Never knew I’d be so focused on charms & keychains.
Don’t worry. That ugly panda thing with the plaid and record for an ear is not something I’m making. It’s something horrific I made when I was exhausted one night making buttons many, many years ago. But honestly, it’s how I’ve felt about my designs for the past week, it made me laugh, so I thought “why not share it?”
One of my biggest goals is to transition my art from being something that you stick on a wall and look at to something that you can wear and use. Buttons and keychains are two of the best products I can produce to meet that goal and I really love them. I’ve been collecting anime acrylic charms and keychains for over a decade. I think I have somewhere around 250 of them and I’ve paid anywhere from $15 to $65 for each. A good portion of them are Rohan Kishibe charms. And most of them are about 2” in diameter. Some have long chains, some are short. It varies greatly. Even the type of acrylic feels different from charm to charm.
What I love about the keychains and charms is that they can be double-sided. Although, most of the ones I own aren’t. And, when they are double-sided, I always wished that they had something different on the back. Most most of them don’t.
So I started wondering why. Why are they the same image on the front and back and why are the vast majority of them single-sided? When I started questioning how these official products were made, I arrived at answers regarding how they were used.
Double-sided keychains and charms cost about 40%-65% more to produce. But the going price of the product may not be enough to cover that increased cost.
Most of the charms I own come from Japan, but when I look at keychains and little acrylic trinkets here in Florida, the use of those products is much different than how they’re used in Japan. Florida’s use of them requires double-sided designs, I think.
Then there’s the packaging. The packaging of double-sided charms can be more expensive too! Think about it… if you’re in a store and the charm is protected by some kind of packaging instead of just hanging there on its own, then it’s probably stuffed into a deep shelf with other packaged charms or it’s hanging from a small hole in the top of the packaging. So, at first glance, you can only tell that it has one side. And that one side better look darn good or you might not walk over to it and turn it over to see what’s on the back or if there’s anything on the back at all. Given that most of the charms produced are only one-sided, you’d probably even assume that’s the only side of the charm. So then the question becomes: how do you show people it’s double-sided?
Fortunately, my booth is interactive enough that demonstrating that feature is easy. And, if someone is interested in getting one online, that’s not as hard to show either. But I’d like my products to be in stores, too.
So, ultimately, I’d like them to be hung on some kind of card, put into a small sleeve or pouch that has a hang tag, and then hung at shops. The card keeps the charm from slouching and moving around too much. The protective sleeve prevents external wear (dust, scratches, etc.) and provides a “collector’s value” to it, if someone just wanted to purchase it to look at it - like me. But the card on the back would prevent seeing the reverse of the charm.
So then how is this solved?
I have a few ideas, but they’re all obnoxiously complicated or increase the cost of the product by roughly $0.50 each. And that may not sound like a lot, but it can be when your margins are already slim. And, before you say “margins? what are you a capitalist?” Maybe. But I need those margins so I can pay my bills and eat. So that I can continue producing art.
And that’s where the challenge really hits. Sure, I could sell charms on the cheap for about $5 per charm, not worry about the packaging, not worry about double-or-single-sided and make about $2 per charm. But that $2 doesn’t pay the bills. It actually won’t even cover the amount of time it takes me to place a new order (assuming I make $10 per hour, which is still the minimum wage here in Florida). And, if there’s no packaging and I don’t want to put my logo and site on these charms (I feel that’s a bit tacky…), then how do you remember where you got it from so you can get another if you like it? Sure, you’ll toss the packaging eventually, but having it for the initial part of ownership is essential for me to basically introduce myself - especially if you’re picking up this product in a store and not at my booth.
And then there’s the amount of time it takes me to make a charm. Right now, the new charms are taking anywhere from 3 - 6 hours to design them and another 2 hours each to format them because of some issues I ran into over the past few weeks. So, at $10 per hour for at least 5 hours… that’s $50 per design.
And I’m not interested in making single-sided charms because I want my work to appeal to as many people as possible. Double-sided keychains are common over here in the U.S., especially in Florida where we have so many tourist shops selling them for cheap. In Japan, however, most of these charms are not used as keychains, they’re displayed in Ita Bags or displayed at home. (At least the anime charms are.) It’s highly unlikely that someone in Tokyo is driving a car, let alone needing a large keychain that’s 2+ inches wide. In fact, I could argue that 2” is a bit large for us here in Florida when we need to stick the keychains into our pockets (and we all know that girl’s pants have unreasonably small ones…).
So that’s what I’ve been dealing with for the past few weeks. Price points. Packaging options. The logic of double-sided versus single-sided charms. And size.
I ordered 20 new designs yesterday, despite all these challenges. They’re double-sided and most are about 2” wide, some are a little smaller because I think that those designs work better small and that the people who would be interested in owning them would want those designs to be smaller so they can use them as keychains that easily slide into their pockets.
I still have another 30 to order too! These are the D&D themed designs I’ve been working on for about 4 years. I was going to send them yesterday but, after I designed all 13 of them, I realized the design was wrong. They’re too bulky and I feel like there’s too much wasted space on the charm. So I’m redoing them for the third time. I’m sure this will be the last time. It’s taken me a while (and a whole ton of research) to figure out what they should look like and I think I finally have it. I’m very excited about them and hope to have them ordered next week!
And…
Who would have thought this is what I would be doing instead of producing like 20 new prints?
I’m not sure which I like making more either. There’s a lot of tedium to the charms that I don’t like, but I like having useable art.
I still plan to make some prints, but I haven’t quite figured out what those will be yet. I guess I should get on that. But first, I need to finish Game Over Level 7!
Honestly, what I’m enjoying making the most are originals. I still love drawing fan art, but this new journey into original art has me more passionate about my work than I’ve ever been. It’s a really nice change of pace and one that I think is going to really make everyone excited and happy. I hope you’ll enjoy what I’ve been working on! I can’t wait to share it with you!
