Feature
Little Otsu Interview
Adam: So tell me, this is question #1 and I think this is what people who read this are going to wonder right away: Why no dogs? Why cats? Why did you guys decide to have cats instead of dogs?
Jeremy: Is this really a cat ownership interview? (Laughs)
Adam: Hey, I’m the one conducting the interview here. Don’t get sassy.
Yvonne: Actually, I did have a dog. To be honest, I think I was too young for the responsibility and didn’t end up being the best dog steward. Dogs are a lot more dependent on their caretakers for happiness and we just haven’t been in an ideal situation to make that kind of commitment. We love dogs and all animals and definitely like the idea of being able to adopt a dog one day, but right now we have two cats and wouldn’t want to disturb the equilibrium. I also like the idea of house rabbits.
Adam: So, you guys, describe the creative business entity that you guys have created, that you guys have fostered. Give me the nutshell origins.
Jeremy: We launched the store idea in the spring of 2002 and opened in October of that year.
Adam: And this is a retail space or online or both?
Jeremy: Retail. Actually online took about a year to get going. We wanted to take it a little slow with the online part just because Yvonne still had a full-time job so she was already working 7 days a week and we didn’t have time for online. And I would say that the point where we got to producing stuff was in 2004 when we asked an artist to do a planner with us. We had wanted to make one for a few years, but then the store came along and the project got put on the backburner. But sometimes it’s the right moment and you just find a person who wants to do it and they’re excited and you’re excited. Earlier that year we had decided to try our hand at a second store, which we opened in Portland to be next to Food Fight in the first incarnation of the vegan mini-mall. The Portland store was doing OK, but we had started this planner project and that did so incredibly well which got us going on another print project and we knew we didn’t have the time and resources to expend on both businesses, so it seemed like if something was so well-received and it was so much fun to make, you’ve got to kind of go with your gut. So we stopped the Portland store and kept focusing on publishing, and now we’re kind of focusing on it full time. Even though we still manage the store remotely, a good portion of our time is spent on production and all the jobs of publishing. But even before the planner, we had been working with artists on t-shirts. Actually, that’s more how the beginning of the creative side was. An artist, Chris Duncan, who became a friend just by he and I just chatting in the store – we had the same music in common and he’s from Delaware and I’m from Maryland so we were kind of talking about growing up with the same taste in music – anyway you know how that is, you get along quickly and he’s vegan and he’s a nice guy and so he said, “you know I should do a t-shirt for you.” And it was just really great and really successful and we started asking other people and Lart (our longtime collaborator) submitted a t-shirt and we just kind of went from there. Our friend Chris who did that first t-shirt, he’s also done several print projects with us and actually did the third release after Lart. And, yeah, the t-shirts are actually more the origin of us working with artists on projects. We didn’t plan on it being something where…you know we started the Portland store, and maybe we thought retail stores, maybe several retail stores would be where we’re going. But, we found the most excitement and fulfillment from producing our own products.
Adam: So the creative side, as opposed to…I’m assuming initially it was more of a boutique of unique items that you guys came across…the creative side was almost an accident.
Yvonne: Yeah, it wasn’t intentional.
Jeremy: Our friend was really the one that knew what he was doing, in the sense of saying “you should do a t-shirt.” And it was just a great t-shirt that did really well and kind of the same thing that happened with the paper goods and the books, it was just extra rewarding to sell something you worked on yourself.
Adam: Yeah, but I can see what you are saying in the sense of, you get the opportunity that you get to get your hands a little more dirty, in the fun sense when you are working with somebody on creating something as opposed to saying, I found this thing or this thing was brought to my attention that we could put in the store. It’s like an A B C thing where you guys get to be the C when you finally get to D.
Jeremy: That is a lot of letters but I know what you mean. There is satisfaction in finding something somebody made and feeling like this is really cool and you want everyone else to know about it. But you don’t get the same exact feeling as you do when you hold a project that you worked on from start to finish even if you’re the artist or not. I think anybody involved, even the printer, will probably feel this way. I can’t even imagine what that must be like for you in the sense of holding a record or listening to a song that you worked on and somebody who bought it can only think of it as a finished product, but you know it as a note or a couple of words.
Adam: Sure, yeah, the amount of times that someone actually holds on to something that I’ve created is so infrequent. So those moments, they don’t come very often. But I think I understand where you’re going.
Jeremy: Yeah well, these things are not exactly…our projects are very small scale. Even though they do well, we are a really small publisher. We are considered a very small press.
Adam: Now, a typical run for you guys would be anywhere from what to what?
Jeremy: On average about two thousand at a time. We have a book that is at the printer now that will be three thousand.
Adam: So what are some of the criteria that you guys look for? What makes something interesting and creative for you guys that peaks your interest?
Yvonne: Something about the art just has to be interesting to us. Neither of us have educational backgrounds in art or any formal training whatsoever. We just kinda fly by the seat of our pants and go with our guts. And we don’t necessarily have a definable aesthetic. I think we’re attracted to styles that stand out as more distinctive and have a degree of artistry that is unusual.
Adam: That makes sense. That is a good segue to talk about…
Yvonne: Cat litter?
Adam: No, we’ll come back to cats. But about the record label Zum and its origins. Realizing that you have little to do with it anymore. But in your past life, when it was something you were doing.
Yvonne: Origins of the record label, well my brother (George) and I started a zine in high school. It was a long time ago. It was 1990 and I didn’t even know what a zine was until like our third issue. I thought of it as a newsletter. We would recruit people we knew in high school to write things for it and it kind of evolved into covering more music things, interviewing bands, reviewing music. And for our tenth issue we wanted to do something cool so we decided to do a compilation cd for it. So that was like our first foray into releasing music. It was a good experience, so we decided to do another compilation. We didn’t really know what we were doing, just learning as we went along. It was self publishing, D.I.Y. label feeling it out. And again it was so micro scale. You know like a thousand records at a time.
Adam: This is pre-internet?
Yvonne: It was pre-ecommerce, there was some internet going on. We had a web site and a shows list of what was going on. But we ended up ending the zine after issue twelve because we felt like you had to either go big or quit.
Adam: Oh, I like that, it’s like a No Fearism
Yvonne: And we just didn’t have the energy or will to go big. I think George was finishing college, I was working, and I really hated the magazine industry in the sense that I knew there was a lot of waste. You know the big outlets were Tower (Records) and big book stores and you’d be considered extremely successful if you sold through forty percent of your magazines and the rest get their covers ripped off and returned. It seemed really wasteful and I guess we decided we weren’t going to try to become the next Magnet or whatever it was. That was not what we wanted to do. And so we decided to focus on the label stuff. And we tried to do an online content thing for a little while. I don’t remember why, but I guess that stopped. The whole thing is that we were not ambitious entrepreneurs in any sense and so it was kind of like a hobby, an expensive hobby. And we got to the point where we were only doing one or two releases a year and Otsu came along and I barely had the energy to work on that. So the label fell by the way side on my part. George has actually been pretty active with it now and has already put out a few releases this year.
Adam: Do you feel like your experience with the label informed anything that you do with Little Otsu?
Yvonne: Both doing the zine and the label lead up to what I’m doing now, it just took me a while to realize that it was a natural progression. I think I was sidetracked by the retail store aspect, but when we started working on our first planner, publishing seemed like the obvious missing ingredient. Again, everything is still a constant learning experience, but the processes involved in doing Zum are completely applicable to what we do now. I first started using Photoshop when I was doing Zum. Like I learned the cloning tool from my friend when I was working on The Beans Crane Wars album cover. As far as marketing and distribution, the idea of needing to get your stuff out there is the same, but doing paper goods is easier by a million because with a record or cd, unless you’re at a listening station, somebody has no idea what is on it which makes it much harder to sell. As opposed to the paper goods where someone can just pick it up and pretty much figure out what’s going on, whether they like it or not. But the music industry is so different now than when we started with digital and everything. We definitely were not on the forefront of that wave. But as far as handshake ethic of working with artists, writing one-sheets, selling to other small stores, working at shows--I think all those things definitely carry over into doing Little Otsu.
Adam: Now, was the label in existence when you were playing in Xiu Xiu?
Yvonne: Yes it was.
Adam: Was it interesting being in a band and also having a small label, kind of being on both sides of the fence?
Yvonne: It was. I think Jamie from Xiu Xiu was definitely more ambitious as far as what he wanted to do, so I don’t think it was even an idea that Zum would put out a Xiu Xiu album. I mean we were trying to hit up Merge and Touch & Go. You know the bigger indie labels. So the fact that we ended up in the Kill Rock Stars family on 5RC (5 RUE CHRISTINE) is kind of cool.
Adam: Yeah, and it’s a testament to as you said someone’s drive if you will.
Yvonne: Yeah, I mean Jamie has always known what he wanted to do. I was just along for the ride.
Adam: Do you guys feel like in this day and age, the idea of a retail space is kind of gone to the wayside? Where you know outside of the argument that people being able to capture I would use the term Point of Purchase or the immediacy of someone walking in the door finding something and loving it right there. Do you think that is falling by the wayside and do you see more places saying you know what, we can put a lot more resources into what we do if we eliminated paying rent and paying for an employee and so forth?
Jeremy: I think it depends on the store. Something about being on the street makes you a giant reminder of your existence as a business. There is something about being in an area where people walk around like in Portland on Hawthorne or Belmont where they are walking to a restaurant and they walk by your store, look in the window and think “oh, that’s kind of cool” or interesting. There is something infinitely easier to that when you are trying to find a gift. Now if you are searching for something like a book or a record, like anything you are searching for would be faster online (searching as opposed to browsing). Personally I think browsing is always better in person. You walk in a book store and the book table is up front and pretty much everyone stops and looks at what’s new. There is something about that that is a little harder to do online I think, however it gets better to shop online all the time. But to summarize, I think the reason storefronts are great is because it’s an experience. I feel like I’m giving you a long answer. So, no-- I don’t think stores are going away. I think stores are changing. Like record stores are now selling vinyl more than anything because vinyl has made a comeback.
Yvonne: I think all that said, there is also something about online stores. I mean all those things you said about overhead and paying employees. You know an online business is open 24/7.
Jeremy: That’s true, but I think that online stores are way more work than people think from the back end of it. But you know what, you don’t have to worry about how it looks in the store. It’s so much easier. The internet is open 24 hours a day and it always looks good, whereas our store is open 8 hours each day. And the store gets dirty, the windows need to be cleaned--it’s kind of a pain in the butt in that respect.
Adam: There is no dust online.
Jeremy: Yeah and our store is very dusty.
Yvonne: That is because the streets are dusty.
Jeremy: The street is very dusty. Another one of the good things about having a store is that we’ve met lots of nice people through the store who are now our friends and I’m not sure otherwise how we would have met them.
Adam: So how do you guys feel cat ownership informs your business decisions?
Jeremy: Hmmm, that is a good question.
Yvonne: Well for one we can’t travel to the store together because one of us has to be home.
Adam: That is a perfect example.
Yvonne: Because they are old and fussy.
Jeremy: While we allow dogs in our store.
Adam: You do?
Yvonne: Except when it’s raining.
Jeremy: I have never said no, but you have to be careful because it’s a paper store. We don’t want to be the people that don’t allow pets in, as we love dogs. As far as the traveling because of the cats, that will get worked out eventually.
Adam: That’s what most people with pets run into. Less with cats but you know what just what you said. If they are old and fussy you’ve got to play parents. This might be a redundant question but, the economy has affected everything. How has it affected you guys?
Jeremy: Well, sales have slowed down for us, like for many other businesses. And because sales are down we have less capital to create projects because we don’t work on credit. So because we have less access to capital we have less of an ability to make projects and we are being more selective. But also there is less demand so even if it was not about capital, when there is less demand you probably should cut down on what you make anyway and kind of strategically make things instead of kind of throwing things out there and seeing what happens, which is fun but a lot easier to do when people are buying more stuff all around.
Adam: Have you noticed a decrease in submissions?
Jeremy: You would think there would be an increase because more people would have fewer jobs and they are trying to get jobs. But I don’t know that I have noticed anything either way to be honest.
Adam: Ok so let me ask the obvious, when is Little Otsu going to have a blog? Yvonne &
Jeremy: We do.
Jeremy: Although many people don’t really know about it.
Adam: So is this a blog where you guys are taking photos and talking about stuff and documenting stuff the way that blogs have become that?
Yvonne: To an extent, I mean we did a lot more of that when we did Vegan Mofo, The month of vegan food writing. I made a concerted effort to blog every weekday. We liked having that frequency of new content and are aiming to get back to more regular posts.
Jeremy: Yeah we try to do it. It’s not something that is as natural for us.
Yvonne: Even though we both did zines. So we are used to writing.
Jeremy: But a zine is seen by a few people, a blog is so massive. You tend to edit yourself and it takes longer than necessary.
Yvonne: We’re definitely not verbal diarrhea type bloggers. We try to edit.
Jeremy: Since I talk a lot you would think it would be natural. For us it’s good, we try to get more artists to do it and when they have it’s been really good. And we’ve been doing a series of Q&As with our artists so people get some additional insight into the way they work. George has written some stuff, like a rundown of his trip to last year’s South By Southwest. We’re trying to get more people to do stuff like that, but it’s tough because everybody is so busy. But this is really the time to do it. We have not been the types to say this is what we had for lunch today. Maybe we would between friends. It’s weirder when it’s about your business.
Yvonne: George got us to sign up for Twitter a couple weeks ago. And even there we are not into overshare. But if someone wanted sort of more regular, less than one hundred and forty word updates everyday, there is that. And we also have a Facebook page, which gets updated with sporadic frequency.
Jeremy: Twitter is almost actually better for us because it’s more like a status update on Facebook. That’s all it is. I like the succinctness of it. You know what I mean? Today for instance at the store we got in our newest project, which is five new greeting cards and a new postcard. And then you can write in twitter, “just got in new greeting cards and they look great.” And you don’t have to say anything else and people can keep up to date with what you are doing. They don’t have to read a giant couple paragraphs about how great they look, if that makes sense.
Adam: Yeah, it’s the difference between calling someone and sending someone a text message. Ok, last question, what have to two of you heard lately, a movie that you saw or a book that you read that got you excited?
Yvonne: We just saw Synecdoche, New York and we all left the theatre still processing it. It was really ambitious, I think as far as a piece of art goes. Good acting.
Jeremy: We saw The Beaches of Agnes at the Portland International Film Festival. It is by a French new wave film director named Agnes Varda. She made an amazing movie called Cleo From 5-7 that is very excellent and I highly recommend you watch it. But she did this movie that is basically her memoir. And it was unbelievable; she had an amazing life and is an amazing person, and totally unique. Just an amazing movie with so many moments that had you smiling all the time. I can’t stop thinking about how much I loved that movie.
Yvonne: You were really excited about the new Bonnie Prince Billy.
Jeremy: Yeah that came out yesterday, I have not bought it yet. I was just in San Francisco, and I was listening to an older album that is so fantastic that I have not spent enough time with which is by Smog and is called Supper. That is such a great album that I’ve been listening to a lot lately.
Yvonne: I’m reading Great Expectations right now, although it’s taking a long time because I have not read in a while.
Adam: That is by Chuck Dickins?
Yvonne: Yeah, Chuck Dickins, because I had not read it in high school. I have been trying to get through those classics.
Jeremy: I just finished a graphic novel called Berlin. It’s placed in the 1920’s in Berlin. Drawn & Quarterly put it out. The drawings are really great and well-researched. I recommend that too.
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