Why is small business TikTok so weird? w/ Audrey Chamberlin | Grazing Hell #16

welcome to grazing hell the one and only podcast made by a cow and we've got a little cow guest today as well as her human audrey chamberlain owner of pony up press who is also the artist behind the artwork for this podcast so i'm so happy to have you both here today you and little phoebe the chihuahua in her cow onesie oh god i'm screaming it's dressed for the occasion i just if you're listening i cannot describe how cute this is phoebe it's like it's quite it looks quite fluffy doesn't it it's like a little oh yeah it's it's fuzzy nice and fleecy for the winter i love that it's a little bit big for her as well that makes me like the sleeves are a little bit baggy which makes it extra cute she looks like a baby you know just it is baggy the it has back legs too it's like a onesie and i have to roll up the legs oh my gosh she is an angel unfortunately siggy is uh in bed and she as i've mentioned in previous episodes she's scared of the microphone so who knows if she'll join us but phoebe is here and that's all that matters so you know but phoebe does not like to be in my lap okay all the time so she's just gonna sleep behind us on my bed hopefully you heard that little shake oh is she digging this is uh yep she's circling yeah and there's oh my gosh if you are listening and not watching you are missing out on some cuteness so audrey do you want to tell the people who you are and what you do sure so my name is audrey chamberlain i'm the owner of pony up press which is my little business i'm an illustrator and product designer i currently work full time as a product designer and i'm working on my illustration and at pony at press i make various kinds of merchandise so i make t-shirts pins stickers prints i just recently did patches for the first time um so please check that out yeah i'll have all the um but yeah i have a degree in design and um i also have a lot of experience with small business i have only ever worked for small businesses with one exception um i did work for my university for a brief time and then i got fired oh sorry everybody just a moment we've got ziggy has joined us the hi-c wow look it's your friend phoebe hey yep there's phoebe phoebe you see this she's like phoebe's like i'm nothing sorry usa you you got fired by your university i did um they said that i asked too many questions oh wow that sounds kind of culty getting kicked out for asking too many questions it was more like i didn't understand the instructions that were given to me by my boss okay and i didn't know what was going on and they gave me no training and then they fired that's awesome love that it was not my best moment but uh i i used it as a moment of growth exactly now we've all yeah no i i've i've been let go from retail jobs because i'm just not very good at it um you know exactly so okay i'm not very good at it either i'm very lucky right now to not have to deal with any customers at all exactly yes um at least in my in my day job yeah i do deal with customers uh at in my side hustle yeah so how long have you been doing said side hustle so i started it in january of 2020 which was a bad time to start it but i i have been drawing i guess for my whole life i did abandon it briefly when i was in high school in the beginning of college um because i had i went i went a different direction um but then i came back to it and i'm loving it even more i love that okay so well there are three reasons i'm having you on today one being that we're buds uh we haven't met in real life but we are i now consider you a pal um and thank you so much i consider you a good well um and you made a beautiful cow for the podcast but secondly i feel like you have a really good insight into small business culture that i think i don't know i just think people can learn a lot from it because we're living in an economy where or at least on our side like the more arty side of social media uh we are more interested in consuming small businesses however there's like a lot of etiquette and there's lots of things to consider and always there's always gossip there's always uh i don't know challenges and stuff so i'm curious to hear about all your thoughts on the small business world and all that's going on well a couple years ago i think most people thought of small businesses as whatever kind of brick and mortar store you had in your town whatever wasn't a chain like mom and pop stores i come from a really small town so it was mostly small businesses we weren't allowed i think there's something in the town charter or whatever that you weren't allowed to have chain stores so our only chains were like uh dunkin donuts and a subway oh some of those slipped in there um so i was really really fortunate to like grow up in that kind of economy i guess i just kind of grew up with that and now the way that a small business is thought of especially after the pandemic small business is taking on a whole different name like anybody can have a small business now which where i feel for like the last couple decades it's been oh you have a small business it meant it was really really hard to start um but now it's a lot easier especially with the pandemic starting and on tick tock yeah especially tell me about that because you use tick tock for marketing um yeah what's the deal with small business tick tock um so small business tick tock is kind of a whole can of worms because it's definitely changed over time the way that people feel about it okay um i think the the term small business has almost become taboo on tick tock now or kind of like a joke on tick tock like ghosts yeah so yeah kind of like a girl boss which really sucks for me and the other people doing the same thing as me um because i don't want to say i'm a hashtag girl yes but you're a girl and you're a boss of your business i'm a girl and i'm like that's right um but anyway so yeah when the pandemic started i think that people are using or people are running they don't have enough things to do they're bored and it's like well i'm going to start a side hustle maybe you lost your job maybe you aren't working um so now is a great time to start your own business if you are a maker and you want to make stuff say you were making jewelry on the side for all your friends and family or for yourself and now it's like well i have all the time i don't have a job i'm going to monetize it you know i think it's great it was definitely great that all these people were starting small businesses if you knew how to sew you could sew and make you could sew things and sew them um really really easy side hustle i'm totally big proponent of side hustles full-time hustles yeah small business lover um of course and then you started getting that audio i don't know if you've heard that audio okay um that's like i don't want to sing it it's like it costs that much because it takes me [ __ ] hours right yes cost that much cause it takes me [ __ ] hours [Music] you need to pay for my skills cause exposure doesn't pay the bills it costs that much because it takes me [ __ ] hours yeah so like i think that song was like the downfall of it all oh no really because to me when i first say that that doesn't sound inherently bad to me because it's like that's something i still see you know people just don't value labor they just think it's yeah a hundred dollars for a sweater that's overpriced it's like it's not overpriced you just don't know how much labor goes into it you don't know how much the materials cost when someone isn't being forced to make it in a sweatshop like so it's it's certainly true uh fast fashion has definitely redefined uh the way we think of our clothing prices um so that's definitely a big part of it when it comes to more of the apparel side of things but honestly that kind of bleeds over into into anything yeah no true um very much rarely since um we have come up with better ways to manufacture things very rarely are people wanting to turn to more bespoke things um which is how a lot of people make their livelihoods which was unfortunate but i think now um i don't know if it's like the pandemic itself or just maybe more liberal views coming into play um but people are definitely wanting things made in small batches or from small businesses more now but that audio i think after a time did come across as pretentious because there is and i have i guess discuss this a lot with my other friends who who own their own businesses or are independent artists um that there is like a like a learning curve um you can't automatically just sell whatever you make for the amount of time it takes you gotcha yeah which is definitely um an issue i think that's what a lot of people have had uh criticisms of is it takes you a long time doesn't necessarily mean it's a good product hard pills to swallow but yes no i do see what you mean i know you're right i relate to that as a photographer you know i worked as a i've worked as a photographer for like five plus years and i look back at my headshots from when i first started and i think i'm glad i only charged this much i wouldn't charge what i charge now for those because they're not as good as my work now and like i look back at that and i'm like oh cringe so yeah when you start out and you're just getting clients and you're still learning i agree you got a price according to that yeah and i mean for for everybody i think for every artist um there is a propensity to undercharge and i mean i under charge everything i do my friends who are professional full-time artists they undercharge everything they do um so i think with that like audio or that that kind of mentality that came along with that audio or like forms that audio um kind of has to do with you can't just this yeah you can't just charge a price for x amount of hours that you worked on something because you worked on it you have to have like the skill that comes with it you have to have you can't like jump out of the gate charging people like 35 an hour for you to make something um which is a tough pill to swallow because again with a lot of these small businesses and people that are making things by hand it is really personal yeah to them and they're working as hard but as you say it's not just about the work it's about the skill and the labor and the expertise and that's also what you're paying for so certainly i mean i can work on a drawing for five hours and want to you know get paid 35 an hour for it but it's just not realistic because my skills like aren't there yet which is is fine for me you know it's a side hustle but some people that that is their full-time hustle um so it's it's a difficult kind of line to draw it's a very difficult thing to figure out how much to charge people for stuff with with i think this like boom of small businesses we also have all these people who are learning what drop shipping is i don't know your experience with like drop shipping or if you know what that is yeah do you want to explain it and i think i do know what it is but you want to explain it for the listeners in case they don't yeah so drop shipping is pretty much uh you have some sort of uh e-commerce platform um and a website and you purchase things from that website um but the business never has those items actually in inventory so those items come from some sort of wholesaler or manufacturer directly uh so the business does not hold any inventory um and that's different from say a business that doesn't hold inventory and has things on demand and is making them like this a business will have nothing to do with the inventory essentially they pretty much just set up the platform in order to be able to uh send items out okay and a lot of people have a problem with this uh so yeah what are the issues that crop up with this well some people think it's kind of shady um and i think when you're coming to selling things like clothes which is where a lot of drop shipping comes into play is with clothing especially with instagram boutiques and things like that um is that they don't often experience the product very much sometimes they'll get a sample of the product but not a big shipment so the quality control is out of their hands essentially and more often than not drop shipped items are not made very well um so it's something that you that quality control is kind of essential for if you're going to sell a cheap product um yeah and you're pretty much just paying for the business that's doing the drop shipping to handle that exchange and to have the website up front whereas a lot of clothing that you find on um like random instagram boutiques a lot of that clothing you can go on to like aliexpress and you can find the exact listing for oh yeah so um there's a really great uh tick tocker her name is madeline pendleton and she owns a clothing company called tunnel vision and she has a lot of really really awesome insightful videos about this whole process because she's been working in fashion design for like 10 or 15 years and she creates all her own designs for her company and then also sources some vintage clothing too i believe um but she has experience in all of these manufacturing pipelines i guess um and she actually can often go onto like stores that people ask for they'll be like oh can you check xx store and tell me if it's like a drop shipper or they're making their own clothing and she can go on there and if it's a drop shipper they more often than not will have actual pictures of her clothing and copies of her designs oh on their website it happens i i mean she does these videos a lot and that happens very very often it's shocking how often it happens yeah that is it's the stealing designs as well that's really extra level of shitty isn't it i don't know yeah the the way it's actually a huge problem um the way that that happens is that a lot of independent designers and independent artists will use a website like alibaba to find a manufacturer more often than not in china which doesn't mean that it's unethical manufacturing you know there is it's it's there is a lot of ethical manufacturing in china and it's not necessarily bad that something's made in china just like it's not necessarily good that it's made in the u.s because there are um some issues with factories especially in l.a especially in la especially with clothing where they aren't ethically manufacturing okay yeah that's the thing because that's a big marketing thing at the moment made in the usa made in britain and all this stuff and obviously i know this is a very extreme example but it came out about i think it was a pretty little thing this like very i don't know how it's like a forever 21 type brand um essentially it turns out they were paying their workers who were working in england um like two pounds an hour so exactly like you say it's um yeah you're not safe just because it's made in the same country fashion nova does the exact same thing i mean you can often tell by a garment if it looks cheap it's probably made with unethical manufacturing i'm telling you right now if it's a cheap shirt that's new you should be skeptical that madeline pendleton talks a lot about that in her videos as well um she says that she can make like a very very very simple cut and so dress uh for around 45 dollars with ethical labor but if you start adding lace if you start adding embroidery which is a it's very expensive method embroidery is very expensive if anything has embroidery and it's cheap definitely a red flag okay good to know yeah embroidery is very expensive i have a a close friend of mine has two embroidery machines um and she does a lot of embroidered apparel and her sweatshirts cost anywhere it's in the hundreds geez yeah it's like a hundred to a hundred sixty dollars for one of her sweatshirts um extremely detailed it can take um i think around an hour and a half for some of her embroidered designs on her embroidery machine and those machines also one of them is i think new was six thousand dollars jeez lordy lordy well there you go exactly it's um and like crouching i i follow some crochet people and um someone would share something from a fast fashion show store come with which one and it was like a crochet dress for like 40 pounds and that was take a long time to make so they were basically just saying this is really dodgy it's a lot of if you know it when you see it right so but when it comes down to uh stealing designs how that happens is when designers look on aliexpress to or alibaba sorry alibaba for um their manufacturers which is how a lot of people find manufacturers um or how they source materials um and a lot of those manufacturers will just take your designs wow it's it's as simple as that they just take your designs the same friend with the embroidery machine she said that she contacted i believe she said around 20 to 50 manufacturers to find one because they can be really dodgy um and there is a definitely a language barrier um but some of them yeah are trying to do things like take your designs and it's really unlikely that you're gonna be able to do anything about that yeah reason being i mean i can't remember what it's like in the us but in the uk you can't um really copyright a shape of clothing or anything like that like a sort of silhouette because it's a utility you can only really copyright a pattern i believe i don't know if it's a similar system in the us but i think that's why it's so easy to steal designs and the artists can't really do anything because it's like i i don't really have copyright over this so yeah you're you're right in that you it's very very very difficult to copyright fashion it's incredibly difficult i think more often than not you can end up copyrighting the utility aspect if it has some sort of different utility but you can't just obviously you can't just patent something because it's a shirt that keeps you warm very exciting it's a shirt that covers your boobs i mean that's every shirt yeah so you have artists who have created products and the products that they have end up anywhere it can end up in those drop shipping instagram boutiques that are really small it can end up at zara yeah another thing that means yeah that's notorious yes i've seen so many posts about zara is it diet prada the instagram page they they call out a lot of it i would recommend that it's a good page um and it's just the audacity of it is just wow yeah and more often than not when companies do that they're like oh our that's from our manufacturer they didn't tell us that it was stolen oh really it's like well maybe you should research something a little bit before you put it on the shelves or you buy you know thousands of units of stock but it's it's definitely i'm afraid of it for sure especially with my designs that are more successful and like a little more palatable to larger audiences i mean you know my my cow pen and pin that's a a cow with a little cowboy hat and booties it's pretty simple um yeah it's really cute it is it's pretty simple but that's something that definitely can be corrupted but there are kind of two routes that you can take when it comes to manufacturing things in china is that you can contact a manufacturer directly through something like alibaba or you can use a kind of an american middleman and there's companies like uh vogue race for example they're a big company that people use for like key chains pins lanyards washi tape things like that and they're an american middleman so it costs more you are paying more upfront but i think it's like a little safer or they have like dedicated manufacturers i'm not exactly sure um when it comes to that but i think it's a little safer to do that yeah yeah it's definitely it's a dog eat dog world out there which is it is really really sad you know how things like fast fashion can just bleed into every aspect of business it's like everything has become an industry like everything is commodified to the point that i think this is a big issue with like free market capitalism because it's so unregulated you can just make money out of anything and therefore there's everything is like profit fueled there's like no ethics behind it exactly like no matter how big a business that you have it's it's functioning on a capitalist economy so you kind of have to play with the rules of capitalism which sucks a lot sometimes i mean you have to play with the rules of marketing and you gotta if if tick tocks what's working for marketing you gotta go on tech talk and let me tell you that shit's a battlefield is it i think there's like always there's that ongoing joke that tick tock comments are just the a hell hole basically where's the youtube comments somehow which amazing i know the youtube comments section is usually pretty brutal but yeah tick tock can can definitely be brutal i mean comments like don't really phase me i i mean i haven't haven't gone truly viral yet also it just amazes me the things that can end up being controversial because i'm trying to think like how any of your players could be controversial but on tick tock they can because like posting pictures somehow posting like a video of your little cow pin with cowboy boots could piss some people off on tik tok that's the kind of environment it is it blows oh it's it's yeah it's it's certainly it's certainly scary i mean again people don't really understand the cost of starting a business and the cost of manufacturing things so they see on tick tock obviously gives an ideal view of all the cool things that are happening um so it's behind the scenes you know to understand like the amount of investment and time and whatnot that goes into those things um and tick tock has definitely changed that too for a while people are doing like packaging videos and then suddenly you got to get good ass packages yeah and that's expensive also a lot of it is going to go in the bin anyway i don't know i just i always wonder how how much is it worth for you investing or does it actually is it worth it because it will make people more likely to buy it i don't know that that's a question for you you would know more than i would i mean it's definitely something that sorry this is something that's called the blanket it's fair it's probably chilly over there it's chilly here so yeah it is anyway sorry i'm saying sorry is very important [Laughter] what was i saying yeah packaging so all that stuff is very expensive and you're right it it is likely going to be trash unless you're like me and you like to save every little bit of packaging and reuse stuff but not everybody does that and so it makes me sad you know when i design a beautiful pin card that that pin card's just probably going to go in the trash which really sucks and i mean even if you think of just a print i i make my prints myself and i put a like a plastic baggie around them and like it sucks because that is as of right now kind of the best way to protect a print um it's like the professional way to do it um and even more professional if you have like a cardboard backing with it or like a map board backing um and all that stuff costs a lot of money and you know like that that kind of thing like a plastic bag for your print that's kind of an essential thing a card for your pin that's essential but when it comes to like people have custom tissue paper yeah so not wow it's beautiful it's amazing it's an experience let me tell you yeah but um when you're just starting out your stuff's not gonna look like that i think there was kind of an expectation on tick tock that when you order something from business no matter how big that business is it's going to come in nice packaging yeah when nice packaging is super wasteful i mean it's i would rather use just a pre-made tissue paper because it's it's less manufacturing cost and uh less wasteful in the manufacturing process so that's where you get kind of like to small business doesn't really equal ethical or sustainable or anything like that it doesn't mean that i i don't know if you remember on tick tock in kind of the early days of the pandemic you had a bunch of people who were ordering like charms off of aliexpress and just putting them on earring hearing uh backs yeah it was like that's not i mean so it's not something you see quite a lot where people take that a step further and they will use sustainable as a marketing thing but you don't really necessarily need to prove it yeah there's a little bit of green washing involved and i think i've been guilty of that before um because it takes a little while to understand what is truly sustainable it's definitely is this a buzzword now um and i used to think you know i was trying my best but it's very difficult to manufacture things on your own and it's very difficult to get uh the most ethical manufacturing that you can it's very difficult to manufacture things in the us so there is a little bit of i have to just try my best you know i can't afford to you know manufacture things in the us i can't afford to manufacture pins in the us it's very expensive you know there's a little bit of like coping i have to do with myself and i do i i think yeah yeah i'm not trying to you know fool anybody i like putting that little made in the u.s if my product is made in the us on my website because that's nice it makes me feel good but it most of the most of like the business owners that you know they don't get everything manufactured in the us which is definitely unfortunate i wish it weren't not manufactured in the us but like manufactured ethically because you can manufact you can manufacture ethically in countries like china it can be done but it does take a lot of research it does take a lot of um experience in that field i'm just not that experienced in the whole finding manufacturers thing i mean as a brand you can kind of get dinged for anything too you got to be really careful right i mean it's it it's just you're just as susceptible to being canceled as if you were some sort of celebrity like if you're running your small business i'm i'm telling you it's it's brutal out there too it's a wild west it really it's the wild west for sure definitely size inclusivity huge that's the big one i see yeah you know i want to you want to be as size inclusive as possible of course because you want anybody to be able to enjoy the things you make um and i think that's the same with with any brand especially brands that are trying to be size inclusive um have a lot of trouble sometimes even if they are i guess marketing themselves as size inclusive um for example big bud press fairly popular brand by this point i've been following them for a few years yeah tons of their pieces i personally love them as a company and they carry sizes double x small to 5xl yeah which is a pretty big size range um bigger than anything you can go to the mall and find except for maybe i don't know pains t-shirts or something like that like something super simple um so it is awesome that they are providing like really well-made beautiful clothing for people of all sizes size inclusivity also goes down to smaller sizes as well like for for me i'm very very small um and i've never been able to find sizes for me until i found companies like big bud press who went down to a double x small but uh even big bud has gotten a lot of flack for being size inclusive yeah um so i think the main problem has come down to uh their sizing being a little inconsistent which they are trying to make uh unisex clothing um and everything is made in la with like pretty non-stretch fabrics uh which can be difficult to do but they are really nice fabrics you know of course the more stretch you have in a fabric the the less amount of time it's going to last because um things like spandex and elastic just don't last that well they don't have a long they don't have a lot of longevity and some people have like tried to boycott them before um oh i know i've missed this completely it's a little under the radar i'm i'm on the big bud press like facebook group i think i'm the only one in my age group who uses facebook i was gonna say yeah no i'm like super active on facebook you're a boomer i know i'm i'm scrolling through my facebook feed and it's like all it's like people in queueing on and oh yeah i mean i definitely get an interesting view into what they're they're up to but yes if people boycott big bird press because of um lack of well sort of inconsistent sizing was that kind of the main issue or um as far as i know yes as from what i've been able to see um but for me at least that's more of a a customer service issue um they are a very yeah they're very transparent brand um and she's all about like loving bigger bodies she uses a lot of um a lot of models who are of all different shapes and sizes um and as far as i know a lot a lot of people who are larger sizes love their clothing but some have had issues with them in the past and i've seen them listed i saw an infographic going around i'm also on the girlfriend collective facebook page which is another size inclusive athletic wear brand um but or considered size inclusive but there was some sort of infographic that was lumping in a bunch of brands that weren't considered size inclusive and it had things like forever 21 on it and um like adidas or something you know all of these really big brands and then big bud presses on there too so i think that's a little i i don't want to say i guess dodgy but it it i think it's a little or mean i guess i can't find the word for it but it's inaccurate or not fair it's mainly like not fair to a brand that is actively even if you even if you think that their sizing is off or inconsistent or whatever like they're actively trying to be size included put them in the same list yeah as someone like adidas or forever 21 it's just not fair i think yeah yeah like forever 21 has no reason to change their sizing really again they're probably not going to because it's just like not for them at this point it's probably just not a worthwhile business endeavor to even bother because that would require i mean they have thousands upon thousands of product listings on their website i mean imagine changing every single one of those listings and also changing patterns changing whatever manufacturing there is like changing all of that it's just not gonna happen for them they don't have any motivation to do that so that's it's it's unfortunate that that kind of happens and um and then there's definitely a lot of dog piling that goes on when it comes to uh criticizing small businesses and and it is sad at least i mean coming from the perspective of a business owner it is sad to see that um especially for people who more often than not are you know trying to be much more ethical and sustainable than their fast fashion counterparts are held to such higher standards they are held to high standards and it is a lot more personal because when you're running a small business you have either a really small team or it's just you and that's more often than not your your life's work as well so it's it's tough to see business owners go through things like that i have sympathy for them for sure i i'm not a plus-sized person so i can't really like speak on a lot of a lot of those issues i can speak on it as someone who is like a lot smaller and and i you know obviously very happy when brands do cover smaller sizes i i have a similar thing actually i'm also very petite and i do find especially when it comes to stuff like trousers really difficult to find um because i have like very small hips short legs you know all that stuff it's really hard like my dream is to just find a pair of mum jeans that fit i can't wear mum jeans they look ridiculous on me they look like a child wearing their mom's jeans you know like yeah i just don't have the right just too small i feel you 100 the only pair of i i've only found two pairs of jeans that fit me um ever one of them was a pair from i think urban outfitters like six or seven years ago or something and i still have those and then i also have a pair of believe it or not vintage levi's um that i found at a flea market and they were so small that uh the girl at the booth gave me a discount for them because she's like i have not found a single person that is small enough for these that's not a child yeah so and they were even too long they were too long so yeah my mom had to hand them for me and my mom often when she when we find pants that that fit me but they're too long she's like who is this made for yeah exactly who is like this tiny and long exactly exactly certainly not me all pants are too long so i had not found pants that fit me legitimately like consistently fit me um until big bud press which personally for me makes me love them all the more because i was finally able to feel confident in my body because i had clothes that fit i spent years uh shopping at you know fast fashion stores like broke teenagers do um who don't really know their style yet either um and uh i just like had never really felt that confident my body i couldn't really i couldn't thrift stuff even because everything at the thrift store was still too big on me or it didn't fit me or it wasn't like that flattering um like i've never i've never found pants at a thrift store not jeans certainly um but the way that like the fit is they're a little bit cropped which is really nice and so that kind of changed that like i honestly finding big bread press changed the way that i dress and it changed kind of my style and my aesthetic because it was like for the first time it was oh i didn't have to find something and buy it just because it fit i could like something yeah that's what yeah exactly you want both right it's exactly and everyone deserves that everyone deserves to have clothes that they feel good in and look good in and yeah it's just exactly exactly it's so important i'm definitely grateful to like the small business realm for granting me that i suppose um the kind of confidence in my body and um even outside of just small businesses just size inclusivity in general it's had a big effect on me um so companies like uh girlfriend collective and big bud press and moko yobe and new works um all of those having double x small sizes made a huge difference for me because i could buy clothes that i a liked and be fit in and that's really really special that's really something that i hope that everybody gets to experience no matter their size yeah exactly exactly yeah you shouldn't have to dress boring just to fit well and i think that's something a lot of like like plus-sized influences i follow talk about is that like a lot of the time they just get like really either really boring stuff or really um overtly garish and you can't just have like normal chic clothes you know i mean there's no like nice middle ground and yeah i just yeah it's yeah when you were a kid did you ever go to like the boys section you're like wow these clothes are so much better yeah of course yeah it's like oh they're they're graphic t-shirts are like so much better like and i feel like plus size sections are a tear even down from that so it would be like the boys clothes the girls clothes the plus size section yeah it's like plus size people have definitely had it rough in terms of design exactly it's like they think and there's nothing wrong with dressing like you know a grandma if you want to but like not everyone does want it and it just seems as if like a lot of plus-sized clothing looks like the kind of thing that a grandma would wear which there's nothing wrong with grandmas are great but not everyone wants to dress like their grandma some people want to dress a bit more bit more saucy you know and they should have that opportunity yeah i think it's really cool when there are brands that um cater to larger sizes um because it's also a different body shape so there are different ways to make different body shapes flattering clothing for different body shapes flattering as well you know what's going to look flattering on me is not this going to look may not look flattering on a person that's like 2xl just because we have totally different body types so i think that larger people deserve that kind of treatment where people are making clothing that is for them yeah the way that i guess like slimmer people sometimes it's called like straight sizing straight i haven't heard that yeah i think it's a newer term i don't i don't know if that's like an acceptable like heterosexual yeah it's the heterosexual um clothing sizes but you know i guess people who fit in like small medium large oh okay i see what you mean yeah yeah yeah not like sizes for people who like the opposite gender yeah yeah what small businesses spring to mind that you think are just really bad if you're allowed to say um or is that just like it's hard to there are things that i don't support um that i just don't think are like cool but i wouldn't say they're bad because like i don't want i don't want those people to lose their livelihoods you know i hope that they alright i don't even want people to lose their side hustle um i want people to be able to grow and learn from things like constructive criticism um but what i look for i guess kind of as red flags i suppose um have you ever seen people like making rugs yeah a lot of people doing um punch needling or um tufting rug tufting okay um a lot of them um they are they they don't have their own designs they'll take like scenes from movies or they'll do like characters and things like that and i just from the point of view as an artist who does all original work um i just don't like that okay very much yeah you see it i mean you see that was just one example you see a lot in every medium um but especially a lot of people on tick tock and i think you know that's fine to work on your skill to um practice i like to be selling things like that is just not right gotcha oh okay there are um like when it comes to fan art there's a lot of gray area because yeah technically you're not supposed to sell a lot of things that are considered fan art okay and some comic cons even new york comic con this year they have a rule that's uh says that you can't sell fan art of any kind but no people sell it anyway um and fan art makes a ridiculous amount of money oh of course yeah if you want to make money get into fan art um but i like personally can't do that uh there's this guy on i'm mentioning tick tock a lot tech talk all the time um it's it's for work for business purposes um also the the company that i work for is fairly active uh we have a pretty big following on talk and instagram so i um watch a lot but anyway there's this there's this guy on tick tock who does i think he's an art teacher and he does kind of art reviews and what he said i know this is going to be a hot take because a lot of people do fan art but he says something that i agree with which is that any any sort of fan art is going to be unoriginal in some way um which i think is just inherently true and not that that's like bad i don't think that fan art's bad i just you know i do prefer original works personally um just because i i i like what seeing what people can come up with all on their own uh but i'm on another facebook page um you boom i know i'm so sorry i i'm a double agent um because i i i don't interact that much on facebook yeah so i don't post on facebook i'm just in groups on facebook uh for my my uh my model horse collection oh wow incredible yeah for everybody that liked me up until this point i'm so sorry to disappoint you i do collect model horses i'm a horse girl through and through do you watch bob's burgers yes tina she has horses yeah tina's a pretty accurate representation of my so she's in middle school she's a horse girl who's never ridden a horse you ride horses don't you yes i do i do ride horses you're a real horse yeah since i was like five ish but i've been in a barn my whole life um has phoebe us yes phoebe um has met many horses um she's been on the backs of horses no she hasn't that's so cute yes she has did they ignite that they've got a tiny dog on there a lot of horses love dogs um i've had the same horse since i was a child and so he's he's pretty old now but um he loves dogs i would always bring our dogs to the barn to come see him yeah and he always wants to sniff them and interact with them they try to all the little ones though they try to nip at his nose which is of course like this big yeah phoebe his head's like this big yeah um and so she'll try to nip at him and his head kind of just bobs that is so cute so what this guy was saying that fan art is inherently a little bit unoriginal what else did he say or was that kind of the whole thing kind of i think that was mainly the gist of it yeah but like i i agree with that and that's often a hard pill to swallow and you know i don't want to like it doesn't mean that i think fan arts bad or that fan art artists are untalented because some people make absolutely incredible fan art like anything pretty much anyone that makes studio ghibli fan art i mean you're already starting off with a incredible source material you know um and i guess i guess maybe it can be akin to like sampling yeah in music yeah yeah it doesn't mean it's not artistic it doesn't mean it's not like meaningful or good it just it is yeah it's like a process that involves source sourcing you know yeah so absolutely um it's just like not a personal preference of mine like i don't do fan i have like tried fan art a little bit but i always just feel more inspired by doing my own things what about phoebe fanart you do phoebe fan art well phoebe isn't original so oh i love her so much she's just on the bed being cute and i would die for her oh sticky's under the blanket next to me oh she does not like the camera she does not especially the microphone she's terrified of the microphone phoebe actually is not scared of very much oh good oh hello yes she just opened her eyes and then she's back to sleep she knows what i know this is her all day i take her to work with me and she just sleeps all day we made her this you can get these doll beds at ikea it's just like a small bed and so i got one of those and i set it up at work for her and she sleeps in a little bed oh angel oh yeah she's she's the source for lots of inspiration for me in my heart i've um she's my second chihuahua oh yes um and so both of them have been incredibly inspiring for me um i did some of my first art as like chihuahua-based art um and now i do a lot of horses yeah and cows and cows yes i do do a lot of cows or one cow specifically yes so the cow speaking of do you want to um tell the people where they can find you go find your work sure so on instagram i am pony up press so p o n y u p p r e s s just spell it out because some people think it's pony express um and then uh same thing on my website just pony up press dot com and same thing on tick tock um but yeah you can find all of my products there and i post art on my instagram as often as i make it yes oh amazing well thank you so much for being on today it has been delightful as always um especially thank you to phoebe for dressing the part um she's in her cow onesie she looks she's slaying she came to serve um serve a look and i appreciate that yeah thank you so much for having me on i'm uh not i i rarely see the light of day on the internet with my face so yeah you did great you did great no you're good shall we do i'll buh bye bye bye now you know the one i do to the camera yeah okay are you ready three i'm ready two one bye-bye bye-bye bye-bye now bye-bye bye now bye-bye [Music]

2021-10-27 03:57

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