Just a small announcement: I’ll be vending at Renegade Craft San Francisco, July 21st + 22nd. This show is about a twenty minute drive for me and it’s always a  great time, so applying to show at it again was a no brainer. I remember the first time I ever flew out for it…what a great damn time.

I might also kick out an application for UNIQUE SF, which is at the end of June – Sonja (the woman behind the UNIQUE empire) always puts on a great show; I just have to figure out if the timing works for me. Now that I’m not keeping all of my inventory at hand anymore (I now ship everything to the lovely people of Fangamer, who handle all of my order fulfillment and are in Arizona), I have to plan further in advance for shows and can’t just throw everything in the van and go, since I either have to be reprinting stuff (in which case I’ll have it at hand before I ship it to Fangamer) or I have to get Fangamer to send me back some of my current inventory (which takes time).

Sadly, I won’t be doing Renegade Craft LA, since I still haven’t gotten all the locks on my van fixed. I’ll be honest, my car insurance deductible is pretty high, and I have a gated parking lot, so it hasn’t been necessary.

Also, I’ll be reserving my usual space in the Cult Yard at New York Comic Con soon enough…I can’t wait to get back.

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS – WHERE I REMIND YOU ABOUT THE FAB SALE, ENDING SOON

There’s one day left in the Fab sale – unless they extend it, which they sometimes do. I was told a pretty specific sales goal that we’re really close to hitting, so I’m hoping we get some overtime. It’s still been great – we’re getting loads of tees in people’s hands, including this brand new one, P.L.T. (Pug, Lettuce and Tomato) by my buddy Jason Fischer.

This will be on the site soon too, but I figured we’d give the kids at Fab first crack.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS – I WROTE A GUEST POST ON A TEE BLOG

My buddy Matthew Skiff, who’s a hell of an illustrator/tee designer, opened a small webstore and I wrote a review of it (spoiler alert: it’s fucking great and you should buy things from him). This is my inaugural guest post over at Hide Your Arms – I was struggling with how to get started over there and I really was dreading writing some dumb introduction, so when I saw Skiff’s store pop up I figured it would be a perfect way to break the ice over there.

It felt nice to write about someone else’s tees for once, particularly when they’re good.

Thanks for everything, MCA. Today was a pretty good day until we found out that Adam Yauch passed away. The Beastie Boys were so huge for so many people. I remember being so stoked to see them at All Points West back in 2009, when they were one of the headliners, and then right before the show they announced that MCA had cancer and that they weren’t going to be able to perform. Jay Z took their place and started off the show with “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” and the crowd went nuts – that’s the closest I’ve ever come to seeing the Beastie Boys live. We’re lucky to still have Mike D and Adrock, and nothing can erase the impact the Beastie Boys have had, but man, this is the saddest I’ve been about a celebrity death.

It’s going to be all Beastie Boys in the office today.

There’s going to be a SEIBEI sale on Fab, starting Wednesday morning at 11 AM EST/8 AM PST and running til Saturday at least.

For this sale, we’re partnering with Fab, a members only site (though, with 2 million or so members, there isn’t a high barrier to entry beyond registering with the site) that offers daily deals – artists/retailers/etc partner with Fab to sell stuff to their members at a reduced price for a limited time. Retailers get exposure to new fans and hopefully sell a grip of stuff, and Fab takes a little cut off the top and continues to grow their membership.

The Fab crew actually hit me up sometime last summer, and I had to tell them “sorry! All of my inventory was stolen and I’m currently trying to rebuild my company via Kickstarter. If I manage to do that, then I’d love to have a chat.” So, here we are.

As you can see in the picture above, I’ll be running a new colorway of Cats Can’t Read, and I’ll also have a full selection of other SEIBEI favorites, some new colors, and a new design from my friend Jason Fischer. Once the Fab sale is over and that’s all taken care of, I’ll be restocking the website and everything will be available for purchase through me as normal.

If the Fab sale does really well, they’ll extend it for two more days. That’d be pretty rad. Honestly, though, however this sale does, I’ll be happy. Some brands have had absolute blowouts on there, and some brands have had a ho-hum response, and that’s okay! I’m just very anxious to find out what this whole new audience thinks of my work, you know?

OUR RECURRING SEGMENT WHERE DAVID APOLOGIZES ONCE AGAIN FOR NOT BLOGGING ENOUGH

Sorry I haven’t been blogging enough lately. Now that our fulfillment is almost entirely set up and running (still working out a couple of kinks, and there’s still some stuff I have to ship them), I have considerably more “free time” on my hands and I need to start blogging again. I’ve even accepted a position as a guest blogger for my favorite tee blog (sorry, other tee blogs, you know I love you too), Hide Your Arms, where I’ll be trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s because Andy and his buddy Tigg and I got drunk in NYC once and they looked after me when I briefly passed out like a damn idiot?

Nice sweater, you dickhead. Geez.

It’s been SO LONG since I’ve blogged on a regular basis (yeah, I used to have a PRETTY SERIOUS Livejournal), I’m just feeling rusty. What was it like, back when I was so sure my dumb thoughts on things were super important?

Alright, back to work for me.

We recently had a photoshoot at the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, CA. It was a blast, and everyone at the museum was as nice as could be, and we had a good day of chumming around and looking good. My buddy Jackson handled photography duties, and I couldn’t wait to look through all of the new photos.

Looking through them a few days later, however, it suddenly hit me – how long I’ve had some of these colorways available, how long I’ve kept up certain designs, and while I have a place in my heart for all of my designs,I was honestly kind of bored.It’s so easy to lose track of time when you’re busy, and the length of time I’ve had some of these up has hit me all at once.

I’ve always kept things up when they’re popular, and stuck with some colorways for years – the Navy/White Sandwich Dinosaur, for instance, is practically as old as the company itself (literally the second one I ever printed by hand – EVER – was white on navy), and the Aqua/Red colorway has been around nearly as long. I’ve reprinted them both countless times, but think I’ll just bore myself to death if I keep it up.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Louis CK lately. He’s one of my favorite comedians, and no small part of it, it seems, is his amazing work ethic. Every year he ditches last year’s material and writes a whole new set. Every year he challenges himself and digs deeper, and the result is this amazing growing body of work.Now, granted, creating a body of recorded work that can be played and reproduced over and over again is different than making t-shirts (of which there are a finite number of floating around in the world and you typically need to own a physical copy of one to enjoy it), but it still hits home.

Part of me is tempted to just retire every design – but I do need to make rent, so I will have new colorways of my Big Three Sandwich Dinosaur, Taco Dinosaur,andI’m Fat Let’s Party.I know, I know, the current colorways are great, but they’ve been around for a long time, and big white text on red shirts is getting a bit played out, anyway.

This isn’t really anything new, though – it’s just me getting with the program. Johnny Cupcakes runs through designs all the time and brings back new colorways of the classics, and Electric Zombie just puts out huge releases and gets rid of all of his old designs, maybe sometimes bringing some old classics back, which is admirable. Both of these dudes put out amazing work, and a lot of it, and I just want to be more like them.

So! Sorry for the short notice, but this is the last time any of these things will be printed in these colors for a while. They could always come back – I’m not made of stone – but I’m just going to sell everything I have on hand (which, to be fair, is quite a bit) and then print new stuff.

I’ll be printing new colorways of a few things, but a number of them will be straight up retired for a while.

The good news is that this will make room for new designs from me, new designs from friends of mine, and some new colorways of shirts that are just a little too popular for me to retire yet.

Back to work for me. I’ve got a beer label design for my buddies at Arcade Brewery to finish up and new designs and colorways to polish off and other business to handle, and a pot roast to eat.

Sweet! The Sandwich Dinosaur was totally on 30 Rock last night.

Kate and I were on our way to dinner when I got a text from my brother from another mother and longtime SEIBEI supporter James – just a photo attachment and the message “Just thought you should know this is happening now.” I opened it, assuming it would be a sweet pic of him playing NBA Jams or watching Law & Order SVU, as these are things we enjoy doing together, but it was my friend Judah Friedlander rocking the Sandwich Dinosaur in full view of MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

Judah’s a hell of a guy and has been a supporter for years. Thanks for spreading the love, dude!

IN OTHER NEWS:

My homies at Double Dragon Studios are hard at work on a slight revamp to the SEIBEI site. I’ll spare you the boring details, but there are some small changes I’ve been wanting to make, and the entire backend of the store will be changing to a Shopify system.

I’m about to restock the HELL out of some shirts; I just need to update inventory counts.

I’ve got some great new designs coming out – some from me, and some from some amazing artist homies of mine.

Also I am at my day job and need to stop blogging now, as my 15 minute break is over.

The Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco is next weekend!

I’ll be there, slanging tees and onesies, and maybe even some wallet samples if we can get them made in time (I’ve been REALLY indecisive about what to put on them, to be honest).

Even if you don’t want to buy anything from me, which is totally fine, there will be loads of other great vendors there – homies like Kevin Tong, DKNG Studios, Cutesy But Not Cutesy, Fuzzy Ink, and of course, my ULTIMATE dudes from the craft circuit, TWO RABBITS STUDIOS.

I can’t wait; I haven’t seen ANY of these guys since that weekend in Los Angeles when all of my stuff got stolen. So stoked to see my people!

Hi guys!

So, the site is almost back together – I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of Kickstarter shipping, and am at the point where I can confidently divide inventory between “the relatively small amount of tees I have left to send” and “everything else.” Soon, I will make “everything else” available online available for purchase.

Yes, I’ve missed most of holiday shopping, but frankly, I’m just happy to be back in business again and do things right and resume building my company. I have a pretty decent day job now, and I’ve reached my goal of being able to support myself and just let SEIBEI money be SEIBEI money, rather than needing to pay myself any wage, so I can kind of approach things with a bit more of a level head, rather than “oh crap, unless I make $XXX by XX/XX I won’t be able to pay this bill or that bill.”

[Typing this suddenly reminded me that I forgot to pay my student loan bill on the 1st. Handled. Sorry about that.]

SO. Why are Intramural Zombie Hunting League tees not on the site anymore?

Frankly, I got a bit in over my head, and have a few shirts that I forgot to make in all of the craziness of Kickstarter and getting robbed and reorganizing everything, and I’ve upset too many awesome customers by not holding up my end of the bargain. Until I can fix this – basically I’m going to train a Zombie Hunting League assistant who just helps me make these once a week – I can’t have them for sale on the site in good conscience. I would rather upset you now by not having it for sale – something I should have done long ago – rather than upset you later when things inevitably get too busy or hectic.

Long story short: it’s only temporary. People like the Intramural Zombie Hunting League tees too much for me to give up doing them forever, and literally NO ONE ELSE makes anything like it (it requires some pricey equipment and a fair amount of printing/shirt decoration knowledge, and I think everyone else who has that kind of equipment and knowledge doesn’t want to spend the time it takes to make them).

Anyway, time for me to get back to shipping shirts and counting up inventory; the sooner I get this done, the sooner the site will reopen!

I’m FINALLY putting the site back together – once we get past a few technical issues and I get a solid inventory count, I should be ready to reopen. I’m hoping for this weekend or early the next, so we’ll see!

Sorry again for the lack of updates. I’ve been working a lot lately to get things done; I’ll have better things to write about soon!

This blog has been lifeless – absolutely dead – for months, and this website has basically been a ghost town. No new tees on here in months, and most products out of stock.

For those of you just joining us, in July all of my tees were stolen and my business was crippled.

In August, I began an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign to get my business back on its feet. It gave me the funds to print a ton of new tees and head out to New York Comic Con to sell a few.

Since then, I’ve been doggedly working to get all of the Kickstarter backer orders, and backorders that I failed to fill in between the chaos/depression of having all of my tees stolen, shipped out.

Soon, I will be reopening the SEIBEI website with a whole grip of new tees and onesies (mainly the Kickstarter stuff!) and other accessories like wallets, but first I have a lot of orders left to ship.

I’ve learned a lot this year. Mainly, that there are parts of the business I’m good at (selling and designing things and working with awesome artists), and parts of the business I’m terrible at (staying on top of shipping orders, first and foremost). Especially as one guy with a full time day job (which I’m currently on break at), it’s been tough to manage everything. So, I’m bringing in some help, or rather, giving my work to another company. Some friends of mine will be handling order fulfillment – the day-to-day shipping of orders – freeing up my time to design more shirts, make more products, and maybe, just maybe, see some of those friends who I keep blowing off because I’m working (just kidding – I’m going to use all of the time to play Dungeons & Dragons) (not really).

And maybe write a blog post or interview or two every now and then.

For those of you who’ve stuck with me in spite of my shortcomings this year, thank you so much. For those of you who I’ve lost for good, I’m sorry to see you go, but it’s totally understandable. Maybe you can give me another shot down the road, but I’m not counting on it. Either way, I’m changing a lot of things so it’s smoother sailing from here on out.

Also, if any of you know any babies who are down to model for some onesies, let me know.

Anyway, back to work.