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Manic Pop Product Shop!

So lately, I have been having a TON of fun with online custom print clothing shop called Kin Custom. I guess in a way it's a bit like drop ship print sites like Society6 or Zazzle or RedBubble, but I think it appeals to the designer in me since they have a bunch of different styles to customize.

 People have always been hounding me -- "When are you going to release your line/collection(s)?!" for like the past 10 years.

Many of us who have been in or exposed to the industry for real know that starting your own line, manufacturing, and getting that rolling is prohibitively expensive. To make it even worse, most of the time when no one knows who you are, it's much harder to sell product to nearly anyone! And who wants to spend about $10k on your 1st clothing line when no one knows who you are, you are not guaranteed to sell it? What do you do when you create a line no one likes and no one buys?


Well.....enter in Kin Custom! No startup fees. You design the items given to you with your own prints (there are a lot of options!) You set your own margins. You can add these items to your Shopify store, Amazon account, your own website via plugins like WooCommerce and Big Commerce, or Etsy. They do the printing, sewing, packing, shipping. And you get paid for the items you sell!

A pair of shoes I designed. 


I did make sure to see what samples were like before I announced to anyone I had one of these shops. My question is always about quality and how things actually look once printed. 

So here is that shoe in real life...


I am impressed! (And yes, my original drawing had that color variation on it -- so it came out as the file looked!) 

Here are some photos of other real-life orders that went through: 



So yeah, tons of fun. I find myself just sketching random prints/designs and then noting that I could probably make them happen on this site. Like this skirt -- 


I had a drawing on my phone with a similar skirt, and here it is! Ready to order. 

I thought at 1st I would be calm and release "collections" but I figure why not just keep going with all the random cool ideas I have? 

I took a drawing I had for a few years around here, finally colored it and added it to a shirt. 

And then random sketches become an all-over repeating print.

These are men's high tops! 

 This ladies skirt featured on the right was an idea in an old sketchbook of mine from 2013... but now it's a real-life item ready to purchase and wear! 


 The print on here was inspired by Biba, a 1960s fashion designer. 

And another fun waves and stars one. 


Overall, I have WAY more items in the shop, so just click the link here: Manic Pop Kin Custom Shop. 

While I realize this all skews more on graphic design for fashion, I am still beyond excited to have some of my creative pieces out there within the world. Yes, I still do enjoy sewing and designing, but I never, ever wanted to personally be a manufacturer. While I am pretty good at sewing, I didn't want to spend my days holed up at a machine. (That's ok for many, but not for me!) 

This allows me to have time to work on what I want, when I want to, and also make some money on the side from designs! I think it's amazing that we have platforms like this now. When I graduated fashion design school in 2007, even sewing how-to videos on YouTube were not a thing! 

I am currently working on some other things which satisfy the original designs criteria, but I've had a lot of false starts in the past, so I don't want to promise anything. What I can say that it is nearly 100% complete (much further than I got last time!) and the item(s) will be sold via Etsy. 

Unless I get dragged away from this other project for some reason (like having to go back to full time work), I can see the coronavirus keeping us inside for a bit longer. 

But for now, I am grateful for this new awesome platform, and grateful for some time off to work on things I otherwise put by the wayside. 

Hope you all out there are staying safe and enjoying what I have been able to design and put out there! 

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