shitennou have in common is a decorative brooch or button on their shoulders (seen below). I told Taka to design how he saw fit since sometimes it has 2 flourishes and sometimes 3.

I also struggled to decide on Jadeite's piping color because in the Naoko's own artwork can be so inconsistent in colors and outfits. In her initial character design (left) Jadeite has red piping which was used in the 90s anime as well. However, in the rest of her artwork she illustrated him with the softer purple color. And no I won't get into how Jadeite, the stone, is usually green and how Zoisite, the stone is can vary between purple and greens. Seems like a missed opportunity of color choices, but who am I to judge? haha

Star Fighter was a pretty complicated design with her detailed brooch, and me changing my mind on how I wanted to do the background. The screenprinted pink areas were initially metal lines, but it felt too heavy so I changed it to screen print and then added the stars like her power in the 90s anime. In total, she has 4 screen prints colors. I made her headband more thin and delicate like she wears int he manga, even if our background colors reference her in the anime. I'm not sure if you all have noticed or not, but we usually do a sort of combination of both the manga and anime as we see fit.

Moving onto the kiku or chrysanthemum design, we have 4 color options as usual. At this point, depending what choices you like best, we've made it possible to collect most the designs in these 4 colors with some variation from month to month based on actual colors of florals. I really enjoyed working on these designs even if they took a lot of time due to so much linework. It reminded me of one of Taka and I's last garden visits while we lived in Japan where we went to a kiku exhibition where cultivators and gardeners showcased their countless chrysanthemum variants at Shinjuku Gyoen.

Below I'm also showing the other Chrysanthemum design I will finish vectoring tomorrow which will be available as an add-on design for anyone interested.

I'll likely also have my Princess Mercury design finished by Friday as well. Once I get a quote for her from our manu I'll get limited preorders for her up for you all. I imagine she'll be in the $30 range since she's going to be around 3-3.5" and the price really jumps up at our main manufacturer once a design exceeds 2.5". I'll certainly try to keep price as low as I can, and these will be single run designs, so I guess you can say LE even though I don't want to actually call them LE since I hate that the perceived value of a design goes up, regardless how good the design is or not, once you tack on the title "LE." Interest will also determine the LE since I don't want to be stuck with too many extras of these larger pins.

SHIPPING UPDATES

I try to grade mainly during daylight hours since I like to use natural light when grading pins, so I should be able to wrap up grading for Pluto and Rubeus tomorrow and Friday. I should start having pins out the door by Monday. Grading for the mugen club pins from July and August are done, but I'm still waiting on 2 of the color variants for the lotus and 1 color variant for the morning glory. As soon as I get those I can get those in mugen or docchimo tiers out the door as well. Thanks for your patience everyone! It's highly likely I'll be shipping out orders to you all twice this month or else early November, since I'll most likely have a bunch more pins incoming in the next week or two.

BUSY SEASON

As you'd likely expect, we are about to roll into our busiest season as November and December approach. I'm taking most of October easy (only 3 events, spaced apart significantly) to focus on vectoring future designs, work on fulfillment and take what little rest I can get before November's back-to-back events. While it's not likely we get to see most of you in the club since we're doing mostly Seattle area events only, here's a list of all the events you can find us at:

October 8: Alt-O-Ween (Tacoma Freighthouse)
October 22: Grit City Comic Show (Tacoma, WA)
October 30: Wing Luke Pop Up (Seattle, WA)
November 5: GeekGirlCon (Seattle Convention Center)
November 12-13: Anime Expo Chibi (Ontario, CA)
November 25-27: Geek Craft Expo (Seattle, WA)
December 2-4: UCU Winter Show (Seattle, WA)
December 9-11: MY VERY OWN "AAPI Holidays" Mini Pop Up Market, (Seattle, WA)
December 14: TBA Mini Holiday market (Seattle, WA)
December 16-17: Winter Solstice Market (Seattle, WA)

Gosh, just making that list makes me exhausted! 😫 But the great part of these events for me has been the ability to stay afloat and keep bills paid this year since tbh, online sales have slowed a lot since people aren't spending online like they were in the deep of the pandemic. I also use the downtime when I'm at events to work on the more repetitive task type things like grading pins (since most markets are indoors or under really bright lighting indoors) or putting pins on backing cards, cutting prints, etc. I've gotten my set up down to a science too, so I know how much inventory to bring each time, how to pack it efficiently into our truck, and set up within an hour. When I get home it usually only takes me 1-2 hours to replenish stock for the next event. While I try to immediately update my inventory for whatever I take from the stock here at home, about once a month I go over inventory to make sure numbers are correct on the website so that I don't accidentally sell out. I'll be checking extra carefully this month since sales will probably be high in the next two months.

POSSIBLE  MOVE & SOME HOT BIZ TIPS FOR Y'ALL

Finally, another reason October is looking to be a busy month for us is because we will be taking a short trip at the end of the month to visit Austin, TX as we are high key considering moving there in late January. 😱 As much as my heart doesn't want to leave my home in the Northwest (ok, let's be real, I consider Tokyo to be the closest thing to home I ever felt, even before I made friends there or met Taka), we just don't feel Seattle is sustainable for us and now our landlords told us when our lease is up for renewal in February that we'd be charged an extra $150/mo to cover how much property taxes went up in the last year. 🥲

All of 2022 we have struggled to pay bills and make ends meet all year since we ended up owing a lot in taxes for 2021 since I didn't expect it to be such a successful year with the initiation of the Pretty Winkers club. I literally just finished paying off those back taxes yesterday and am already trying to set aside money for taxes next year. Sadly, I'm sure we will owe a lot next year as well since I only just found out taxes are a lot less when you run your business as an LLC instead of as a sole proprietor (as I've been doing for years). 🙃 So hot tip for all you small biz owners in the club, just pay the extra it costs to be an LLC, you'll get better tax breaks... but also, legalese, don't quote me on that cause I'm not a tax professional. haha 😅

Another reason paying off our taxes was a slow-going process was because I did so many events this year and no kidding, events are so expensive to vend at and you usually have to pay 1-4 months in advance to be a vendor, which means you see no ROI for 1-4 months. Seattle events tend to charge between $100-350, and yes, that $350 event cost is more often than not for a single day event! Since I try to do 2-4 events a month, I'm spending at least $200-1000 in advance 💸💸💸 before I even have a chance to recoup my costs through sales at the said event. You're also kind of at the mercy of the event promoters to do a good job advertising and bringing in attendees, or if you're at an outdoor event that the weather holds up.🙈

I have a strong rule of thumb that I expect to make back at least 3-4x what I paid to be at an event, which includes the table fee, travel (gas or flight), lodging (if necessary), and food consumed on those days. I'm sharing this info because I hope you'll all know how much risk your favorite local vendors are taking when they show up to an event. I know you're all super supportive (or else you wouldn't be here), but it's something I think a lot of people don't realize when they go to an event, whether the event is free or has an admission fee. I know before I was a vendor I didn't realize vendors had to pay to sell, or if they did I didn't think it was a very much moolah. I just assumed that the cost of admission was what helped the organizers pay for renting venues and everyone else was just invited to sell their stuff. 🤦🏻‍♀️🙈

So, anyway, that's about all for now! Thank you all for making it this far if you did! :p I'll be updating more this month for sure as well as more in the coming months should we decide to stick around Seattle or move to Austin! I'm not sure, but would you all be interested in a Vlog? I really don't love being on camera, but maybe it's easier to listen to my long updates than read them?? Let me know in comments on the blog page or DM me. Whatever's clever. Talk to you all soon!

- Mandy + Taka