TL:DR

• Stick it to the man

• The motto

• Keeping options open

• Album of the week

#1 STICK IT TO THE MAN

When I was a rep at AS Colour, most of the people I'd meet were great. But there was one meeting I was sitting in where the guy pretty much just complained about all the young cowboys in the industry. Essentially calling out (in some cases by name) all the print shops and businesses being run by younger people, most of who I knew and was homies with.

To paraphrase he was saying that these cowboys think they can just start up in this industry and that's not how it works, they don’t know how it actually all worked.

It kind of pissed me off because I knew how hard some of these people worked and how much they were putting into it, so for them to just be written off as cowboys kind of pissed me off. Figured if I was going to be open a spot, I’d happily be classed as a cowboy by this mans.

#2 GOING FULL COWBOY

I’d always wanted to try and start the business, but I had 0 idea on how to do. One day when before I started I was fed up with waiting for stuff to pan out, I just said to my friend “fuck it I’ll judt go full cowboy and figure it out”.

Which is what I did. From getting a lease with no references (and no money really), to getting a 200kg press up two flights of stairs, outfitting, and on countless other occasions we’ve gone cowboy time and time again.

¹ Basically it’s the idea that when things going wrong, or if you haven’t done something you don't have to know what you're doing to start, you can go full cowboy and figure it all out. You don't need permission.

Never forget there are no problems only solutions.

#3 RETAIL (this failed hard)

An original goal was to build up the decoration side of the business, but we also had an accessory catalogue that flopped horrendously. FR I think we did like 2 jobs from it and spent maybe 3-4 months prepping it?

The idea was to sell retail-ready accessories (ashtrays, grinders, mugs, keychains etc.), but also do our own branded ones and sell them into retail stores.

So the name had to be something that’d work on a retail front, which also meant it had to be memorable, figured full cowboy would work for that.

As time's gone on, that retail dream kind of died a slow death. We just didn't have enough hours in the day to put the oxygen into it to really get the fires going.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Cam (who works a few day a week at FC) and I have been friends forever, and when Opera Oblivia came out we’d just turned 20 and would drive around with nowhere to go in his old corolla and listen to it on loud as we could.

Honestly forgot about it till Cam mentioned that Hellions were doing a show to celebrate 10 years of Opera Oblivia (we missed out on tickets if anyone has a plug please let us know).

Had it on repeat and has had us talking about all the dumb stuff we got up to 10 years ago. Been heaps of fun.

Thanks for reading

Anyways, that’s why it’s Full Cowboy. We’re going to be adding printing and embroidery to the end of the name, it gives us a really clear direction and north star going forward.

Going to drop the retail dreams, and double down on what works.

Always full, never half.

Geremy