burger boy

I will succeed because I'm crazy. 2025 mantra

If I may momentarily break keyfabe, I think the deal with D.B. Cooper is most likely that cops are just bad at finding people.

New D.B. Cooper theory: he went somewhere the cops didn't look

Things are bad right now.

As many of you know, way back in 2020 we weren’t sure if our business was gonna make it. Our factory was already on break for Lunar New Year–a month-long holiday for many businesses in the area–and with the announcement of COVID19, everything shut down indefinitely. We knew immediately we were in for a bad time. Despite our fears, our sales grew so far beyond anything we ever expected, to the point where we had to hire two employees just to keep up with demand! 

Unfortunately, even after our factory reopened, our problems were not over. Their quality drastically declined almost immediately, to the point that a significant amount of our  fabric would literally fall apart in transit between the factory and our office. Because of this, we discovered that our sales rep had no idea what she was doing and knew nothing about the factory she was representing, so when we told her the fabric was garbage her response was “👍 factory said it’s good!” At the beginning, only roughly 10% of our new product was defective and we were able to sell the affected items with a reasonable discount. By the end of our relationship with that factory, 40% of our midi skirts and 70% of our miniskirts were defective, some affected so severely that they practically fell apart when touched. And still, our rep said everything was fine and there were no problems and the fabric composition had not changed.

So in 2022 we changed factories. We hired Ash to handle this since I was way too busy managing fulfillment to do the amount of research and communication necessary to find us a factory that met our criteria. Finding clothing factories that can make clothing over a size 2-3X is significantly more difficult than one that can’t because it often requires larger and more expensive machinery. But Ash did it: she got us set up with a new factory that has excellent certifications for both their labor practices and their methods for textile production, that delivers consistent, high quality sewing on well made fabric that can be printed without suffering loss in detail–and she was armored with the knowledge for what makes a quality garment so she could check them if they tried to screw us on quality. Their minimum orders were way higher than our previous factory’s, so we decided to focus on ordering more units of fewer designs. We ordered way too much our first round–some of those designs were in stock until the 2024 blowout sale! But it worked out, and slowly we had a warehouse full of stuff to sell.

Fast forward to 2024, business is slowing down between the economy being bad and what seemed to be a general skirt fatigue amongst our customers. We tried expanding into shirts, which would’ve been successful if our minimums were lower. In the late spring we realized we were in trouble if we didn’t make drastic changes and we ultimately decided to end in-house fulfillment and transfer to a third party fulfillment center that would support domestic shipping in Canada and eventually the UK, EU, and Australia. In order to make that transition affordable we drastically discounted everything and that sale was super successful! We were able to begin shipping from the fulfillment center with an almost clean slate, even if it did mean having to close the store for almost two months and thereby missing out on two very important months of sales.

Unfortunately, we were stupid. We continued to order new designs on an every other month schedule instead of switching to an every month schedule, forgetting that having a backstock in a variety of designs is what previously helped us float between orders and now we quite literally didn’t have enough inventory to match the sales we made for last year’s holiday sale.

That brings us to now.

We’re a little stuck. We have a round of skirts in production (yay!) but they won’t get here until February (boo!). To get back on that monthly cycle we would need to order the next round of skirts right now, but we can’t pay for production until that next round of skirts gets here; if the current sale goes well, it’s paying payroll, not production. We are currently in the very difficult, horrible situation of not having enough money for next month’s payroll unless we are somehow able to make significant sales with our very sparse inventory.

We’re scrappy and we do our best to adapt to disasters and I’m sure we’ll find a way to adapt to this one as well, it’ll just take us some time to get there. Basically we’re going to be okay eventually–hopefully later this year–but in the meantime if we seem frantic, now you know why. 

If you’re been considering trying out our viscose shirts but haven’t been able to justify paying full price, they’re on clearance PLUS half off right now! That’s $9-$15 for the viscose tops, and other tops on clearance are $20-$45. Some of the shirts we’re having a LOT of trouble selling are now priced below cost to help us recoup some of the money we spent making them.

Any amount of support helps right now. Sharing posts, telling your friends, buying a $9 shirt–all of it helps. If our clothing isn’t your thing, we also have a Patreon you can support for as little as $1 a month. https://www.patreon.com/mayakern

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great rest of your day and that 2025 is a brighter, kinder year for us all.

SALES LINK???? WITHOUT A SALES LINK I CAN'T BUY ANYTHING.

you are so right!!

honestly i was not expecting people outside of our immediate customer base to see this post, but i can see a bunch of you are sharing it and i really appreciate it.

for those of you who don't already know us, we are a small business run by me (maya) and my wife devin. we design and sell ethically made, size inclusive clothing that is made to last.

our staple are fun, illustrated skirts that fit sizes XS-8X and have pockets deep enough to fit an entire nintendo switch, joycons and all.

we also have some cute shirts and sweaters that fit sizes S-6X, which are super duper on sale right now!

plus our new loungewear set and a couple dresses as well!

i’m a real wizard btw

Do you know any spells?

no.

You get a Sea Mullet

this feels like a bit. i know it’s not but this is so absurd that it feels like it’s right out of arrested development

it honestly really sucks to have people blowing up my inbox wanting validation for their autistic or queer identity all the time. you have no idea how many questions i get like that. like multiple per day. why are you treating me like i am an authority on your life. i don't know you, you don't know me. why are you giving someone else that responsibility? you get to decide. that's it. that's the freedom, that is the responsibility. you decide. it's on you.

what people are really asking is for me to make them feel better about who they are and to give them a sense of community belonging. i'm sorry, i cannot actually do that. i can say nice reassuring things that you deserve to hear but it is no replacement for you actively claiming who you are for yourself and participating in building community with other people so that your identity can be expressed and seen. there is no shortcut for that. nobody else can give it to you. you have to claim it. with your actions.

and what if i said Dylan G. song

���how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

"how did you get into writing" girl i've been tormented by the visions since i was eight years old

I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know

I think...you might be right

what the fuck

this duck LOVES pink drink

Torture to be a fan of any exotic animal when it's like. 90% of the footage of them is gonna be from dodo videos of people illegally keeping them as housepets . Really wish I could enjoy this video of a lynx but I also kinda wish everyone involved would die

the always relevant

crazy thang is whenever someone makes a post talkng about how xyz thing annoys them someone will always go 'oh so we're not even allowed to do [thing] anymore??' like no you literally can. that person just will not like you. if that is enough to stop you then its not that youre not allowed its that you are not capable of existing outside of the approval of others

why are you asking for permission. begging? are you a dog or a man

there it is

The very basics of feminism, i think, is the acknowledgment that for every form of oppression that women face there is simply not an equal and opposite force. It does not exist and attempts to create such forces are historically always anti-feminism, a way to shut up women or otherwise take attention away from them in their own movements. “Men also suffer under the patriarchy” is like, the modern most “feminist” restatement of this idea i think, and it serves to soften or draw attention away from the fact that opting into patriarchy lends men a ton of power.

moment of unspeakable beauty today when one of my coworkers called another coworker "judas" for not splitting a can of white monster with her, and i got to watch the guy who sits next to me open a new google tab, type in "jeudis," and say quietly to himself "french thursday...?"

Switching between these every day

look man, i dont know how to say this but like. i would love to use you as a stepping-stone to my own perfect vision of the future. do you like me back