Studio Tour
A look at the in progress Stupid Fresh Mess HQ
A STUPID FRESH MESS SINCE THE DAY I WAS BORN
That title has NOTHING to do with what I’m going to write today, I just like the sentence. Well, it might explain why my photos are shit though! (You can imagine how my bad ass photographer wife feels about my janky photography!)
Before I show you around the studio, I’ll give you brief rundown of my company Stupid Fresh Mess, LLC.
I started shipping books and merch in 2004. I had been a “pro” comic creator for only 3 years at that point. I published my first sketch book called EFELANT, a few prints and put some Led Heavy T-shirts online for sale. (Led Heavy was an online studio we started. More on that in another post!) At this point, it was just me packing envelopes in our Chicago apartment. Over the years I added more sketchbooks and prints and recruited a friend to take over packing and shipping. He would swing by my spot with a roller bag and stock up on inventory once a month or so. And by inventory I mean like 20-30 books each month. Nothing crazy.
In 2009 Casey and I left Chicago, but I kept on publishing new sketchbooks to sell at cons and online. At first, I was able to handle it on my own, but it quickly went from packing and shipping a few packages in the first hour of work to taking 3/4 of my day and hauling multiple bins full of books to the Post Office. We just had our first kid and Casey was staying home now and jumped in to help take over the shipping.
Over the years, Casey shipped out thousands of books, prints, and hundreds of Daily Sketches and pieces of original art. But now our first kid was older and our second was all up in the mix and Casey was focusing on her photography in a major way. So, we decided to pause the store for awhile until we could figure out a way to run it like a real business, and not just a husband and wife trying to find a few minutes here and there to fulfill orders.
A few years later, I was getting the itch to open the store again, but I knew I didn’t have the time to do it on my own. Casey offered to jump back in, but I knew that taking her away from her art and passion wasn’t the right move. One day while at the pool with our friend Megan, I pitched the idea of bringing all of her marketing, sales and retail experience to my newly formed company… STUPID FRESH MESS. She said “I don’t know anything about comics.” To which I replied, “I do, so we got that side of things covered.” haha.
We rented a few office spaces above a Crystal Shop and in October 2019 opened the store on SKOTTIEYOUNG.COM and started moving units. Here we are two years and over 8000 orders shipped later, in the new Stupid Fresh Mess headquarters. We moved here in the middle of quarantine so it’s taken us awhile to really get it set up. We’re heading into our second year in this space and we’re finally starting to move things around, decorate and all the good stuff that makes a place feel like your home away from home. Also, we’ve added a new employee to take over the shipping department, so Megan can use all here superpowers to bring you all the fun stuff we’re planning for 2022!
TAKE A LOOK AROUND
Here’s a quick look at our HQ now. I took most of these (shitty) photos when I got to work this morning. I figured it would be fun to show it in it’s not so finished state and then I’ll give some updates later as we put some more love into this place!
I’ll post some more detailed aspects of my office itself soon. Hope you enjoy the brief history of Stupid Fresh Mess and a look around our HQ in progress!
Love the space. My favorite decoration is the puppy! What’s THAT employees name?
The title is fantastic and got me excited to read the post so mission accomplished!
I'm loving the new space! Especially seeing Megan get her own office and seeing all the stuff you're bringing to the space to make it more you! Peep that Mitchells vs the Machines art book hell yeah! I can't wait to continue to see the business and the space grow and to continue to support that growth!