It’s a morning routine for me to wake up in the morning and look through my Facebook Memories. Today’s took me back to the beginnings of Kimchi Kawaii.
Facebook status post from 14 years ago stating, ‘Holly Guenther is contemplating finally making a move to sell art online’.
On this day 14 years ago, I started thinking about selling my art online. My mom had told me about this print on demand site called Cafe Press where I could upload art and sell it on stuff like clothing, drinkware and more. It was really appealing cause it had practically zero overhead which is great when trying to start a business. I researched what I needed to do (like permits and other not so fun things of small business) and got going in August of that year under the name Soy Happy.
Screen shot of a Facebook status post from 13 years ago saying, "Holly Guenther just put up the Soy Happy fan page on Facebook. Anyone want to join?"
And then exactly a year later, I launched the Facebook fan page for the business and was pleading with people to join my tiny little page. I’m honestly not sure who did the two shares cause I know my mom wasn’t on FB at that time, lol. I’m assuming two of my art friends shared.
Over the years, it’s definitely been a roller coaster ride with the proverbial ups and downs of small business ownership. About a year and a half in or so, I had to change the name to my current one as I discovered that someone had the rights to the name Soy Happy. At the time, I didn’t even know about the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) so hadn’t searched their database when picking my original name. It was totally solved on friendly terms and honestly, Kimchi Kawaii fits so much better with what I was doing anyway.
Since my little call out into the void for followers, the page has grown to have a 11k following. I started an Instagram account that currently has over 6.5k. My Twitter was somewhat neglected for a few years, but that’s getting more use now and is just over 1,200. I remember when I was super excited to hit 100 likes on the FB page!
I’ve also launched 17 Kickstarter projects, most of which funded well over the initial goal and allowed me to expand my business in ways I’d never have thought when starting out. I’ve been able to travel around the country selling at anime cons. I’ve met a ton of awesome followers and fellow artists through online groups and in person at the cons.
I admit that the pandemic was rough on my creativity. At first, I actually surged in doing art as life came to a virtual halt. Since I couldn’t go anywhere and wasn’t hurrying off to cons, I could spend all my weekends working on new designs. But the constant uncertainty and anxiety was a slow build and hit hard this past summer, manifesting in burnout. My art output dropped and my social media posting for the business slowed to a trickle. It was starting to feel like a chore to keep the business running. The fact that my last Kickstarter products got caught in the factory and shipping delays didn’t help as I had no new product to promote. I was honestly starting to wonder if it was just time to move on and close out this chapter in my life.
But these two statuses this morning took me back to the excitement of planning out and starting the journey and I feel a little flame has been rekindled. I’m marking out cons I want to sell at and starting to feel the urge to create again. So the goal for 2022 is to shift out of neutral and start driving forward again with Kimchi and seeing where this road leads. I hope you all stay for the ride!