Sometimes I’m a bit surprised at how often I’ll be asked “how do you make new and successful things?” or something along those lines. As much as I can say I’ve been doing this (one-man-band-job-of-one-thousand-tasks) for over 8 years, frankly, I still can’t endure calling myself an ‘expert’ at anything. Part of that is the imposter-syndrome talking but I know when I could learn more.
There’s quite a few things I’ve designed a “V2” for now. Most of those items- it was for the sake of “flexing” newly built art and design muscle- giving a refresher to good ideas with even better execution. But MX Paint V2 was not that. The base design actually barely changed. The biggest ‘fix’ was to the management of the series as a whole. And oh my god am I glad I finally redid it.
Back in 2020, I was a bit fresh to doing merchandise design but I had seen a lot of new ita bag designs come out and I wanted to try my hand at it. A lot of the designs I’d see at the time were purse-style, small, usually creature or character-oriented and some massively successful. On paper. On the cover, I mean.
The reason I specify that is because MX Paint (V1) WAS massively successful… if you only looked at “big number” and didn’t look further. And for a while before I had to actually put together the packages by hand, I also thought, wow- this is an insane pull for me! I made more than I’ve ever made with this project! It was a pretty swift lesson thereafter that margins really do matter.
I had never received more than 50 preorders at one time back then. This was nearly 2000 orders for a bag that I had done one round of sampling for. That jump alone should tell the rest of the management story but- at the very least I knew that money wasn’t mine and didn’t spend any of it on things unrelated to the project, and thank god because that project did not profit me a cent. I spent 2 years in a technical business deficit of $20,000 that I had to chew bite-by-bite.
So how did we get here?
Well for one, the bag was underpriced. And you need to understand this from the perspective of “this isn’t underpriced for what I would pay for it as a customer” it’s “this is underpriced to the point where it is a project breaking-even at best and leaves little room for the business owner to grow let alone tread water.” I also thought the V1 had plenty of issues but those weren’t things I could have seen until months into usage from customers.
I was convinced from the vocal minority that what I made was worthless. Packing 2000 orders in an unconditioned storage unit in the middle of east-coaster winter by myself made me feel like I was worthless too. But I had just lost health insurance and access to my meds at the time so that might have also contributed. And yeah- these were details that didn’t really come up during the campaign updates because it wasn’t my customers’ responsibility to know that I was kinda withering away- or at least, I felt as though it wasn’t their responsibility. And this isn’t an uncommon story! I’m not trying to garner pity whatsoever.
But it makes sense why it took me nearly 5 years to even consider doing this again. MX Paint was honestly one of my favorite series ideas. It was a love-letter to where I started and got my name (MS Paint) and where I was currently (Procreate). It sparked a flame to embrace a lot of what got me inspired to do art in the first place, what made me think so creatively. I’m so happy to have returned to it- to execute it again with not only the improved design muscle but also with better knowledge of materials, communications, management, and finances.
I think generally I learn towards slow-fashion even with self-funded projects- partially because of what I learned but also because I value growth internally over externally.
I have a disdain for virality because I’ve learned it is much more fulfilling to serve the people who want to be here.
Some lessons applied showed up in the form of doing private “preorders” in smaller batches with quantity caps. And creating feedback forms for those! I’ve had other bags go from V0 to V1 to V2 before going public, and the process is really satisfying. I’ve sampled using a variety of materials and understanding their best usage cases. I even worked with a completely different fulfillment team for MX Paint V2! And I think most importantly, I’ve set clear expectations both for myself and for my customers.
MX Paint V2 had 25% of the backers that MX Paint V1 did and I couldn’t be happier about it. I feel like that allows me to sustain my business and have more time to ensure the quality of my products are something I’ll be proud of. I can actively work to improve parts of my creations over time and seek out the best version of my vision. And the people along for this ride I can’t thank enough.
To this day I think there are still people out there who were left disappointed from the first campaign and while I’m not aiming to artificially ‘win back customers’ I do want to do them right within the means I have today should they come around. At the end of the day they are within their right to hold onto their experiences with me from 2021 but I can quantifiably say that things have changed and I’ll keep improving.