How To Be First.

We’d been making funny onesies at Wrybaby since we created the category in 2000. When things blew up during the first year, they blew up big. Our designs were featured in the NY Times, Newsweek, People, USA Today, Time, and TV Guide, to name a few pubs. They were even seen on VH1, Today Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly. It’s still unconfirmed, but witnesses swear to seeing David Letterman hold up the funny onesie we sent him on his Late Night comedy show. That kind of exposure is great, but it also creates a giant, burning-man-style beacon that screams, THESE PEOPLE ARE ON TO SOMETHING.

Meet Valencia. She’s rocking the world’s first Super Snapsuit.

If you’re a designer or an entrepreneur, you need to hear the very first thing our very first screen printer told us before things got crazy –“People will rip you off. Stay ahead of them.” He wasn’t lyin’. It wasn’t long before we were inundated with competitors, knock-offs, rip-offs, or all three at once. While Von Maur, Buy Buy Baby, and FAO Schwartz were ordering our funny onesies from the source (us!), Target and Sears were ripping us off wholesale. While our company was doing private label projects with Barneys and Cost Plus World Market, thousands of small businesses were stealing our designs right and left. Café Press was full of people hawking wrybaby designs. When the company started, there was just one little place in the south that offered blank onesies to print on. Eventually we started having garments custom made overseas (way better cotton and fit), and while we did that, garment supply companies started carrying lots of blank onesies domestically. It got really easy for people to do what we were doing, so we decided to go back to making baby things that were hard to make.

Our concepts and designs up top, and below is how Target ripped us off. I appreciate that they doubled the cost of a “Photo with Baby” while undercutting the cost of our original onesie by 75%.

We made fun bath towel sets (that’s what we ended up doing with World Market), we made travel cases for pacifiers, and we made stacking blocks for toddlers among many, many other things. We even made pillowcase covers for new parents! All of these did fine, but nothing ever matched the baby-shower-gift perfectness of the funny onesie. It’s a magical combination of being a product for a very focused age range, that’s useful, provides good theater at a baby shower, and is really affordable. So how would we keep making funny onesies that could be recognized as OUR funny onesies?

In 2007 no one was as bananas for super heroes as they are today. Seriously. Just like there were NO funny onesies in 2000 before wrybaby made them. There were only a couple of people making super hero capes for 8 year-olds, which you’d think would be amazing business. It wasn’t. The problem was this – no one wanted to kill a kid with a cape they made, and no one wanted their kid to die in one. It’s pretty understandable from a parent’s perspective. And, yeah, it’s freaking scary making kids clothes much less SUPER kids clothes. We figured these added up to a pretty HUGE barrier to entry that we could rub our brains on and solve.

OK, nevermind for a sec that they were hard to make. If no one were ape shit for comic book heroes, why would anyone want to buy a super hero onesie? The short answer is because it’s ridiculously hilarious. Look, you’ve got this non-communicative blob who doesn’t even have enough strength to hold its own head up, much less fight a giant menace from planet Krapnoid. Can you imagine strolling a super-infant into a Starbucks? Knee. Slapping. Hilarious. You could even have fun over a bottle of wine with your spouse imagining your child’s future super-powers. There were all kinds of reasons to take on the how-do-we-not-kill-the-child-problem. The answer was surprisingly simple and available all along. It was just hard to make. Take a standard, lap-shoulder baby t-shirt and sew a cape into the shoulder seams. The neck would be SUPER loose. And a baby 0-12 months isn’t THAT squiggly, so as long as you made the cape short enough to not get sat on, you’d be good. As an extra safety precaution we tacked the cape down to the back of the bodysuit in three places, which kept it nice and close. Then, to make it even harder to replicate, we used this cool puffy ink to print on the front. 

The idea for a Super Onesie actually came from the baby journal we wrote for Running Press, The New Parent’s Fun Book (left). You can see where we incorporated the cape into the shoulder seams. And although a baby’s going to do nothing but lay on it, we even did the extra credit of embroidering a star on the cape!

How fun is that puffy ink!? I made it so only some parts were puffy. Like on Super Cute, only the type outline and starts were puffy so the design didn’t get to heavy. Who wants a sweaty baby?

Aside from the darn thing being SUPER safe to wear, there were so many other minut details that we poured over to make this garment from scratch. From fit to color to a cape that wouldn’t end up a wrinkled mess. What a pain!

NPH!!!!!!! I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to have even the smallest guest appearance in his awesome life. The Super Snapsuits were SUPER well received (sorry, I’ll stop doing that now). For a while they were, at least.

The packaging was on point and the pitch was perfect. When all was said and done we had a SUPER safe, SUPER fun new baby shower gift to offer our boutiques. We eventually added a new Super Snapsuit to the mix – “Super Bad” for kids that may desire a different path to worldwide notoriety. Our invention made it to People.com, but our pride and joy was when Neil Patrick Harris showed pics of his twins wearing them while he was co-hosting Live with Regis and Kelly. Another point of pride was when Ohio State University asked us to donate Super Snapsuits to help reward families who were participating in a study to battle SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy). No one bothered trying to copy our Super Snapuits. And most importantly, no one got hurt. Total win. At least until the super hero craze started. Which you’d think would HELP our sales, but it did not. The opposite happened! Consumers wanted licensed product, no matter how shitty that product was constructed. And, man, they were terrible. They didn’t even have capes, for crying out loud! But that’s people. Sigh. Eventually our Super Snapsuits were attacked online nationally as an affront to women somehow. So when we sold out of our last batch, we retired the style for the time being.

We did so well with those first two styles, we decided to add a villain to the mix. Initially these came locked away in little window box packaging, which in hindsight was kind of dumb because you couldn’t see the cape right away.

We also made everything so bigger kids could be super, too.

That sounds like a sad ending, but it’s totally not! This story is titled “HOW TO BE FIRST”, after all! Hahaha. While the Super Snapsuits were on the market, we were still innovating. A onesie with just a QR code on the front, for example. When the curious scanned it, it would bring up a fake online shopping website saying that that baby had been added to their cart. We invented a baby mystic who offered blind-boxed fortune telling baby t-shirts (you wouldn’t know which incredible future you’d get!). We’re still innovating. You can get free, shareable goodies every month, or you can print our styles on your own with services like Zazzle. This is how, for more than 20 years, wrybaby has stayed profitable. By being first.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Survive Being Hated Internationally.

Yes. It happened to me. I made international news. They talked about it on the Today Show. National radio talk shows hounded me for interviews. A woman wrote me (actually a lot of women wrote, but this stood out) that she hoped I’d have my arms and legs ripped off. What caused such a firestorm? A funny onesie. I’d never gotten bad press before, much less ferociously attacked. Hilariously, it had always been way the opposite. At the time, no one really knew what to do when something as extreme as this happened to them. There was no guidebook. As far as I know, there still isn’t. So I’m going to walk you through what we did when the world decided to hate us. If it ever happens to you, at least you’ll have some idea of what you can do.

Welp, this is it. This is the funny onesie that brought an international troll army to our door.

Let’s back up for a sec. In 2000, a small company called Wrybaby started the funny onesie category. Seriously, back then, the novelty onesie DIDN’T EXIST. I can say this with confidence, because my wife and I started Wrybaby when our son was born. Kelly and I agreed that, through humor, we’d reflect the new parent experience in a way that was 100% true, and 100% funny instead of kind of terrifying. What we made was irreverent, but not vile. It was unconventional, but served our mission. We made hipster baby gifts before our community labeled them as such.

We started with a few designs and suddenly, in 2001, it all went crazy. Wrybaby products were featured in Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today…it was bananas. And it stayed bananas for years. Hell, Neil Patrick Harris and his husband introduced their new twins to the world in People Magazine wearing our onesies. Then he showed his babies wearing our super hero onesies on Live with Regis and Kelly. NPH likes us (and we love him right back)! Hahaha.

So’s you have an idea of the kind of stuff wrybaby makes, here are some of 2015’s best-selling funny onesies. Heck, a few are STILL best-sellers. We also had some adorable plush and kid’s backpacks in addition to the world’s first Super Hero onesies.

Not to brag, but this is just a tiny sampling of the kind of press we were used to getting over the last 15 years. People who found our stuff, liked our stuff. It was that simple. That InStyle Magazine page? That’s our Wheel of Responsibility in Christina Aguilera’s kitchen. I can’t even remember how we found out about that.

In 2013, we introduced a new baby bodysuit with a graphic that said “Love Me for My Legrolls”. It sold pretty well. Because what’s the best thing about babies? Smell, cuteness, and all that plumpy goodness. At Wrybaby, we change up our funny onesie offerings every year, and in 2015 we introduced a another poke at the healthy baby’s cherubic condition – but with an ironic twist. It simply read, “I Hate My Thighs”. And, sorry if I’m treating you like an idiot, but here’s the definition of irony – Happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this. My fucking company’s name is literally in the definition of irony! So it was a complete surprise when, for the first time ever, our Facebook page started getting a lot of negative comments. Then a lot of threatening comments. Everyone in our office was freaking out so I tracked down the source. It was a shitpost on Ms. Magazine’s website, authored by their senior editor, no less.

I found that Ms. had a fun little hate segment on their blog called, “We Spleen”. Get it? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. It’s their clever flip on “I Heart”. Anyway, it’s a page where they trash things they disagree with and then encourage their readers to pile on and troll the hell out of whoever was responsible. Titled Baby Fat-Shaming, they admit right off the bat that “Yes, we know it’s supposed to be funny.” but then postulates that our funny onesie would become a “harbinger of things to come later in a child’s life”. Hilariously, the author spends some time not understanding irony by explaining that “babies’ delightfully chunky baby thighs are some of the most lovable things in the world!” Mm-hm and duh. In the end she asks her readers if she’s “taking it too seriously.” Which was interesting. Because folks who think something is bullshit (and there were many in the article’s comments) don’t waste their time telling all their friends all about it. Because, well, it’s bullshit. And, to be honest, it probably would have quietly blown over in a week if we didn’t do what we did next.

On the left, the Ms. Magazine article. Upper right, the Senior Editor’s Facebook post promoting it to her troll army. Bottom right, our response and her request to divert our donation to her magazine rather than the non-profit created by Ms. Magazine.

Put yourself in our shoes. What would you have done? We weren’t going to take the onesie down. Even if we took it off our website, we were selling to boutiques around the world and “I Hate My Thighs” was a favorite among them and customers who’d already purchased it. So the design would still exist in the world. Besides, we thought the author’s assessment, and her minions’ opinions, were not only wrong, but designed to intentionally stir up trouble. So that ruled out an apology, too. Fuck that.

That leaves defending yourself. But how, when you don’t really feel like you have to? The author herself actually gave us the way forward when she opened it up to her readers. We’d do the same thing. But not the way they’d ever expect us to. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how we fought back.

Step 1. Take a Deep Breath and Be Realistic.

C’mon. It’s the tiniest of companies selling the nichiest of products to an even nichier audience against an historic publication with a fervent audience. It was stupid to think we’d ever “win” anything. And what was winning anyway? That’s the first question you need to ask yourself. What’s in it for YOU? What would make it worth it? Can you strengthen customer loyalty? Can you make money from this? Can you get a lot of exposure? Free press? We decided on all of the above and made a plan to push the conversation in that direction.

Step 2. Turn the Tables.

Near the end of the article, the author took a small break from hating on our “I Hate My Thighs” onesie to muse about how much better it would have been if it said, “I Love My Thighs”.  If you remember, we had done that two years earlier with “Love Me for My Leg Rolls”, which is on brand, funny. So we brought it out of retirement. As much as she had conjured up an affront to women from our irony, we manufactured a challenge out of her criticism. In about three hours we implemented a popularity contest between “I Hate My Thighs” and “Love Me for My Leg Rolls” on wrybaby.com. After all, Ms. had suggested an alternative. We’d let consumers use their dollars to decide which graphic should remain, and we would donate all proceeds to the Ms. Foundation for Women. We even had the balls to call the whole thing “The Ms. Magazine Challenge”. Hahaha. And to be honest, this is why it took off internationally. We made a contest out of controversy and the press LOVED IT.

Step 3. Protect Your Core.

 At this time, Wrybaby was about 70% wholesale with boutiques all over the world. So we called every store that stocked “I Hate My Thighs” to explain what happened and what we were going to do. We told them it would probably get messy and if they wanted to avoid the drama, they could exchange their “I Hate My Thighs” onesies and we’d pay for the shipping. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it sure wasn’t 100% support. Heck, more than a few stores even put them in their front windows instead of taking them off the floor. I love our boutiques. 

Step 4. Punch Your Bully in the Throat When They Think They’ve Won.

Once the challenge was all set up on wrybaby.com and the stores were notified, we hit back. Hard. Oh, not on our socials where we’d hopefully garner some support. Like I said before, people who support you, will. And plenty did. But not as vociferously and viscerally as the people piling on the hate. Which is totally understandable, because who’s got time to throw a ton of energy into fighting a ton of crazy people for a small funny onesie company you happen to like? Our strategy was to catch the hate early and attack it at the source. So we hit back in the Ms. Magazine article’s comments. That way, we’d have a permanent record of OUR narrative to fall back on if need be. You’ll see what I mean in Step 6. I still think our response was appropriately shitty at the top and hilariously enthusiastic at the end when we flipped the script. Believe me, it was so hard to take the emotion out and leave all the spite in.

This was our giant home page graphic announcing our Ms. Magazine challenge. A lot of articles, like this quote from Redbook, claimed that this was all some kind of PR stunt that we orchestrated. Which says a lot to validate our response. Once it was on the Today Show, publications everywhere started holding their own polls to see which onesie people preferred. My favorite was on PopSugar’s website where you checked a box to vote and there was only one reply under it that said, “Where’s the box marked, “Who Cares?” My sentiment exactly.

Step 5. Stay in the Fight.

This kind of thing is both emotionally and physically exhausting. But it’s also oddly exhilarating. We kept our eyes on the article comments as well as on the response to our Ms. Magazine Challenge, while our hands were busy responding to social media comments. We were replying to EVERYTHING and EVERYONE directing them to our onesie challenge on wrybaby.com. We were posting to our followers to enlist their help. We launched carefully crafted emails to our giant list. Eventually, as the story was picked up everywhere, we had to cover all that ground, too. We threw everything at the challenge.

Step 6. Avoid Traps While Capitalizing on Mistakes.

Things quickly escalated to the point where we started getting calls from radio stations across the country. One producer wanted us to go on-air with a child psychologist. Um. No. Hahaha. Pick your battles, friends. Speaking of which, we apparently irked Ms.’ Senior Editor because she sought the last word at the end of day one with a snarky comment to her article requesting we send the challenge donations to Ms. Magazine itself instead a non-profit. How bizarre is that? Why would the Senior Editor of Ms. Magazine publicly divert donations away from the non-profit foundation they originally created? So we called her out on it in the comments. Hahahaha! She later replied at length, clearly exasperated at finding herself on the ropes in the fight she herself started.

In regards to Step 6, I’m sure the author never thought she’d be defending herself to her own shitpost comments section. Hahaha

Step 7. Record Everything and Promote Your Vindication.

Eventually we stopped getting calls from local radio shows and started showing up on the Today Show, the Chicago Tribune, E online, MSN Lifestyle, UK’s Daily Mail, Comedy Central, Redbook, Cosmo… so many places! We promoted the exposure that was in our favor while directing everything to the onesie challenge. Hell, we were only an office of three people, so it was all we could do to manage this shitshow AND run our business. Despite the chaos, I recorded, snapshotted, and saved as much as I could. I felt like, when it was all said and done, it’d be helpful to have some proof that what happened, actually happened (I get to that at the end).

Step 8. Follow Through.

Look, enough is enough and we had a business to run. A week after all this started we announced the results of the Ms. Magazine challenge. Again, in the original article’s comment section. We recapped our narrative of the incident before declaring “Love Me For My Leg Rolls” the winner with 71% of the sales. And, true to our word, we retired not the offending onesie, but the ironic onesie – “I Hate My Thighs”. (Truth be told, we actually sold out of them). Then we followed through with our insistence on donating to the Ms. Foundation and reminded the senior editor and her readers what their mission was before thanking them all for the opportunity to engage with them. See? That’s how to be shitty and classy at the same time.

Our last word on the subject was somehow both positive and full of bile. The senior editor later responded with a seething checklist of “facts” about how we misrepresented her shitty article but by that time no one was really paying attention anymore.

So what happened in the end? Well, it didn’t wrap up as tidily as our onesie challenge. Even when the story eventually died out, wrybaby kept getting hassled by crazy people on Facebook for about a year and a half. Way longer than we thought. And then, some misguided social justice warrior was triggered by our Super Snapsuits, of all things. Two onesies with capes. One read “I’m Super” on the front, the other read, “Super Cute”. He posted a photo of our Super Snapsuits on display in the NYU Bookstore and falsely claimed that the blue one was marked for “boys” while the other was marked for “girls”. And then he said something like “isn’t it a tragedy that girls have to be just “Super Cute”? First of all, we don’t mark gender on anything. And secondly, doesn’t he know that Super Girl wears blue and red? Ugh. Whatever. By this time, we were honestly too tired to fight it. Besides, it was a single jerk, not an actual publication. We couldn’t forge a monetary or PR reason to fight, so we let it go and endured crazy people’s death threats for another 6 months. It was actually more sad and irritating than disruptive.

Today you can still find dusty old archival posts about our Ms. Magazine experience from publications all over the world. But what’s most interesting is how the original article was preserved at the source. It now boldly declares victory at the top – “UPDATE: Wry Baby has taken its “I Hate My Thighs” snapsuit off its website in response to the uproar caused by the following Ms. Blog post!” All the comments are wiped clean, including those from the folks who supported us and our good fight back. There’s a link now at the end of the article directing you to buy feminist onesies in their own Ms. store. Which is why you need to record this stuff as it’s happening. You may want to use it someday.

And what happened to Wrybaby? Believe it or not, that whole Ms. Magazine shitshow actually didn’t do THAT much in sales despite the crazy exposure. Which is something to consider if you think (or your client thinks) the road to riches could be paved in hate mail. It isn’t. Would I do it again? Hell yes. But in the long run, it’s always best to run your business for the folks who get it and appreciate it. Those good people are your people. They’ll support you longer and recommend you more wholeheartedly than any flighty trend hunter or thrill seeker ever will. So keep those guys happy! That’s what we’re still doing at Wrybaby. And between you and me, I heard they might bring back “I Hate My Thighs” soon. ;-)

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How a Simple Plan Can Go So Wrong, and So Right.

Design > Product

I know I say this a lot, but making things is hard. There are lots of moving parts to get right, no matter what it is. If you’re a small business, you’re likely struggling to bring it in for a manufacturing cost you can afford, and with a retail price your customer can afford. Not to mention, I’ve had a lot of things come from the factory damaged (it happens) which is a double whammy because you have lost capital plus lost sales opportunity. Because of that, I’m always looking for a way to make things that would eliminate the likelihood of disaster, or to roll with it (like Mysterio did).

I decided on a plush project. It would be one form factor; two different sizes. It would have a flat front, a flat continuous side panel, and a flat back. It’d be made of canvas, filled with fluff and a layer of beans at the bottom so the doll would stand on its own. Easy, right? The fun part would be designing characters on this plush blank canvas. I’ve always been a big fan of art toys. Take Frank Kosik’s Labbit series or the Dunny characters, for example. So smart and simple, and endlessly fun. I’d call my art plush project, Stuf.

FINAL: This is the plush line I created called Stuf. Simple dolls with bean bases (so they stand on their own). Art toys that kids could use as playthings, puppets, or pals. Simple, clean, bright, and fun.

EARLY: I hit on the shape I wanted for all the Stuf dolls to share and here’s a little peek at some of the sketch work. I made paper models (complete with fill) to see if they had the physical presenceI wanted them to have. Yeah, I’m weird that way. I started off thinking I just wanted to make really graphic little characters, but it soon grew to all kinds o possibilities.

EARLY: OMFG. I designed the simplest thing ever so I’d avoid any production disasters. What I got was the exact opposite. Look, I’m good at specing out product for factories (US and overseas).. I was thorough with the instructions for what I wanted (lower right corner). But if it could go wrong it did. The shape, fabric, color, structure…UGH. With my detailed instructions I even included the paper doll shot from above. They assumed I wanted puffy faces sewn on. < sigh >

I didn’t have a lot of money to invest in Stuf. And this plush wasn’t even something that fit with everything else I was designing for Wrybaby. So it was a creative experiment, for sure. I had to begin by getting manufacturing costs, and then from there, work out what I could do. For example, I’d initially wanted to make every doll different. Just create a lot of fun art pieces that would live under a brand story. Once the costs came in, Kelly and I figured we’d be better off creating a handful of Stuf “families” instead. That way each family could be a story, and the likelihood of success was higher overall. Why? Because if I created, say, 20 of one-off Stuf characters, what if people LOVED three and they sold out? I’d be stuck with 17 slow sellers and no way of re-investing in the three that worked. Get it? If you group families, there’s an incentive for people to buy multiple pieces in a family they’re drawn to. I’ll come back to this later.

Anyhoo, it worked out that we’d make 4 Stuf families. Each made up of 4 small dolls and one big Stuf doll. You should see all the preliminary sketches I did (so many!). It was a blast, but I really wanted to make them all. The two deciding factors for the themes we went with were: current trends; and our instinct for what we knew would be attractive to Wrybaby’s wholesale clients. Pirate Stuf, Bird Stuf, and Robot Stuf were an easy leap for stores. We went with Developmental Stuf because it was a link to Wrybaby’s parenting wheelhouse. Think of it as a safety move. If the others didn’t work, at least there was a solid baby offering.

FINAL: A closer look at Pirate Stuf. I gave each pirate his (or her) own little character attributes for kids to build on. A parent once called me to say her son, who’s afraid of the water, found great comfort in his Shaggy Dan. Honestly, that alone made all the Stuf headaches worth it to me. Oh, and Pirate Sue really IS nothin’ but trouble! Hahaha

FINAL: Some Stuf dolls shared pattern on the back, but had extra credit on the side panels, like Circus and Robot Stuf. I especially like how the rosy=cheeked lion sits on a little performance pedestal.

FINAL: We pulled everything along with Stuf’s clean “European art toy” aesthetic through to it’s website and retail packaging. We made plaques for each Stuf family that made them look so special on retail shelving. And later we’d even build wood and canvas backdrops for each Stuf family.

FINAL: Yep! I made Stuf backpacks! The funnest part was the side water bottle pockets. The Owl’s pocket said SEEDS, and the Circus Elephant’s pocket said…wait for it…PEANUTS! Of course. :-)

We’d thought of every little thing except one. That the factory would fuck us. Oh boy, did they ever. We were working with a liason in the states who touted Gap experience and pull with a factory who was rich with Disney experience. As simple as this project was, it was a complete shock when the complete Stuf shipment arrived and only 25% of it could be sold. Yeah. While the samples they sent for approval were great, the final dolls were misprinted, sewn terribly, and…grimy. It looked like they ran the fabric over with a greasy forklift before sewing them. Not to ruin the story, but it’s important to expect the best and plan for the worst. No matter how much you try to avoid trouble, it’s inevitable in one way or another. 

But as they say, the show must go on. We had to really make sure our sellable 25% s-o-l-d. So we kept to our plan and did something you’d think we would have rethought considering the circumstances. I’ve written about how we built a snooty art brand for Stuf to live under. It was like a high-end art gallery that was only open by appointment and never answered the phone or returned calls. Hilarious and, as it turned out, hilariously effective. Stuf would soon be sold in major art museums across the country from SF MOMA to NY MOMA (you can see the complete list here).

Stuf sold through that first terrible shipment and we were able to find a new factory to make a disaster-free second round. Encouraged by Stuf’s success, we designed Stuf backpacks and we added hand-made wood and canvas backdrops for playtime with each Stuf family. OMG, the trade show booth that I designed for Stuf is still one of the best booths I’ve ever done. But that’s a whole other story.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Break Into Modern Art Museums.

Strategy > Product Development

I’d designed and manufactured all kinds of products – baby clothing, children’s hooded towels, toys, stacking blocks, board books, even pacifier cases. OMG it was all so HARD. I had always wanted to make a line of plush (normal people call them stuffed animals), but was intimidated by the potential for it to go wrong. Hahaha. I’m such a chicken, but being gun-shy DID bring me success in our Mysterio line. So, I put that kind of thinking against the plush problem.

First of all, and if you know me you already know this, it couldn’t be like any plush. I didn’t want to make furry lions, or sweet teddy bears out of recycled sweaters. It had to be different. I was super intrigued by blind box art toys. Especially the artists who were sculpting one simple form, and then re-skinning that form in different ways. It seemed so simple and yet so endless what you could do within those confines. So I started noodling forms and experimenting with what could be done with them.

Where I ended up was certainly really different. Canvas forms filled with beans at the base so they stood on their own. Easy surface to print on, simple shape to sew. Manufacturing would be easy since I’d only be held to a printing minimum rather than a per piece construction minimum. I could make a lot of different dolls without a lot of expense. But it wasn’t “fluffy expected” and it wasn’t particularly “baby”. I didn’t think it mattered. I was going for something beyond expectation.

FINAL: This is Robot Stuf. Because we were funding this line ourselves we had to do it as economically as possible. Can you guess one of our methods? Right. Limited colors on each doll (notice the ON switch on the back isn’t green). But it made it a challenge. So what do you do when you’re limited on colors? Double down and make it work to distinguish each dolls individuality and character.

FINAL: All along It was always this simple. The form on the left was Big Stuf, 12” tall. On the right, Small Stuf, 6” tall. These were the blank factory samples we approved.

FINAL: While some Stuf families had the same patterns on the back of each doll (Robot Stuf all had ON and OFF buttons, Circus Stuf all had a shared graphic pattern), Pirate Stuf all had a bit about each pirate’s personality on the back. My favorite, I think, was the orange Shaggy Dan who was “only a little afraid of the water”.

FINAL: Circus Stuf was probably my favorite family and it was an honor to have them for sale at the Ringling (as in Ringling Brothers) Museum of Art Florida. Pictured with the Circus Stuf family is the Big Top-themed wood and canvas backdrop I later added to the line.

FINAL: Bird Stuf and Developmental Stuf.

I always tell my clients that they need to design their audience before they design their product. I knew I wanted this line to appeal to art-types, and that because of it’s plush category nature, they’d likely be parents. So why not make collectible art plush for children? And that’s when I started working on themes. I went EVERYWHERE and it was SO fun. I eventually landed on five different sets – Circus, Bird, Robot, Pirate, and Developmental. Developmental Stuf was interesting because developmental research shows that babies respond positively to high contrast items. It stimulates their brains like crazy (in a good way).

Side note: No matter how simple you try to make things, it always gets complicated. We had hired a freelance production manager who’d worked for the likes of the Gap and we found a factory who’d manufactured for Disney, yet 75% of our container shipment arrived practically destroyed. Badly sewn, misprinted, stained and unsellable. The 25% we could use was exactly to specification, thank goodness. Entrepreneurs, know this: no matter how much you try to prevent this situation, it’s ALWAYS a possibility. Which ALWAYS sucks. 

I’d always planned to market Stuf in a special way. Like, exclusive special. So I developed a line presentation that would set it up to be museum quality from the beginning. Even the name, Stuf, gave a simplistic European flavor without the fancy umlauts. Each line of Stuf would be a limited series, and a percentage of proceeds would be donated to a specific charity related to each theme. Bird Stuf, for example, would donate to the American Bird Conservatory. Developmental Stuf would contribute to Plan. The idea was for stores to display each line of Stuf alongside an engraved plaque we had made with the charity information. When a customer brought a Stuf doll to the register, the shopkeep would retrieve a fresh product from the back for purchase. It was special art you could buy. And this is an important part of the strategy – perceived value. We set this up to look like each piece (with its charitable contributions and lack of back stock) would retail for $40 each. No. Each of the small dolls retailed for just $12.95. The big ones for just $24.95.

FINAL: Our online retail packaging was clean, simple and graphic, like the brand.

FINAL: Developmental Stuf in NY MOMA.

Finally I get to the REAL strategy part. We didn’t cop to being the creators of Stuf. We were just the DISTRIBUTERS. We never told our stores or any interested parties where Stuf came from. And this is important to building mystique. We build a whole separate website for Stuf and only offered a single Stuf email as contact info. No order forms. No list of stores that we sold to. No wholesale reps to contact to buy it. Nothing. This all lived in the background before we launched at the big NY International Gift Fair.

When Wrybaby did bring it to market, we played dumb. We found this line and we’re the distributors. It was so different from anything else in the Wrybaby booth, it was totally plausible. And we gave it wide berth to attract stores we’d never been in before. Those store were museum stores. Modern art museums. And we got their attention. Before too long Stuf was available in:

MOMA NY
MOMA SF
Contemporary Arts Center - Cinncinati
Walker Art Center - Minneapolis
The Art Gallery of new South Wales
Arkansas Arts Center
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Delaware Art Museum
Portland Art Museum
Tacoma Art Museum
Dallas Museum of Art
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Ringling Museum of Art Florida
The Getty Museum
The Ackland Museum NC
The Autry Museum
The Bremam Museum
Bay Area Discovery Museum

FINAL: Once the concept proved itself, Stuf got to have it’s own booth at NYIGF. So clean! I wish I had a better camera to document it. :-P

But here’s the best part. Museums liked Stuf, but we pulled the whole third-party distributorship act through to the end. Emails to the Stuf website went unanswered, or a Stuf Staffer replied vaguely. There was no phone number to call. It was like those Stuf people weren’t really interested in selling their plush dolls at all. Stuf’s website was hilariously smug. It was set up like a modern art gallery site. It only listed the products, the museums they were in (which expanded by the week), the charities it funded, and the trade shows it would be presented at. I’ll tell you, I sat on the one museums PO for months until they were calling me every day to fill our their new vendor form and ship them. Why? Sometimes the more you make people want something and the more they have to work for it, the more valuable it becomes to them. It’s the law of exclusivity. Availability works the same way.

Stuf was successful enough to warrant an INCREDIBLE trade show booth dedicated to it. Very artsy. We added cool canvas backdrops to the product line so kids could put on plays using characters from each Stuf theme. Stuf went through another reorder with another factory (much better) and we retired the line to focus on other projects. But I’ve still have the bragging rights to having my art featured in most of America’s major art museums (even if it was in the gift shops).

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How Packaging Can Set the Stage.

Design > Packaging

Mysterio’s product is super unique. And as I mentioned, things people have never seen before are hard to package. Mysterio tells you your baby’s future on a little t-shirt. There are 12 possible futures (all party safe), and each is sealed up in this bag so that it’s a surprise when you open it. Back in 2006, I didn’t think I had to explain that last part – what with blind box toys getting more and more popular each year. But trust me, the average consumer STILL needs all of this explained to them. Sigh. I’ll share some business and behavioral lessons we learned as I go.

FINAL: Mysterio’s packaging had to do SO MUCH. Tell you what it was, what it did, what the possibilities were, what the guarantee was, where it was made, who made it, and even how to open the goddam thing,

Anyhoo, that’s a lot of work for a little muslin bag! Which is why the whole front of the bag is the product description. The back? All support, no filler. Build up the experience while explaining the experience. We did this for another reason, too – the end user experience. If you haven’t been to a baby shower, here’s how it works. There’s a lot of games and chit chat and cake and such, and then everyone gathers around to watch the mom-to-be open her gifts. When she gets to Mysterio, she’ll likely read the bag out loud before opening it. Therefore, she’ll be explaining to everyone exactly what to expect while building anticipation. Show time!

And this is why, at first, we didn’t list the futures on the bag. We printed the on the wood display so that when Mysterio’s t-shirt was given, nothing would lead the giftee (or her audience) to think their surprise future would be more funny than aspirational. Good idea for the consumer, bad idea for our bottom line. Why? Because on our next reorder from the factory, we decided to freshen up the futures. But we still had a ton of displays. So that meant printing new lids for everyone who already had displays. Woof.

FINAL:And this is Mysterio’s packaging from way back in 2006. Lots of lessons learned along the way! This was when we tried to make the bag easy to open by just pulling the top string (big mistake) and relied on a lot of copy to get the story across (big mistake; no one wants to read).

The first bag was also easier to open. On the first two rounds of production, all you had to do was pull a red string to open it (like a bag of charcoal or dog food). For dramatic effect, we wanted to make the opening act (see what I did there?) was as seamless as possible. We didn’t want to interrupt the mood we’d built up by having someone run off to find scissors, leaving everyone in awkward silence until they returned. This, however was a big mistake – for retail stores. Why? Because their customers were opening all the bags, searching for the future they liked the best. What the fuck is wrong with people? One store watched Puff Daddy’s personal chef do that, but at least he paid for all the ones he opened before he left. Anyway, we got tired of paying to re-sew all the bags closed. So now, you gotta have scissors at the ready to open it.

Speaking of construction, the pinked edges of the bag were designed to give it a roughness. Sort of an economical, controlled fraying. Oh, and while we always offered the wood display, some stores decided the display wasn’t worth the nominal fee and made their own thing (which usually translates to standing them up in a basket where no one will see them). Then they complain the shirts aren’t selling (which never happens), so they finally buy a display, and then they sell through their stock. But still, we wanted to give options. That’s why we eventually added the brass grommet up top. So if stores really didn’t want or have room for the display, they could at least hang it on a peg on a wall slat, and the front of the bag can do it’s job. Options are always good. It costs more to do, but didn’t detract from the product and it enhanced its sellability.

COMPS: Two bad ideas. Megastore Buy Buy Baby wanted to try Mysterio out, but didn’t want the wood display. That’s when we had to start thinking about alternate solutions. This on the left was the quick fix to make it work with inventory we already had. Oh, and we felt like we had to dumb the paper hanger down A LOT for a mass market (which would still be true today). Workable, but I like the grommet we did later better. And on the right is a quick fix for our displays when we changed up the futures. Not a bad solution, but not an ideal long-term one.

Let’s talk about extra credit. I say, it’s for chumps. Here’s a good example. When we switched to scissor-open-bags, I wanted to add something to add some stability. It always sort of bothered me that the bag was so floppy and light. I know, it only held a tiny folded t-shirt, but still. I also didn’t want people cutting through the t-shirt while opening the bag (see, I was learning!), so I added a thick cardboard card with an outrageous guarantee. If Mysterio’s future wasn’t correct by the time the child was 70, you could return it for a full refund. Funny, but not to our lawyer. At least until I showed him the legalese attached to the guarantee:

*Claims must be submitted with original receipt and the allegedly inaccurate garment upon which Mysterio’s prediction must be legible. Substituted garments will void this offer (besides, Mysterio will know you were trying to trick him). Claims shall also include a facsimile of child’s birth certificate, complete grade school transcripts and college transcripts (if applicable). Please also include an essay by the child, in his or her own words explaining the circumstance of his or her failure to achieve the destiny predicted by Mysterio detailing any conflict of personal hopes and/or dreams. As all claims will occur in the distant future, before submitting your claim, please consult a psychic or other such mystic for information regarding Mysterio’s whereabouts. Reimbursement will consist solely of the garment’s original purchase price minus sales tax and minus any delivery fees Mysterio shall incur. If said fees exceed the refund amount, you will receive an invoice from Mysterio of the balance owed to him by you. Invoice will be payable immediately. Failure to remit payment will result in dream-state visitations to the claimant by Mysterio until the balance is settled. By reading this agreement you promise to see the futility in filing a claim and to realize that it’s perhaps easier to go ahead and just fulfill Mysterio’s prediction by doing what he said you’d do.

Fun little extra spice to add, right? Nah. It added a new vendor to production, drove up the manufacturing cost, and in the end I don’t think anyone really cares. Maybe it was just too much. Like a smart friend of mine is fond of saying, “It’s a joke on a joke”. Unnecessary. We’re heading into our 10th reorder of Mysterio shirts, so if you want one with a guarantee, you’d best order one now before they’re gone. Hahaha.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Expand a Magical World.

Design > Product

I’ve said before that your packaging is as much the product as the product is. This is another example of how true that is. If you don’t know, Mysterio makes a baby t-shirt that can predict your child’s future. Kelly and I had just published a children’s picture book about Mysterio and we were looking to expand his product line. Mysterio was always more of a gift for parents than a gift for baby. Sure, the baby got a shirt. But the parents, the baby shower guests and the gift-giver, all got a fun, memorable experience. So why not develop more experiences for them

FINAL: BEHOLD! Mysterio’s Deluxe Keepsake Chest! An expansion of the Mysterio infant t-shirts that predict your baby’s future. It was so fun to play in this sandbox from a design and illustration standpoint. Almost too fun. In the end I made way too much stuff for it. Made it a little hard to explain all the contents!

That’s where Mysterio’s Keepsake Chest came from. It was a deluxe collection of Mysterio’s baby shirt, his book, two fun games, a wooden top, and a paper craft. Over the years, customer feedback told us that people really did keep Mysterio’s shirts once their baby’s grew out of them. How fun to see if the future would eventually come true! So one of the games we developed predicted more specific events – Milestones. At the bottom of the box lies the game board and a heavy card filled with milestones. Spin the top and name a milestone. When it stops, it will point to the age at which the child will reach that milestone. Write it down on the card. Easy! The fun part is discovering that your child’s first haircut will happen at 58 years of age. Yes, all silly, good fun at a baby shower. Flip the game board over, and you’ll find that Mysterio will answer any YES or NO questions you have. Again, ask the question, spin the top, get Mysterio’s answer.

FINAL: SEE?! TOO MUCH STUFF! The tag on the outside had a list of contents (as brief as I could make it), but it still read like a novella. The game board that’s flipping up? That’s two games on one board. Of course it comes with a one of Mysterio’s signature baby t-shirts and his new picture book.

FINAL: A close up look at the Ask-O-Meter! Think of it as a flat, paper, much sassier Magic 8-Ball. I’ve got one of these in our living room and we use it all the time to make YES or NO decisions for us. I like how a lot of the answers end up being sort of confusingly ambiguous/

FINAL: The flip side to the Ask-O-Meter is a fun way to record when your baby will meet their major development milestones. What’s so funny is how horribly wrong Mysterio’s predictions get. First Tooth could be at 51 years, for example. Hilarious.

FINAL: There’s even a little papercraft Mysterio that you can pop on a shelf to keep a mystical eye out for baby. I like the extra credit (which I always say is for chumps) of printing a back to the paper Mysterio complete with all the instructions reversed as well. And here’s a shot of me tying up a box to ship out. I’d do 100 of these at a go and it KILLED my fingers. The things you do for art.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing was the clever packaging. We stuffed the box with wood excelsior so it looked all wild and exotic. We even slid the lid closed to leave some of the curly fill sticking out because it looked so cool. And just like we did on his baby shirt packaging, we let the lid be pretty simple and straightforward. We used a paper tag to really detail all the info. But even the tag was cool because, as the gift-giver, you could clip off the contents part and be left with a nice gift tag to fill out. Then, the giftee could discover the contents on their own. Also, it looked WAY not-commercial that way, too. Oh, and to keep people from getting into the box in stores (I already learned they would try), I wrapped each one with heavy rope and fastened it tight with heavy black wire. It killed my hands (yes, I wrapped them all myself), but it was totally worth it.

When baby was too big for Mysterio things, the whole kit and kaboodle could be stored away in Mysterio’s handsome wooden chest. Someday, far in the future, the child would find it, and have a good chuckle.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Turn Iffy QC into an Asset.

Strategy > Mysterio Predicts

Making things sucks. There. I said it. Kelly and I had been manufacturing goods for Wrybaby for years and whether it was done domestically or overseas, it always sucked. It’s just a lot of moving parts that can go wrong. And we weren’t even making complicated stuff! We had our share of screen printing problems in the US and we once had our inventory held for ransom in India WHILE WE WERE THERE VISITING THE FACTORY. Understandably, when it came time to think up a new product in 2005 we were feeling pretty sour. So we gave ourselves this challenge: Can we design a product that, if it arrived all messed up, would still be ok to sell, if not improved, by its defect?

FINAL: This is how consumers meet Mysterio for the first time. Curb appeal for days and all the result of outsmarting a quality control problem. I specified using rough-sawn wood for the crate box knowing it wouldn’t print very well on the front. That way I’d never be disappointed with how badly AND it sets the stage so well for the product.

That’s when Mysterio was born. Honestly. As exotic and fun and popular as Mysterio’s baby tees are, it’s totally one of those really disappointing “How I met my spouse” stories, like, “Oh, we were drunk in Vancouver and hooked up and got pregnant, so...”. Mysterio was a child of past failure. See, maybe you know this, but manufacturing overseas sucks for small orders. The sewing, for example, can be kinda janky even if it’s something the factory specializes in. Like onesies. You’ve got QC, but still some crap sewing sneaks through. Sometimes a lot. The printing is even more iffy: It’s off center, faded or too dark; or smudged because it’s done across town with someone your factory contracted with. Get it? Good luck getting anyone to take responsibility for anything when you see it come back all messed up. And again, that’s on stuff they all specialize in.

So given our challenge, we went rustic. We went old world. Exotic. Mystic. We started with the aesthetic. What could you make that, if it arrived messed up, looked like that was intentional to reflect being handmade, or primitive, or of exotic origins? And how would that product relate to a new baby (which Wrybaby specialized in)? 

At this point in our own parenting adventure, we were past the “how will we keep it alive” phase and entering the “what will it be someday” phase. So, I don’t know, it became sort of a no-brainer to make the connection. What if we created a garment that told the baby’s future? It could come in a printed bag that was sealed, so you didn’t know the future until your opened it? What if we built it up to make people think the futures would be amazing and then they weren’t? What if they were kind of hilariously odd? Like, how you can wonder sometimes how anyone grows up to find their passion as a Shrimp Boat Captain? Or a Romance Novelist?

FINAL: The current product packaging, front and back. We’d added the grommet to give our stores more display opportunities. You can see how the printing on the front is a bit off-center (a bit too far to the left). If it was on an envelope or a box, I’d be pissed. But because we used a sewn bag, you totally forgive it.

FINAL: Clip the bag open and VOILA! Your baby’s future. Boom.

It all unfolded from there. We didn’t even test it. We just went all in. We developed a wood crate display for stores with tons of curb appeal. It’s made by a US company who is AMAZING, but still, their shipper dropped our palette and half of the crates splintered, cracked or flat out broke. DIDN’T MATTER! In fact it made them better. They looked like they were just thrown off a boat from Cambodia.

The product itself is a little complicated to explain, being so unique. It makes a bit of heavy lifting for the little muslin packaging, but here it is: Mysterio predicts your child’s future on a t-shirt. There are 12 possible futures (which, btw, we change up every year) and each future is sealed in a muslin bag. Clip open the bag to reveal your baby’s future. 

In 2005 people weren’t very trusting that the futures wouldn’t be something stupid, dirty or terrible. So, we listed all 12 futures on the lid of the display crate so customers knew what they were in for. Eventually, we put the futures on the back of the bag (for reasons I mention in another article.) We succeeded in creating an amazing baby shower gift that was memorable because of great suspense and theater it created at parties. And talk about having a keepsake for that child to discover decades later when they really achieve their career goals! Creative moms-to-be have even used Mysterio Tees to let their husbands know they’re pregnant. Boutiques around the world found that Mysterio customers became steady customers, as Mysterio became the proven go-to baby gift. One boutique told us that Puff Daddy sent his personal chef (why the chef we’ll never know) to open all the Mysterio’s in the shop until he found Criminal Mastermind. He paid for everything he opened and left with his prize.

FINAL: Mysterio’s money-back guarantee along with some product extensions. His deluxe Keepsake Chest, his picture book, and even little freebie goodies like a papercraft Mysterio you can consult in times of indecision.

Over the years we’ve tinkered with Mysterio here and there. In the beginning all you had to do was pull the string to open it, but too many people just opened them in stores until they found one they liked. So now you have to cut it open. We added a silly guarantee the your future will be accurate by the time they’re 70 (and even still there’s a ton of impossible legal stipulations). We even released a limited keepsake box full of games, an inspirational book about Mysterio, his t-shirt and even a paper craft doll Mysterio doll to guard your child’s aura. Mysterio continues to delight, and I’ll be sure to update this post soon. He’s got some new, amazing products in the works as I write.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make Fun of the Helpless.

Illustration > Safe Baby Handling Tips

Fun fact about my book, Safe Baby Handling Tips: That’s me and Kelly in all those drawings! We were living in SF and I was doing a rockabilly thing with vintage red tab Levis and no handlebar mustache. You can see Kelly go through a couple of hair styles between Safe Baby Handling Tips and its prequel follow-up, Safe Pregnancy Handling Tips. I’ve written about how we came up with the idea, but the intention of the drawings was to mimic instructions for power tools. Not airline emergency instructions. Not IKEA assembly instructions. There’s actually an important distinction here.

FINAL: The first edition of the book in question – Safe Baby Handling Tips circa 2005. Look at that handsome rockabilly devil, will ya?

FINAL: Like painters in all the cartoons who paint live models, illustrators use photos for reference.. We call it “scrap”. Before computers, I knew illustrators who had rooms full of file cabinets packed with torn out magazine pages, photos, all kinds of scrap (see!?) paper with stuff they could reference in their work. I like this photo because of the baby laying on the ground behind me. Looks like I totally missed!

FINAL: A couple of my favorite panels. It takes people a while to see what’s so wrong about Shopping with Baby, which is fun to watch. Drying Baby is so moronic and mean it never fails to crack me up. Same with the Lifting Baby detail (what a grip!). Oh, and a little something from Nursing Baby to keep you up at night. Yep, that’s me. I’ll spare you the scrap I shot for it.

FINAL: Another true life adventure in scrap shooting (courtesy of Bonding with Baby). And two of my favorite Kelly panels. She cut her hair short in the middle of the project and I kept it accurate. So when you read through the book you can tell what was done first and what was done later. Don’t ask me why all our furniture was labeled.

My dad and my granddad always taught me that you have to respect your tools. You understand their power and never forget that you need to be mindful when using them. Let your mind wander, and bad things can happen. That’s what I thought about when we had our baby. As long as you stay mindful and not be a moron, no one will get hurt. It’s a weird twist, but you follow me, right?

If you read about the strategy behind Safe Baby Handling Tips, you know I didn’t have a lot of time to mess around drawing these. They’re simple, but they had to be realistic enough to need scrap for me to work from. Because what I’d do if I had time is take photos of people recreating the actions and then draw from that. I did that, but then traced the images in a stylistic way so I could scan them, clean them up in Photoshop, turn into vectors in Illustrator, and then pop them into frames fast. The stuff I couldn’t shoot, I just drew freehand which turned out to be pretty efficient.

COMPS: of course there were a lot of ideas that didn’t make the book for one reason of another. When we did the 10th Anniversary update/expansion we had to nix some panels because technology made them obsolete. They just don’t make TVs like that anymore and we didn’t feel like a flat panel would be as funny. And somethings our editor at Running Press nixed to save us from ourselves. Co-Sleeping is too scary and real a problem, for example. And even though we have a booze related panel (Calming Baby) it was not recommended where this one we flipped it to be the YES. Bad. And I added some that were just shitty for fun. That’s a string of firecrackers I’m lighting over there for the unpublished, Teaching Baby to Crawl.

FINAL: New directions for Safe Baby Handling Tips. Clockwise from top left: 1. If dogs are the new children, a Safe Dog Handling Tip series seemed appropriate. 2. We played with the idea of offering our Handling Tips on adult apparel, canvas totes, and even pillowcases, so we made some useful usage tips for those fine products. 3. I picked something at random to see if the formula would hold up. HI-YA! It did. 4. This was the big NO on how to use a SBHT coffee mug.

I later tried my hand at expanding the Handling Tips concept to other things to see if the idea had legs. Karate, Dog Ownership, that kind of stuff. I think the baby is the best foil just because of the original power tool reference. For some gross reason it’s funniest when the person who could get so seriously hurt is the small helpless person who least deserves it.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Not Destroy a Baby.

Strategy > Safe Baby Handling Tips

Are you a parent? Let me tell you, it’s terrifying. Scary at the least. If you are one, you know what I’m talking about. You’re so nervous and excited and, well, clueless. Because if it’s your first, you have no real idea what you’ve gotten yourselves into. And that’s a fact that becomes more and more clear as you careen toward your due date. When Kelly and I were expecting, I was just scared. She was terrified.

FINAL: The cover of the expanded version of Safe Baby Handling Tips. On the cover is a miniature, simplified version of another product I designed for Wrybaby – The Wheel of Responsibility.

When I was 14, my parents decided they missed being parents (of really small, helpless people). So, they had my brother Josh. Then my sister, Lindsey, three years later. So being in middle school through high school with a couple of babies in the house would prove really helpful to me as a soon-to-be-dad. I knew how to feed and burp a baby, change diapers, and all that jazz. Meh, just like ridin’ a bike. I was in no way emotionally prepared (and who is the first time) for the shock of full time responsibility, but at least I had some exposure in the field. Kelly had none.

We did all the things you do as expecting parents. We read scary articles online, we bought books that were thick and boring, or thick and scary. We were the first of our hipster advertising friends to have a baby, so they were, hilariously, no help at all. We went to baby care classes, and to the requisite Lamaz classes. And finally, our hands about all wrung out, Kelly went into labor and everything changed. 

 Sorry, changed for the better, I mean. Kelly and I soon discovered a few important truths.

1. Across the span of human history, all new new parents feel the same

2. Caring for a baby is difficult, but it’s manageable and only gets easier with time

3. You’ve got to be a fucking moron to really mess this up

REVIEWS: Our Amazon reviews are hilariously amazeballs.

TRUE: The only foreign translation of Safe Baby Handling Tips – German. Take a look at that title on the cover! Hahahaha. Do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with the layout? So bad!

That last point, especially. That’s where Safe Baby Handling Tips came from. Look, as long as your intentions are good, and you’re a somewhat stable person, you really aren’t going to mess this up. At least not in the beginning. Oh, you’ve got all the time in the world to unintentionally destroy your child emotionally. But in the first year? Nah. You good.

We’d conceived (see what I did there) the concept of these “handling tips” about a week after bringing our new son home. Each illustrated tip was printed on a newborn item: a onesie (Playing with Baby); a hooded towel (Drying Baby); a diaper cover (Checking Baby’s Diaper); you get the idea. It’s very simple. Each scenario shows you a common parenting activity and what kind an absolute idiot you’d have to be to mess it up. Sort of gives you some perspective, no?

Anyhoo, we were in Wrybaby’s booth at the New York International Trade Fair when a couple of reps from Running Press strolled in. They asked me if I had any more of these tips to fill a book. “Of course!”, I said. I didn’t. But I sure did a week later when we sent them the packet of illustrations that would eventually become Safe Baby Handling Tips.

To date, Safe Baby Handling Tips has sold over 120,000 copies. It is also well reviewed on Amazon. The book has been translated into German because if anyone knows anything about comedy, it’s the Germans. And the illustrations have become an stubbornly enduring meme on the internets much to our pleasure and dismay.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to See If People Like What You Make, Then Be OK If They Don’t.

Design > Product

This is really weird. But it was supposed to be, so I achieved what I set out to do. I’d been working on a lot of really fun but intense projects that all sort of ended at the same time, so I felt I needed to stretch my legs a little and do something for me. So I decided that thing was to make some fun stickers. The thought was that I’d make sheets of bizarrely themed stickers and then turn the best ones into postcard sets, and then canvas bags, and then...you get the idea. I’d take everything I knew about what gift stores are buying today and illustrate my own odd little brand to offer folks.

FINAL: The idea behind Mr. Dave’s Best Stickers in three photos. A sheet of weirdly themed stickers. Which you could peel off and put to equally weird uses to delight your family, friends and co-workers. A genius product that was way before it’s time.

FINAL: I was especially pleased with how the back turned out. Yes. I wrote the copy all by myself.

FINAL: Oh, there were all kinds of topics. I could go on forever. But fate had different plans!

Kids! Hahaha...I love kids. My friends’ kids all call me Mr. Dave (I live in the South, you know) and I think it’s hilarious so that’s what I called my line. I went for a retro look to offset the not-retro-at-all themes. Sort of a brand subterfuge to make people think they’re about to see something really sweet and wholesome and then it turns out to be stickers of cats pooping.

I put a challenge to myself to do, like, 30 full sheets to prove that the idea had legs. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get bored halfway or feel like I was running out of ideas. That ended up being over 150 individual drawings! So I took 5 sheets that best represented the line and them printed in China on the cheap. I thought I’d test out the concept on Etsy while running them past a bunch of gift boutiques. I quickly found that, um, people don’t come to Etsy to buy stickers, much less stickers of run-over animals (see Roadkill). Great for the unique, bad for strange. Gift stores didn’t know what to think. Hahaha. It was a mess. I don’t know what I was expecting, but no one wanted any part of that shit. They didn’t get the topics or anything. And these are people who’ve known my sense of humor for years. One store asked why it was so old fashioned. What? So I got my stickers into a big box store. Well, one big box store. Cost Plus World Market. The one closest to my house.

FINAL: Actually, there was a sort of categorical plan. Knowing what I know about the gift and greeting card industry, I was able to focus on weird themes in distinct categories: Animals, Fashion & Culture, Food & Drink, Home & Garden, and Health & Fitness.

FINAL: Oh, I also made postcards and posters. You can see more high-brow designs in the illustration category.

Here’s what I did. I went in one day, found some items that were $6.95 (Mr. Dave’s MSRP) and took pictures of their price tags. I went home and printed out the tags and stuck them on the backs of 5 Unicorn Poop sticker sheets and 5 Dead and Dying Succulents sticker sheets. It was just days before Christmas, and World Market had a special little section for unicorn stuff (plush, notebooks, junk like that) and a special little collection nearby of potted succulents. Perfect places to surreptitiously drop my sticker packs and make a hasty retreat.

I returned the next day and found they were not only still hanging there, undiscovered by World Market Employees, but one of the Dead and Dying Succulent sticker sheets had sold! So I kept going back whenever I was in the neighborhood or needing more Hoi Son Sauce, and the selling proved to be slow going. After a few months they took down those special little displays. I thought that was the end of my experiment, but I found my stickers had simply been moved to another part of the store. I kept checking back periodically and was sorry to see that the savvy World Market shopper was really not interested in Unicorn Poop stickers. I hadn’t sold any. But there were only 2 left of the succulents. Yay? What’s weird is the stickers never made it to the Clearance shelves. I’d have been so sad if they had, but they just continued to be repositioned around the store. At month seven, I couldn’t find them anywhere and thought, “Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.” But the next day my wife sent me a picture showing they’d been moved up to the checkout impulse racks – just three Unicorn Poop sheets hanging below the gluten-free gum and salted licorice from Norway.

FINAL: The great World Market experiment. On the left is where I left my Dead and Dying Succulents stickers and on the right the sad aftermath months and months later. Just a couple Unicorn Poop stickers left!

I’m so sorry, I don’t think I have a point here. Hahaha. I guess it’s that when something doesn’t work, try and learn what you can from it and move on. Or make a quasi-illegal game out of it to keep yourself amused while you go on to the next adventure.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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