12.10.06

zbq is dead.

i should know. i killed it.

i have spent the last 8 years trying to get this monstrosity off the ground and make it fly on its own. every fibre of my being has been poured into zeroboutique during this time, every available waking hour spent printing, prepping artwork, shipping, answering e-mails, updating the web site, cleaning screens, feeding this insane entity that has now become so much larger than me. something that grew to completely and unmercifully dominate my existence and basically force me into a nervous breakdown in march. i became violently ill for over 2 weeks, unable to move from bed for 10-12 hours per day. at that point the writing was already in the sand: the business was in debt many thousands of dollars (and had been for quite a while) and i had spent an insane amount of time trying to promote the hell out of the site over the previous 6 months in an ultimately futile effort to fight back this encroaching mountain of ruined credit, collection agents, lawsuits and bitterness. not to mention the grueling printing schedule imposed by the monthly shirt runs: every 4-5 weeks, i would print shirts people had ordered off of the site for the previous month- usually 30-40 different prints- and ship them out. sometimes in excess of 5 or 600 shirts, on a manual one station press. this usually took 3 or 4 weeks minimum, in fact many print runs never stopped but would overlap into each other. i had kept up that pace for nearly a year and a half, and it was punishing. in short, i hit the breaking point where i could no longer cope effectively with running this business, and my body pretty much shut down. after that experience i fell further & further behind with customer correspondence and followups. i started to find it very difficult to even attempt to stay on top of the mountain of e-mail in my inbox- it was very distressing to even open outlook sometimes. something inside me had snapped, and i knew deep down that this was not how i wanted to pursue my dreams any longer. i guess my fatal flaw, my "original sin", was in thinking that just because i can print a t-shirt, i can also run an efficient online store with tight deadlines, fast turnarounds, a shipping department and a reliable database, and i can do it all in time to pick up my boy from daycare and i'll take care of all that other stuff after i put him to sleep. because it doesn't work like that, and believe me, it didn't work like that. i was wrecked in mind and body for 2 years straight- a zombie. a business can become the most demanding master you will ever face, especially if your very existence is tied into its survival (and mine was).

but i can't serve this master any longer. zbq will continue to exist, but once the last batch are gone i am through with printing and shipping t-shirts for a very, very long time. i plan to eventually pursue poster printmaking and hope to be selling screenprints on this site by spring time. but shirts? i don't know if i can go back to shirts. i wound up having to sell my old harco print station to get enough money to move to victoria, and i'm not in any kind of particular rush to get another one and start the nervous breakdown machine up all over again. right now i associate t-shirts with lower back pain, spray adhesive in my lungs, mind-numbing boredom, carpal tunnel syndrome, deadlines, nausea, anger, sore feet and overwhelming stress. sickness. t-shirts almost killed me- i put my blood, sweat and tears into these things, and i feel like i have nothing left to give anymore. some day i may want to print some more shirts, or i may not. one thing is for certain, though: if that day comes, it won't be any time soon. i moved to victoria bc from halifax one month ago, and right now my focus is on working and making some money to pay for a lot of loose ends and trying to make a life for myself and my son here. it could be a year, or 2 years, before i'm either able or willing to print another shirt. it could be never. it could very well be never.

and so we come to the last batch. before leaving halifax, on the day of my flight actually, i packed all of my shirts into 7 or 8 containers (with a little help from emily) and sent them to myself in victoria on the greyhound. those shirts finally arrived last week, and the other day i did an inventory and did a complete update of the database as well. there are 394 shirts left, and they are all present and accounted for onthe last batch page. but these shirts are not for sale- not yet. instead, i am taking bids on each individual shirt. until october 31st at midnight, you can bid on the shirt of your choice (or several if you choose). if you have been outbid, you will be informed. if you win the bid, you will be sent a paypal invoice on november 1st for the shirt or shirts you won, after which you will have 5 days to complete your purchase. if you fail to do so within this time frame, the shirt will be offered to the next highest bidder. all bids start at $16, which includes shipping.

why am i doing this? am i greedy? no. insane? quite likely. but the bottom line is, things are not in a good financial state for me or for this company right now at all. i owe a lot of people a lot of dough, and most of those debts aren't going to magically disappear overnight. i'm not a bad person- i hate owing money and i've worked my ass off trying to make things right. it's been really tough. but i still want a chance to try and make things better- pay my suppliers, refund customers who didn't receive their orders, send some orders that are still in halifax (yes, i am sorry to say), mend a few broken fences and just maybe try and get a print shop going out here on the west coast and see if i can't teach this monstrosity to fly again. as always, i can't do it without you. i've let a lot of you down, but you can help me try and make it up to everyone. bid on a shirt and help keep this rusty caboose reelin' on down the tracks. thanks for your support.

-j