About newsletters.Â

When Friday comes, you know, as it does every week, it becomes the day we write our newsletter (or at least try to). It's not a rule to write on Fridays. But it is that thing that gets left to the end with a hope that something throughout the week will have pooled up that is worth writing about.

This Friday, Che-Wei is away in Cambridge building a prototype for a space habitat. I brought the boys to school this morning and dropped into Pau's class's publishing party. Pau wrote a story called "The Cookie" and it's about an impromptu early morning walk we took where the streets were "quiet as a library". After reading the 11 other stories from his classmates I went on a run. Friday's run is when I "think write" this newsletter in my head.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the medium of the newsletter, and also about things we can do (or not do) to make our our creative practice more sustainable (newsletter or other things).

About a month ago I started reading the newsletter Blackbird Spyplane. I started following it mainly out of a general interest in newsletters, but I like their tone and this very prominent feeling that they just write about whatever random thing they want, with what feels like no other agenda. And I dig this. I haven't upgraded to the paid version of their newsletter, but I might. Yesterday they had a fantastic write up in the NYTimes where they talk about just kinda doing their thing and not selling out, even when the things they are approached with don't even really seem like selling out.

Maybe Blackbird Spyplane is an anomaly, but I like to think it is not. I like to think there is room in this world for anyone who has a creative itch to scratch, to do that. And that you don't have to succumb to the usual tropes of growing into a huge company and subjecting yourself to a lot of the nonsense that comes along with that. Actually, not succumbing can very likely work to your advantage. And the pathways to do this are becoming more and more varied, visible and accessible. I really am hopeful.

If anyone knows of any good newsletters, please send our way! We're curious!!!

Speaking of growing a business, or how we like to think of it, "making our creative practice more sustainable"... me and CW are always playing this kind of dance of, should we do or try this new thing to help our business (ie try to sell more stuff)? Or not. Most often decisions are made just out of scarcity of resources. Time mostly. We don't have time to do the thing, because we'd rather do something else. A common one that comes up is internet ads...should we run them? We don't really know how. Should we pay someone to do it? Probably? Right now we just don't, because we don't have our shit together to do it. But maybe that is ok! We have in the past thrown a few dollars a day at a good Instagram post, with a goal of getting followers. But these days we have just been lazy and don't think it actually helps. Plus we all know instagram is just full of stuff to buy now, and it's a pretty bad place to spend time. And it makes my stomach churn to think of our stuff coming up in your feed as an ad. Really it does.

The past few weeks we took (actually CW took most of it), what I guess you could call a business development class on collaborations. It was offered for free by Made in NYC, and we never do stuff like that, so we figured why not? In taking the class, we were able to identify a few "low hanging fruit" things we probably should do to make our business more sustainable. Some things we are super excited about, and others feel more like, we should really just get this done because we're already doing all the work and this little extra thing could help us sell a lot more of a thing, and then we could spend more time on the parts we like. One thing that we're pretty excited about is to approach some local studios to see if they want to do a thing where we each make a version of the thing that the other makes. So we can sort of work in each other's workshop in a way. A studio that comes to mind is Extra Vitamins. We haven't reached out to them, but I'm gonna say this here and will it into happening or jinx it.

Photography by Heather Sten.

All under one roof w/ CW&T.

While writing this, this interview came out we did for SSENSE. Max Neely-Cohen asked us some great questions, and Heather Sten made us look way cool. In the interview, Che-Wei mentions an article called First Word Art/Last Word Art that is worth the read.

SSENSE interview.

Wonder Bundle.Â

A few weeks ago a photographer friend told us about one of his former students, Su Ji Lee and was like you should hire her if you ever need any help with photo stuff. We looked up her work and were blown away by how thoughtful and inventive it is (do a deep dive). We usually do all of our photo stuff on our own. But lately we've been feeling a need to bring the level of thoughtfulness we bring to our products to the photos themselves. I mean, we like our product photos, and they serve a purpose, but we're a bit tired of too much of this in your face here's a thing we made for you to buy please do thank you. If you know what I mean. Su Ji came up with a concept (pictured above) and also the name, Wonder Bundle, which is a limited mystery box we're going to make available next week.

As you know, we're constantly doing experiments with customization and we have a lot of really cool, one of a kind titanium pieces that won't make it out into the world, either because they were a fluke, or they are too hard to make reliably, but are super cool nonetheless. Wonder Bundle contains a surprise one of a kind experiment plus some other goodies. More on this soon ...

Peace and love,

Che-Wei + Taylor

PS

Solid State Watch making was super successful this week. Last week's 15 will go out Monday. We'll make another 10 next week. If you want one, grab one...