In 2014, during some difficult financial stretches, I picked up a book by Marc Ecko called "Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out" and hungrily devoured it. I was interested in business, and starting a business that was still related to art, and my mind kept racing back to my love of fashion and design, and the requests from friends and acquaintances for shirts.
My wife Liz La Point and I selected three of our favorite images from my work and spent a great deal of money we didn't have, incorporating my LLC and having several hundred shirts printed up to sell.
I literally did EVERYTHING wrong and barely sold any shirts. I was indeed a terrible business person at first, because you don't know what you don't know, but that lesson would pave the way for success.
It took nearly two years of loss and almost giving up on my little LLC before I found a better way to make and sell shirts, but I am finally in a place where the company is growing and I believe in it.
So, the lesson here is not to give up and to learn from your mistakes and keep finding ways of improving and being better at what you believe in.
From time to time I'm going to talk about my growing little apparel company and how the mistakes were so costly, and how valuable they were, and how I am still learning.
Making money from your art is the biggest challenge in an over crowded market where every creative person on the planet is trying to do the same thing, but the key is to focus on what makes your brand and product unique (no one wants to call their art a "product" but in order to profit from it and build your brand, you have to be prepared to see your work as an asset that people want.)
I love wearing t-shirts, and feel like they will never go out of style.
Stay tuned for more updates and Behind the Scenes stories of the building of a business and go get yourself a shirt from Art Bomb Tees, LLC.
1 comment:
Great shirts, great designs. Can't wait to hear more about the company.
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