Happy three year anniversary! Has it already been 3 years!? I remember like it was yesterday when I designed stickers in my parent's basement, hoping someone would buy them one day. Fast forward 3 years and here I am sitting in my office that can barely fit any more merch in it LOL.
Not going to lie, but this year was a tough one for the brand. I ended up pushing it aside in my life for those once-in-a-lifetime events. I got engaged, married, and took a few weeks off work traveling to Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Macau, and Vegas. Ended up driving my car 2,000 kms this season and towing it 5 times; RIP. Went -16 camber for fender to lip, stretched mild sudani, de-beaded on the highway going 140 km, then went back to -5. I burned through 8 tires and wrapped it tiffany blue, but I don't think I will keep the color any longer. The most essential things in life happened all at once this year, and the brand ended up on the back burner.
2019 flew by so fast that all I ended up doing was restock anything and everything that sold out. Playing catch up with orders, DM's, stories, emails, accounting, and content. A few new products and collaborations here and there but not where I have wanted to push this since a year ago. Concept, graphic design, branding, illustration, identity, marketing, re-marketing, channel strategy, analytics, social media, engagement, response, advertisement, order processing, invoicing, merchandise, quality control, budgeting, finance, accounting, taxes, inventory, packaging, shipping, tracking, campaign development, newsletter, activity, engagement, leads, follow-ups, appraisal, customer satisfaction, overall organization, reports, meets and website/ web traffic - the basic things you do to keep a brand/business running LMAO.
Our season opener and ender were a considerable success; many crews and local brands supported us. CTV News came to the opener and gave me 60 seconds of air time. It ended up being so big that we had cars parked in the secondary lots or anywhere they could. This ended with us not being able to use the same lot again that we had been hosting with for 4 openers/ enders. We got a new dealership location for meets, and I think we'll continue to have them there at Alberta Autoplex. Monster Energy also ended up sponsoring the season-ender. Next season I want to booth and attend a few shows out of town like Stancenation Norcal, Slammedenuff Gatlinburg, Simple Clean Daytona Beach, and something in Japan- I need to meet all my internet friends.
I shipped orders to every single state and 20+ countries overseas. We also hit a milestone of 10,000 orders in total since launching! Next year I will make sure this brand is my primary workload and give it the attention it needs to grow. More shows, more content, and more merch. Still blows me away how many friends I have made across the world from a small idea 3 years ago. I still work a day job and freelance, but you can always make time for what's more important. Still going hard at this since day one with no plans of stopping. Thanks again for being with me these past few years. Let's see what 2020 has in store; forever grateful.
- Brandon Yuen