Dandy K. is the owner of Deviant Creations, an LGBTQ-focused illustration business. They discuss their business structure, cross-promotion, social media management, sticker manufacturing, brick-and-mortar store, and pop-up markets. They also talk about their experiences with different sales channels and conventions. Dandy K. discusses their experience with selling art at conventions and markets, including the challenges and successes they have encountered. They talk about the importance of tracking the success of each event and using spreadsheets to analyze the costs and profits. They also discuss the benefits of selling online, including through platforms like Etsy and Amazon. Dandy K. shares their creative display techniques, such as using backing boards for stickers and grid shelving for prints. They also mention their plans for the future, including expanding their retail space and venturing into wholesale.
- www.deviantkreations.com
- instagram.com/devkrea
- tiktok.com/devkrea
- Music by Old Romans: https://www.instagram.com/old_romans
You can listen to the episode here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or read the transcript below:
Nick (00:01.347)
So I would, but I really think that 14 cats is just too many. So today, in the podcast, we have Dandy with us. Dandy, I have followed you on TikTok for probably over a year now under Deviant Creations. I don't know how we connected or what happened, but all I know is you keep showing up in my feed and I keep being impressed by the videos you put together. So thank you so much for taking some time to talk to
Dandy K. (00:05.131)
I'm in.
Dandy K. (00:25.267)
awesome. Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to be here.
Nick (00:30.997)
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would describe your business as a illustration business that is focused on LGBTQ themes, potentially. Okay.
Dandy K. (00:42.401)
Yes. Yeah, yeah, we are a nerd a virgin and queer owned art business and yeah, we do illustrations, graphic design, a little bit of everything.
Nick (00:55.969)
So one thing I'm really curious about compared to myself is with me, my art business, Chain Assembly, is just me. How do you structure the we of
Dandy K. (01:06.497)
Yeah, so I initially started the business back in 2020. My boyfriend joined on about two years ago. And so he has been adding his own art to our collection that we sell. And he also helps run our storefront and helps with our social media and a lot of the backend stuff that we have to do.
Nick (01:29.613)
So with the illustrations that you offer products based on, do you specify who created what, or is it all just generally under the name Deviant Creations?
Dandy K. (01:38.601)
Right now, yeah, we do it as the Umbrella Deviant Creations. His own art we also tag as Apollonian Art. That's his artist's brand, I guess you could say. So we do credit his works under that as well.
Nick (01:55.883)
Okay, so there's a secondary business then that you like cross promote with or
Dandy K. (02:00.189)
It's not really a secondary business. It's more so, guess, just his, just his art handle that we kind of cross promote with. But yeah, we're just operating as one business.
Nick (02:14.125)
Do you find it difficult to do that cross promotion? Is it easy or I don't know, how do you approach
Dandy K. (02:24.681)
Yeah, so it's not super complicated. Usually when I will be featuring posts on social media about his work, I'll add his social media handle on the page and then he's got his own branded, for like jewelry, he's got his own branded jewelry cards that also link to both the Deviant Creations and to his own platform as well.
So yeah, we just kind of do like a little bit of tagging here and there with
Nick (02:59.075)
So like when I first started, tended to create a like a separate Kickstarter page, sorry, a separate Facebook page for each one of my main products and asked people to kind of follow those main, because my main products are like tarot decks. So I'll have like three or four a year. So it ends up being like 10 different things at this point. And I quickly realized that was a huge waste of time asking people to follow a whole new page.
Dandy K. (03:13.174)
interesting.
Dandy K. (03:19.349)
Okay.
Nick (03:28.801)
when it just made more sense to have those products messaging all occur onto the one main page. So I can say from my side, it is a hassle. any... So like for example, every week when I post about this podcast, I post it under the Art for Profit's Sake Facebook page, and very few people like that page. Way more people like my General Chain Assembly page. So I'm starting to post it under there in addition, and I might just kind of kill the Facebook page for the podcast,
Dandy K. (03:29.088)
Mm -hmm.
Dandy K. (03:35.475)
Sure.
Dandy K. (03:47.937)
Dandy K. (03:57.685)
That's fair.
Nick (03:59.055)
I don't know there's any benefit to that, but anyways. So I was just wondering about that. let me ask you then about, since you're, social media so much better than I do, which is such a general thing to say, but like looking at your Instagram page, it has like mentions of events that you're going to be at, which I don't do. D and then your TikTok is a pretty well populated too with regular updates.
Dandy K. (04:10.06)
thank you.
Nick (04:27.437)
Do you dedicate, like, specific hours of the day to focus on social media, or is it just as things arise?
Dandy K. (04:34.017)
A bit of both. I try to curate some backlog content so I don't have to keep doing it day of, but more often than not it will be day of and you know with like TikTok I've finally started posting on there again. I haven't in a long while, but for a lot of that I'm either repurposing either from TikTok or from Reels on Instagram and I'll just
repost the video on my TikTok. But yeah, I try to post at least three to four times a week right now. Last year we had a social media manager and they were like handling that a lot better than we were. But three to four seems manageable enough for
Nick (05:26.625)
Okay, can you tell me a bit about how you got a social media manager? What was that process
Dandy K. (05:33.599)
Yeah, it just kind of happened to work out. was my friend Jade. They were also doing the social media for my local farmers market at the time. And then they left that job and were coming to help us run our storefront. And so they also offered to help with social media. So we kind of just figured that into a pay structure for them.
They were doing primarily Instagram and I believe posting to Facebook with like occasional TikTok videos here and there. So yeah, it just happened to be a friend who had some experience in it, offered their help.
Nick (06:22.477)
Did you notice like, identifiable financial bonuses from having that, extra cook in the kitchen?
Dandy K. (06:33.409)
It took some time, but yeah, they had one video on Instagram that went relatively viral for us. And that gained us probably about 3000 followers. And from that, we definitely saw an uptick in sales. Nothing super drastic, but more than the handful of sales we were getting online there before.
So yeah, we definitely saw a bit of a initial uptick and it's kind of teetered off with a handful of sales coming in passively that way.
Nick (07:13.763)
Do think the increase in sales you got offset the cost spent on having their assistance?
Dandy K. (07:21.043)
I think it came close. I think if we had had another couple quarters with them, I think we definitely would have started seeing more traction and growth. But honestly, the benefit of not having to come up with content ideas myself or to...
stick to posting consecutively was definitely a lot easier. Let me focus more so on like the creation of it and doing more events and stuff.
Nick (07:58.252)
I know that's one thing we bring up a lot in this podcast is like what are the items that you hate to do but can do and for me social media is a huge part of it so that would be like the first thing I offloaded was logistics and I would love to offload that too so I just I've never really spent the effort to find and price out like a part -time help or something like that I really ought to do it
Dandy K. (08:08.789)
Yeah.
Dandy K. (08:17.003)
Yeah.
Dandy K. (08:24.703)
Mm -hmm.
Nick (08:27.051)
I just, enjoy keeping all my profit. So, so one thing that really stuck out to me on my, on your website is the sticker of the month club. Can you tell me a bit about how that came to be and how that's working out for
Dandy K. (08:30.189)
I get that. Keeping your overhead low is definitely important.
Dandy K. (08:45.601)
Yeah, we've gotten a handful of subscriptions with that. It started as kind of our way to, you know, we thought it would be fun just to have like a pack of stickers that we send out, kind of help people who maybe don't have, who get overwhelmed with choices. We have like over 150 sticker designs at this point. So.
It could be a nice little surprise just to get, you know, three, five, 10, however many stickers a month. And then people would also get the first, as soon as we got new stickers in, they would be the first ones to get those in their packs.
Nick (09:29.101)
So I guess the majority of your business is sticker based,
Dandy K. (09:33.107)
A lot of it, yeah, stickers are probably the product that we consistently sell every market or days that we're open in our brick and mortar. I would definitely say that we sell stickers more than any other product that we do.
Nick (09:50.045)
When you have a new sticker design, do you have like a default amount that you're going to order at each time or does it kind of change based on your excitement of the product?
Dandy K. (09:59.379)
It kind of changes. Lately I've started to tease upcoming sticker designs. On Instagram I do a mood of the week a lot where I'll put the sticker file with kind of a funny or relatable watermark on it and then kind of tease that those are coming soon. And we also did
kind of like a bracket style where we had our audience vote for which ones were their favorite to advance to the next round. And then based on the ones that are kind of leading is the ones that we're going to be ordering. And then we'll, we kind of figure out, we have started, especially when we're doing like larger product releases, we start kind of with like a lower amount. We'll do like 25 of each to kind of test.
And then once those sell, if they sell all of them, you know, really quickly, then we'll probably go up to at least 50, if not like 75. But yeah, we kind of start lower test how it's going and then order more accordingly.
Nick (11:10.945)
Okay. Where do you do that engagement? Is that all through Instagram?
Dandy K. (11:17.825)
Primarily through Instagram. Yeah, TikTok I am trying to post more consistently on there. But yeah, primarily through Instagram or even through email marketing.
Nick (11:32.457)
Okay cool. So when you're like posting a question to your audience, such as with the bracketing to see which sticker is going to win out, you get a lot of engagement in those you see?
Dandy K. (11:44.395)
decently. Yeah, the bracket ones were probably our best performing as far as engagement goes. We actually would have people commenting. I think we have them pick between like five designs and we had people commenting their favorite five as well as like tagging their friends or sharing it. So yeah, we definitely had a lot more engagement on those posts.
But yeah, it kind of, just when I feel like I've kind of gotten a groove with Instagram, then like the next post will flop and so yeah, it's kind of always a back and forth of figuring out that.
Nick (12:29.875)
I'm thinking about my own times on Instagram, which again, I rarely ever post on Instagram because I only really... In my mind, the person I'm marketing to is exactly like myself. And I never open up Instagram, just to scroll.
But I'm constantly opening up TikTok just to scroll. like that's kind of where I put my focus. And TikTok, I find it very easy to engage with content. Anytime I post a video, I get a lot of comments in response to that video. But like, again, something that a social media manager would be able to do for me is they would do the things that I don't want to do,
Dandy K. (12:56.875)
Yeah.
Nick (13:08.023)
post to Instagram, I do really like what you're saying about not just posting to have a post, but starting that dialogue with your followers. And I think that's pretty cool. One thing I've learned too that kind of shocked me is, like, I always post these videos to YouTube, but I don't do any community management engagement or anything on YouTube, but I've got a crazy amount of subscribers there, and I don't even know how they find it, because I...
Dandy K. (13:33.75)
awesome.
Nick (13:36.673)
I guess, I don't know. It's just weird. I know there's an audience out there on YouTube that's somehow watching these or listening to these when there's no video and I don't know how to communicate with them. But anyways, that's an issue for another time. So can you tell me a bit about your experience with different sticker manufacturers? Because I'm sure you've run through a bunch, have some you like, some you don't like. So what are your opinions on
Dandy K. (14:00.475)
yeah.
Dandy K. (14:04.545)
Yeah, our go -to sticker manufacturer right now is Vinyl Disorder. They have been both like best in quality turnaround and price. And pretty much every time we order, they also throw in at least an extra 15 to 20 free stickers of each design that we order. So, you know, we'll order 25, but then we get 33 to 40.
two stickers, so it ends up being even cheaper overall. But yeah, they've been our go -to for the last two years. And right now I'm trying a company called Experiential Printing. They don't offer any additional bulk discounts. They just price their price at the lowest bulk discount that you could get.
Yeah, regardless of the amount that you do. So we're trying them out with magnets and we ordered a few stickers. It like a restock to kind of test out how their quality compares to final disorder and kind of seeing, kind of where to go from there. But yeah, we've definitely tried everything from when I first started, there was a person on Instagram who just had a, I guess you could call it a cricket farm. They just had
12 crickets in their house and they were cutting all the stickers themselves. So we started with them and then I've tried probably at least six different sticker manufacturers. And yeah, so far we've landed on vinyl disorder.
Nick (15:50.563)
I don't do stickers as much as I used to, but I definitely want to check them out based on what you said. I've done sticker app. I'm a fan of sticker app, lots of options, and the quality is pretty good. I, like most people, started off with Sticker Mule. Their quality is really good with the stickers, their hot sauce is really good, but I definitely can't support them anymore. I don't know if you saw the email that came out today. Yeah.
Dandy K. (15:57.195)
Yeah, they're really good.
Dandy K. (16:08.477)
Mhm.
Dandy K. (16:17.039)
yeah. Yeah, I've been seeing a few things from them. Yeah, we also started with Secret Meal Tool and as soon as we started learning more about their company and their values and stuff, we're like, okay, that's not someone we really want to partner with.
Nick (16:20.804)
Yeah.
Nick (16:35.259)
Yeah, yeah, but their hot sauce is really good, so I need to start finding alternatives. So, okay, so when it comes to that Sticker of the Month club, I guess this is also a good question in general. There's a lot of businesses that are sticker -based. How are you shipping those? Is it just a forever stamp in a letter, or are you doing something more elaborate than
Dandy K. (16:40.139)
Yeah.
Dandy K. (17:00.213)
Yeah, right now our shipping is, we have kind of these rigid 4x6 mailers and we'll usually surround our stickers with some kind of thin, like 4x6 backing cards, just add some extra rigidity to it. yeah, we have an option where people can have like track shipping or just have
like standard shipping and that will be, it's a label done through Shopify for those. And if they do the track shipping, then we go through pirate ship too. So they have like a tracking code. But yeah, right now it's just those, we haven't had any that have done like any larger subscription ones that we couldn't just fit it in an envelope. But I think if we ever did,
like larger bundles, we would probably be shipping them out in boxes and it'd be really cool to actually have like branded boxes. But I think, I think that's kind of like a, we'll cross that bridge when we get enough sales to warrant it.
Nick (18:11.317)
Yeah. So with the Shopify side, is that a third party app that manages the subscription or do you process new orders each
Dandy K. (18:22.937)
It's a third party app that we found. Yeah, the app lets you just create a subscription listing and then it'll like auto charge them. The customers kind of get a email where they can adjust if they want to pause, skip, cancel their delivery schedule. And then typically like on the webpage, we say that like we ship it all at the end of the month,
Right now we get like one or two subscriptions from that currently. So it's like, I'll just drop them off on my way home. Um, but yeah, so far it's been pretty good. They, as far as like the monthly fee, I think they take just a small portion of your sales that you get from it. They take like one or 2 % from the subscription, active subscriptions.
Nick (19:17.763)
Oh, okay. Like, I love the amount of apps, third -party apps that are out there on Shopify, but almost every single one of them is way overpriced. It's amazing. It's like, oh, this does everything I need. Oh, it's $60 a month? What? Yeah.
Dandy K. (19:19.549)
Yeah, it's not bad.
Dandy K. (19:28.551)
yeah. Yeah.
Dandy K. (19:33.825)
$60 a month? Oh, this one's like $150 a month. Yeah, I love Shopify, the... I hate how they kind of nickel and dime you with everything. Like we were looking into getting the POS Pro subscription and it's not, you don't just get the subscription for your entire business. You have to do it for each location. And since we do pop -up markets and our brick and mortar, it would amount to...
$150 a month, just so we could stack discounts in our POS. So it's not super worth it yet, but yeah, they definitely make it be expensive.
Nick (20:04.045)
Wow.
Nick (20:18.541)
So for in -person sales, are you using Square or something else? Or you're still on Shopify? Okay, cool. I have been very curious about their POS system. They don't advertise it like super heavily, but...
Dandy K. (20:24.427)
We go through Shopify for both, yeah, for online and in person.
Nick (20:37.791)
as much like Square does. And I've been with Square for so long, but it is kind of redundant that I have products both on my Shopify and on my Square interface. So can you tell me how happy are you with the Shopify POS?
Dandy K. (20:46.26)
Okay, yeah.
Dandy K. (20:53.941)
Generally, I've been pretty happy. There are definitely some things that frustrate me. So like we offer kind of bulk pricing on all of our products. If people get two or more, they get a certain amount of discount off of that product. So with Shopify, with their base one, you can do one like order discount.
And then you have to do all your other discounts as line ones. So have to go into each product that you're discounting and manually add all the discounts. So that can be very tedious and frustrating, especially if I'm at like a convention or something and I have 10 customers in a line and I have to go through and like tap to make sure I'm doing the math right and doing everything for it. So it'd definitely be nice if it had features
would let me keep adding discounts to it.
Nick (21:53.249)
I could tell you on the Square interface, discounts are kind of almost like products with negative prices on them. You can make them automatically happen, but I usually just select it as the item and then it just gets added to the list of the order. Yeah. Yeah.
Dandy K. (22:09.801)
so you can actually add multiple discounts. wow, that's nice.
Nick (22:13.909)
Yeah, so that's kind of nice. Like I do these like little role -playing games that I make and if they get three there's a discount so when I add three I then just add that discount light item. Now I know with Square you can also generate like little QR codes for each product then you could just scan it with your phone but I haven't messed with that because I haven't really needed to. Yeah.
Dandy K. (22:32.577)
okay.
Dandy K. (22:36.757)
That's fair. Yeah, with Shopify, we had to get a third party barcode app to generate barcodes. And that saved a lot of time once we did that, because we could just put it on each one and scan all of our products, and that definitely sped up our checkout process.
Nick (22:44.821)
wow.
Nick (22:55.295)
Yeah, I imagine if you're at a market you probably have a shit ton of stickers, right?
Dandy K. (23:00.609)
Oh yeah. Especially because we do, uh, our like pricing structure on stickers is, uh, at three, five, uh, and 12 stickers. So, you know, a few times people will get like the 12 sticker discount. Um, and so I'm scanning 12 stickers, maybe like three postcards, a print and like bookmarks or something for an order. So there'll be around.
close to 20 items. And so if I had to like go through and either type in the name or go into like different collections on the POS, that would take a very long
Nick (23:41.463)
and you're all doing that with a phone, right?
Dandy K. (23:44.929)
We have at our brick and mortar, we have one iPad and then for the market I use my drawing tablet. I just kind of multi -purpose it to also be our actual POS there. So yeah, we do that and then we have a barcode scanner at each location separate so we can just do that. Yeah.
Nick (24:10.233)
okay. cool. All right, so tell me a bit about your brick and mortar. don't think I've had any artists on, I mean, I've had artists who have galleries, but none that would consider it like a brick and mortar shop. What's the story of that?
Dandy K. (24:25.045)
Yeah, so we, for about a year and a half before we were in here, we were in a small business community. In Harrisonburg, we have a place called the Shops at Agora and it is nine businesses that share one roof. So we were initially there and we were there for about a year and a half and we started gaining more sales that way. But it became
that we were kind of like in the back of the building. So we were also kind of overlooked. We didn't have a ton of wall space to actually put all of our original art up. So yeah, we were, we just felt kind of like limited in the space. So we were looking into getting something larger and we just happened to have one that opened up downtown with good window visibility. It's in a pretty...
well -walked place of town and it's also right in the heart of where all of the the downtown events will be when we have like parades or we celebrate pride or when the students come back in town they do like a like a downtown takeover where they kind of come down see what downtown has to offer. So it just happened to work out in a good location and we've been there for
about a month and a half now, so not super long.
Nick (25:56.195)
Cool. What's the footprint of the building? Or of your space, sorry.
Dandy K. (25:57.429)
But.
Dandy K. (26:01.025)
Oh yeah, so what we currently have is about 700 square feet, I believe. So yeah, definitely, yeah, a pretty good amount. We had 330 in the community building space that we were in. So we effectively doubled our square footage with the move.
Nick (26:09.059)
That's a good size.
Nick (26:25.347)
And what's the rent at that space, if you don't mind may I ask it?
Dandy K. (26:28.769)
Yeah, it is $1 ,500 a month. So it's a bit steeper than what we were paying initially. We were paying about $470 in the place we were in before. So yeah, a bit of an increase, but we don't have to pay any utilities on the space, just have to cover Wi -Fi and security.
So
Nick (27:01.023)
Have you seen a market increase in sales from just walk -bys as result of that space?
Dandy K. (27:08.405)
We, yes and no. Right now we are still trying to figure out marketing for the brick and mortar to help attract people inside of it more. But we do get people who will walk by and we'll see art and we'll like come inside. So I feel like we have been getting more visibility from people who haven't heard about our business before. They'll at least like pop in, take a look around
they might come back. But we have had a fair bit of sales there already and we're working on doing more community -based events to help bring people in more soon.
Nick (27:51.959)
Cool, that's fun. So when it comes to looking at your avenues of sales, what percentage would you say are brick and mortar sales? What percentage are market sales, like pop -up markets, and what percentage would you say are online?
Dandy K. (27:53.77)
Yeah.
Dandy K. (28:08.705)
Online is definitely our smallest revenue right now. So yeah, I would definitely say between brick and mortar and pop -up are our primary sources of income. We also just opened up commissions again, so we're hoping to add that into the mix. But yeah, market, would say, is our most profitable.
Avenue, usually beating out a brick and mortar by about $602 ,000 each month. It depends on the month, but the markets are definitely our most profitable.
Nick (28:57.559)
So you do a lot of those then. Is it always you or do you and your partner tag team them? How do you organize who's responsible for what on those?
Dandy K. (29:07.777)
I usually run the market and pop -ups. Yeah, my partner, he usually works the brick and mortar side. We both have some health issues, but my health issues don't necessarily impact me doing the market as much as they do him. So I've become the market face of us, I guess.
Nick (29:34.273)
Okay. And so do you have ones that you return to like that I guess your fans know to come visit you at or is it always different? Kind of, yeah.
Dandy K. (29:47.359)
Yeah, we do at our local farmers market, we do our Tuesday and Saturday markets there every week. So that is our most well known place. Recently, we have started doing more conventions and we actually got one coming up in August. We have one coming up.
that we're returning to because we did it at the start of the year and it was pretty good. But yeah, it really depends. Even with the same promoter of a Comic -Con we've done, one location did significantly better than the other location. But yeah, we try to at least have our regular markets and then do...
at least one to two pop -up markets throughout the month, but it kind of depends on what's going on around.
Nick (30:55.213)
So can say where I am, I'm in Florida, so half the year there are no markets because it's too hot to be outside. And I've done a Comic -Con once and sales were terrible because I don't have any recognizable characters. So when you mention conventions, have they all been Comic -Con or they, like, sorry, comic book related conventions or?
Dandy K. (31:02.13)
I believe it, yeah.
Dandy K. (31:10.196)
Okay.
yeah.
Nick (31:22.005)
anime or like what are your experiences with those as a category?
Dandy K. (31:27.349)
Yeah, we've had a couple Comic Cons that we've done. One of those did really well so far. The other we, I think, broke even on at least, but it wasn't really worth the two hour drive and hotel that we had to put into it. So.
Yeah, some of them have been good. We did a queer college conference that was in Kentucky last year. And that one went really well. And it was worth the drive up there to the cost of getting a hotel and everything. We still made a good profit from that. But yeah, then we've done some
We did a comic book that was hosted by the university near us and that one had a really low table fee, but actually a really high amount of sales. So that one was definitely worthwhile. But yeah, we've, we've had some that we didn't even make back the table fee on and it was just kind of a, a wash. Yeah.
Nick (32:43.255)
Yeah. When it comes to tracking, if at all, how successful individual events have been for you, what kind of factors do you look at and do you have like a spreadsheet or anything to track all that?
Dandy K. (32:59.497)
Yeah, I have a spreadsheet where I will list out each event that I go to. I'll list the table fee, the travel cost, food, lodging, as well as what's included with the price that they do. So generally, I try to make at least
at least two to three times the table feedback. And I consider that at least a worthwhile convention to do. So yeah, we shoot for that. If it does, say we have one that we did like five times the table fee at, it's like, okay, that's definitely going to be on the top of our list to go back to next year.
Nick (33:55.169)
I know I also have a spreadsheet where I track the fees and then how much I've made. track, I don't know why I do this, but I track cash sales as well as card sales. And so based on that, I can see, like, okay, here's what I'm not gonna do again. And I kind of give myself the opportunity to like,
Dandy K. (34:01.055)
Mm -hmm
Nick (34:16.413)
no more than five times a year try an event I haven't done before and I'll potentially get some some good things I want to add to the rotation but as the years have gone on in my business I've reduced the amount of events I'm attending and really just going to the ones that I know will be good just because like I mean it's it's wonderful as a business owner to get like two thousand dollars in one weekend you know that's great but it's like
Dandy K. (34:21.717)
Okay.
Dandy K. (34:32.299)
Sure.
Nick (34:44.367)
For me, could say my biggest source of income is the Kickstarter projects. So I would much rather spend that time focusing on that. It's going to be like slower bits of work, but then I'm not only developing all the profit from the project itself, but I'm gaining all these eyes on my company would have never found it otherwise. And I'm also gaining more product to sell regularly online.
Dandy K. (34:49.78)
Okay.
Dandy K. (35:07.863)
absolutely.
Nick (35:08.075)
So outside of your website, do you sell like on Etsy or any other stores? Amazon?
Dandy K. (35:16.993)
I've gone back and forth with having an Etsy. It really depends on if I can find a good third party Shopify app that will actually sync my inventory and manage orders with it.
Nick (35:32.075)
I have found one but it's very expensive. Yeah.
Dandy K. (35:35.265)
Yeah, I've seen a lot that are like $99 a month, which is hard to justify when you're like venturing into a new marketplace again. So yeah.
Nick (35:43.585)
Yeah. Also when you're selling stickers with such a low margin, so...
Dandy K. (35:49.537)
Yeah, they can definitely, you know, it's like, okay, I have to sell 25 stickers to even break even on this. Am I going to make that in the first six months that I'm doing this venture?
Nick (36:03.371)
Yeah. Well, another issue too with the stickers as far as like Etsy and Amazon are concerned is like I haven't sold on Amazon, but I know with Etsy, you cannot become a star seller if you don't provide shipping. mean, if you don't provide tracking for every item you ship and then adding that to stickers makes them cost prohibitive for most people.
Dandy K. (36:17.663)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.
Dandy K. (36:23.809)
It can definitely, definitely do that. I thankfully, another artist on TikTok actually shared their process of through Shopify, how they got affordable, like sticker shipping options where it's like only a dollar, maybe a dollar 25 to ship instead of the three, four dollars that it can be. So that has thankfully helped.
cut down on shipping costs for stickers if I have to provide tracking for them. So yeah, now that we have that figured out, we probably add Etsy again, just so we can actually try to capitalize on that and at least get the first time sale from them and then try to get them through our main website in the future.
Nick (37:12.555)
Yeah, sure. So one thing I saw on your website, or maybe it was TikTok, I don't know, but one thing you do that I'm really impressed by is the backing boards for your stickers. That makes it look so classy.
Dandy K. (37:27.263)
thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's helped a lot, honestly.
Nick (37:32.333)
So tell me about that, how'd you come up with it? Does it change how you organize them? How do you affix them to the backing boards? All that.
Dandy K. (37:40.277)
Yeah, so to affix them, we just use some double -sided tape on the back of the stickers. And that usually holds them pretty well. We don't usually need a lot of it. And so we can easily just pop them on. And yeah, I just designed the backing cards after I saw another artist.
put their stickers on backing cards too and I really liked how it looked. We don't do it for our market location because our current display doesn't really lend itself to holding the backing cards. But at least with our brick and mortar location, we just put them on the backing cards, attach one of those adhesive little plastic hooks to it and then we can just put it the pegboard.
Nick (38:26.209)
Yeah. So I use those related to that, sorry. I do a lot of enamel pins and I got my backing boards printed by Vista Print just as business cards, dirt cheap. And for a while I was printing the backing boards myself and using those adhesive things. But since I did the business cards, which are already pretty vertical, I went out and bought...
Dandy K. (38:41.277)
Okay. Yeah.
Nick (38:54.817)
this guy, which is a hole punch that does that shape.
Dandy K. (39:00.71)
that's handy. Okay.
Nick (39:00.963)
Yeah, so I just slip the card in, punch it, and I'm good to go. And that way it looks a little nicer than the plastic hangy thingy. So I think this was like 15 bucks on Amazon or something. I don't know. Yeah, but anyways.
Dandy K. (39:09.247)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
That's not bad. Yeah, we'll probably do something similar to that with our, when we run through our current batch of backing cards, I think we're gonna like redesign them some and make it so that the, there is actually a place where we can seamlessly like cut a hole through it. I think that would, that would definitely be nice. And I think it'd take the same amount of time as putting the stickers on them.
Nick (39:40.491)
Yeah. So, can you tell me a bit about what your display looks like at the markets then, since you mentioned that the backing boards don't really work.
Dandy K. (39:55.457)
Yeah, so we used those 12 by 12 grid shelving that you can get and we just kind of built a large hollow rectangle out of it. And on each face we can fit nine stickers. We got this 12 by 12 inch
card collector sleeve, but I guess it's kind of like a coin collector sleeve. And then we mounted it onto those and we cut some easy access ports on it then we just have a little pocket that we can put all their stickers in. And that's worked out pretty well over the last couple years that we've done it. Let's us bring, you know, I think I bring like a hundred
20 different designs with me to markets. So I can just have all of them on that thing. I can have each one hold about 10 stickers of each design. it makes it a lot easier. And then I just attached a lazy Susan to it so I could have it spin and have people access it from usually on my market days. I can only really have
two or three points of access on it based on how I'm set up, but it at least lets three different people look at the stickers.
Nick (41:25.601)
Okay, and then for the stickers you have in the back, your extra inventory at a market, how are those organized?
Dandy K. (41:34.251)
So I actually don't bring any, unless it's like a convention, I don't really bring a lot of extra back inventory with me. Usually on a farmer's market, I might sell out of like one or two designs, but I'm not selling out of like enough where, you know, I feel I have to have a back stock, but yeah, usually with a back stock, I will.
Nick (41:35.737)
okay.
Dandy K. (42:02.197)
I either have these little 4x6 photo organizers where they're all different colors and I can fit two stickers in each of those. I can usually fit a good amount of backup with me.
Nick (42:20.383)
Okay, so what would you, I guess, can you describe what else would be going on in your market footprint? Do you have like banners, how many tables you got, what's the setup look like?
Dandy K. (42:31.969)
Yeah, it's a 10 by 10 space and I currently do a three table U setup. And so I'll have like on one table, it'll have our stickers, our bumper stickers, our pins, reusable sticker books, and then like mystery products. Then one table will be fully dedicated to our eight and a by 11 prints and our 12 by 18 prints.
And then the third table will have more of our like misprints and discontinued prints that we'll sell at a discount or our like pins. Yeah, so we'll kind of just spread them all out and I have added height to them by, I got some bed risers from a local thrift store and just put a slab of wood on top of it. And that gives me an extra.
12 inches of height that I can kind of work
Nick (43:33.699)
Okay. When it comes to the you, are you inside the you or are you behind it, away from the customers? Okay.
Dandy K. (43:42.741)
I'm behind it, so I usually kind of have all of my business cards, thank you prints, I'll have art bags and everything there with me behind me. And it usually works unless there's a large group of people. That's kind of been hard when someone wants to look at the prints, but someone else wants to check out. It's like I can't easily navigate to them.
But it's one of those I have to kind of make do with it because I don't have the space to necessarily go around or to help them another way. But generally I stand behind it a little bit more introverted at times. So it kind of gives me that bartender buffer of space.
Nick (44:36.193)
Yeah, I get that.
I have this weird thing where I don't want people seeing my legs. I got the tablecloth and I hide behind the tablecloth. I don't know why I hate that. It's just, they're my legs. So tell me a bit about then your prints. Do you print those yourself or are you also ordering those?
Dandy K. (44:43.657)
Yeah, that too. sure, yeah.
Yeah, that's for me.
Dandy K. (45:04.757)
We also order those. Yeah, we used to print. We actually used to manufacture all of our designs in -house, but we just had too many quality control issues or didn't have the funds to invest in a really good printer at the time. So yeah, we opted to go through Cat Print to have our prints made. And we can have a much larger selection
thicknesses and finishings and they also use, they have really good UV resistant, steadfast archival inks that they use so they hold up a lot better than anything we could do
Nick (45:47.639)
And that's Cat Prince, C -A -T.
Dandy K. (45:51.423)
Yeah, C .A .T. print. They are a really, really good printing house. They even do, they do like a featured artist of the month you can apply to be a part of and they'll send with every order like a small print of a picked artist and it'll give you kind of their story on the card. So I really appreciate that about them.
Nick (46:19.299)
That's cool.
Dandy K. (46:21.256)
yeah.
Nick (46:22.243)
So last year I bought myself a Canon image pro graph 1000. It's a $1 printer, 17 by 22. And it's got, it's awesome. It's got 12 different ink cartridges and well, they're all pigment based. So it's all archival too. And in the last month or so I've fallen in love with Red River Paper. It's a paper manufacturer.
Dandy K. (46:29.289)
Okay then.
Dandy K. (46:33.331)
wow, how's that working out for you? Yeah.
Dandy K. (46:40.124)
wow. Okay.
Nick (46:49.409)
And have tons of different options, tons of different sizes. And I love that they also have printer profiles you can download too, and ICC color profiles for any kind of printer you have for any of their papers. So consistency has been so easy to get with their stuff. And I just recently started offering printing services for the artists in my neighborhood, because I'm part of like a neighborhood art community. And I started offering print services for people. And since I'm already a photographer, I photograph
Dandy K. (46:58.969)
cool.
Wow.
Dandy K. (47:12.159)
Nice. Okay.
Nick (47:19.393)
paintings or whatever, clean them up on the computer, do the prints, but I'm also delivering them with backing boards and a sleeve and a thermal printed label. So it's like a little pricier than if they got it from Shutterfly or something, but it's ready to sell. They don't have to do anything else on top of it.
Dandy K. (47:22.197)
Yeah.
Dandy K. (47:27.056)
that is so... yeah.
Dandy K. (47:34.409)
Yeah, that saves them so much
Nick (47:35.561)
Yeah, and I already had all the shit lying around because I already been buying all these slots sizes for myself So it's been it's been fun like getting people to be able to sell their stuff at lower price points Or if they do small paintings make them bigger. It's so it's been a fun little adventure for me
Dandy K. (47:40.927)
Yeah
Dandy K. (47:48.046)
sure.
Dandy K. (47:52.833)
That is really cool.
Nick (47:54.307)
And so if you do ever want to buy a big printer, I recommend it. It's expensive. Refilling those 12 cartridges is $800 in ink. But I mean, it's nice that you don't have to replace them all at once. Whenever one goes down, replace just that one color. But the freedom to be able to just make a new print like an hour before an event is pretty fantastic.
Dandy K. (48:02.123)
Sure.
Dandy K. (48:06.091)
Poof, yeah.
Dandy K. (48:10.709)
That is true.
that's really nice.
Dandy K. (48:22.697)
Yeah, I think if we did manufacture things in Haskell, that would definitely be the one that we would do. It would just be so convenient to do that. We oftentimes will be sold out of our print and then it's like, okay, well, we need to hold off a bit till we can actually place this order again. So then we'll just be out of that print, potentially missing sales at either of our locations because that one's out.
So yeah, having a printer like that sounds really nice.
Nick (48:53.347)
It's nice too that like I no longer have to ever worry about bulk discounts when it comes to prints. So I could just do one and call it a
Dandy K. (49:01.345)
That's true.
Dandy K. (49:07.093)
That's nice.
Nick (49:07.489)
So what would you say is the next adventure for Deviant Creations? What's the next big thing you're working on? Or are you just trying to stay where you are but trim margins?
Dandy K. (49:21.515)
Definitely trying to trim margins. Yeah, I think we're, as far as like our retail space goes, we're trying to delve into doing more community things, actually creating a place where other local artists can sell their works and venture into doing wholesale with other artists, as well as doing wholesale with our own products into other businesses. I think that's probably one of our
biggest aspirations for finishing out the year and going into next year. then I think in addition to that, we trying to delve into, we have some larger projects that we wanna do. I've kind of wanted to illustrate a children's book or I've also kind
Going off on something that you do. I think making my own tarot deck sounds like a really fun but kind of daunting project to undertake But I think it would be cool
Nick (50:31.735)
Well, could say it felt daunting at first when I first did the first one. There a lot of redundancy there. it quickly, probably within the third card, it felt comfortable. Because I love creating templates and design rules. And once I have that in place, it's like just checking off a list. And it felt good to not have to worry about what to do and just know exactly what I need to do.
Dandy K. (50:46.979)
cool.
Nick (51:01.531)
The thought of it was daunting, but the actual process was just delightful. Yeah. Yeah.
Dandy K. (51:08.629)
That's reassuring. How has Kickstarter and stuff gone for you with those?
Nick (51:14.211)
Fantastic. So the most recent one I did is Tarrochi Gialli, which is inspired by 70s Italian horror film. So I made each card look like a movie poster. Thank you. And generally the way it's worked, this is kind of based on that. And like, if I were to try to average everything together, let's say the Kickstarter raises $7 ,000, which is pretty good. It's not
Dandy K. (51:26.879)
Very cool. Okay.
Nick (51:44.035)
The one I did I think was like $7 ,200 for the Torokki Jiali. Most I've gotten I think was maybe $12 Least I've gotten was like $4 But so let's say averaging it $7 ,000 raised. The actual cost to print 500 decks is around like $3 ,500. And through the Torokki Jiali there were 176 decks claimed through the pledges. So plenty of profit.
Dandy K. (51:48.891)
wow.
Dandy K. (52:05.599)
Okay.
Dandy K. (52:13.034)
Wow.
Nick (52:14.359)
and plenty of stuff left over for me to sell. So it is absolutely worth it. And not just for the financial thing, but like I mentioned before, I'm being exposed to thousands of people who would never find my brand anyways. I could do a million markets and I wouldn't get that many people who are like interested enough to actually give me money. So, and then anytime someone searches
Dandy K. (52:31.082)
Sure.
Nick (52:43.027)
Italian horror tarot deck from now on my thing is going to show up and there'll be a big link because Kickstarter does tons of SEO so they'll my project will appear at the top of the search results and there'll be a big button that takes them to my website where they can buy it so a huge percentage of my orders on Shopify are from people who have found my old Kickstarter projects so yeah all great reasons to do it so works well for me
Dandy K. (52:52.587)
Okay.
Dandy K. (52:57.953)
Very
Dandy K. (53:10.847)
It seems like it. Do you, are you like penalized if you don't reach your goal that you've set or is it kind of like
Nick (53:17.699)
Well that's a good question. So if you don't reach your funding goal, then nobody's cards get charged. So you don't get the money. That being said, most people have an artificially low goal because the nature of it is people would not pledge to a project that does not look like it's gonna get funded. So you wanna get that funding goal hit within the first 48 hours or else it's gonna probably not get hit.
Dandy K. (53:25.267)
Okay. Gotcha.
Dandy K. (53:32.033)
Mmmmm
Dandy K. (53:39.073)
sure.
Nick (53:47.651)
I always try to picture it as, I've already spent this much time working on this thing, how much money do I have in my bank account that I can dedicate to this? And then I subtract that from my actual funding goal. So that worst case scenario, I can still get it made with this amount of money. Yeah, so it usually ends up me saying like, I need $1 ,000 to hit this thing that's actually gonna cost me like 3 ,500 or so. Yeah, so that's kind of what it looks like when I'm putting those together.
Dandy K. (54:00.265)
Mm -hmm. Okay.
Dandy K. (54:14.835)
Okay.
Nick (54:17.837)
Yeah.
Dandy K. (54:18.355)
Interesting. Yeah, I've never actually delved into crowdfunding in that way, so I'm always curious to see how it actually works for people.
Nick (54:27.767)
Well, I started off with enamel pins and coloring books, I always recommend for artists, that's a very easy place to begin.
Dandy K. (54:32.574)
Okay.
Nick (54:36.139)
And mean, I think your art would be beautiful as coloring books and those would not be expensive to print either,
Dandy K. (54:43.787)
Yeah, we actually had a coloring book a couple years ago. We just haven't ordered anymore lately, but yeah, it definitely wasn't super expensive to get at least a small batch of them made.
Nick (55:00.151)
The manufacturer I've been using recently for a lot of my printing stuff, but especially coloring books is mixam .com. there you go, yeah. Great prices, great quality. Wonderful customer support.
Dandy K. (55:09.018)
I use them too. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick (55:16.247)
Alright, so for anyone who wants to follow your work or follow you around, you're at DeviantCreations .com, that's creation spelled with a K, and you're on Instagram and TikTok as at devkrea. that right? Anything else you want to leave us
Dandy K. (55:27.563)
creation is filled with the K.
Dandy K. (55:34.207)
Yep, that's us. That's us, yeah. Nah, you know, I think for anyone listening who might be starting out, go for it. Start small and keep at it. And over time, it will definitely become, I think, one of your most fulfilling ventures you've done.
Nick (55:55.497)
Yeah, it's funny, feels like, yeah, first couple markets you'll make no money, then you'll make one where you make so much money, and then you're like, I'm hooked now. And... Yeah.
Dandy K. (56:01.577)
Yeah. yeah, it's definitely like chasing a high for a lot of it. The lows can be very, very hard, but the highs are very rewarding when they happen to.
Nick (56:15.169)
Yeah, yeah, you just come home with like a swollen pocket and you're like, let's get let's order food. Celebrate. Yeah. And it's funny too, how like you'll you'll learn what works, what doesn't work. And you can't always pinpoint exactly what it is, but you develop an intuition for like, that box should be on the right because more people will buy from it kind of a thing. Yeah.
Dandy K. (56:22.687)
Yeah, let's order food. We're splurging tonight.
Dandy K. (56:34.111)
Mm -hmm. You do.
Dandy K. (56:40.223)
Yeah, you'll see how customers are interacting with your booth, with your products. And if you just kind of listen to what people are talking about, even without directly talking to you, they'll tell you what they like and what they don't like about products just by what they tell their friends. yeah, that's how we actually started a lot of our different series that we've done, or stickers that we've done. Once I've heard like,
10 people at a market like comment like, I wish they had like this particular animal as a sticker. I'm like, all right, I'm making a note of that. That's a, that's a decent sample size to go off of.
Nick (57:21.183)
All right, well thank you so much, Dandy. It wonderful chatting with you. Thank you. Have a great
Dandy K. (57:26.331)
Absolutely. It was great talking with you as well. You as well.
Outro
Chain Assembly: Art for profit sake is recorded through Riverside FM, distributed through Spotify for podcasters, and edited on Adobe Audition. The music is provided by Old Romans. If you learned anything useful or found this podcast helpful, please rate and review us five stars. If you want to learn more about me or my art, head over to ChainAssembly.com.
