We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aaron John Gregory. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aaron John below.
Aaron John, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
As a pop-up t-shirt brand, most of our entire business model for nearly ten years had consisted of vending at street fairs, maker events, arts and crafts gift shows, comic cons, and even reptile conventions! But once Covid hit, the entire industry of pop-up events with vendors tabling and selling their wares directly to the public came to a screeching halt in California. No more harvest fairs or museum “nightlife” vending opportunities. All we had left as a source of sales was our webstore which, while it does strong sales, was nothing compared to what we would normally do during one weekend at a seasonal, small-town street fair.
Faced with a mountain of inventory taking up space in our tiny Bay Area house, while we too were also stuck at home during the lockdown, we were suddenly dealing with two new problems; a lack of a venue to sell our shirts and a lack of personal space at home.
The perfect solution was to finally pull the trigger on our long-time dream for Cotton Crustacean to open a brick-and-mortar store. It’d provide us with an immediate venue for selling our goods, provide a place for us to store inventory, and give me a space to use as an artist’s studio/back office where I could work to create new designs for the company and more efficiently run the business.
We had to wait till Covid restrictions lightened up a bit in California, allowing non-essential businesses to once again open their doors to the public. And then we had to find the right space.
At first, we applied for a tiny 400 sq ft retail space in a nearby strip mall. While we waited to hear back a confirmation from the property management, I drove by a dream location, located on a corner of Pacifica’s historic downtown main street district, only one block from our massive municipal pier. I peered in through the windows into the massive 1100 sq ft space and saw endless potential. I called the number on the sign and had a walk-through with the property manager that afternoon. I knew the second I stepped in that this was the spot.
We’ve had extremely busy times and very slow times ever since. It’s been a rollercoaster ride so far, but the word is getting out, sales are growing, and we’re having the time of our lives owning this beautiful little store.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
A quick history of who I am, and how I got into the industry:
After spending over 15 years working in the aquarium industry I decided to completely reinvent myself professionally and enrolled in art school at the age of 30.
At first, I attended the legendary Kuber School of Graphic Art in Dover, NJ which is known as an industry boot camp for cartoonists and comic-book artists. After completing a rigorous year there, I then returned to California where I graduated with honors and as valedictorian from the Academy of Art, University in San Francisco with a BFA in illustration. I even studied for a summer during Covid at CSU Monterey Bay as part of the Science Illustration program.
I combined my love and expertise of marine life and natural history with my newfound abilities to illustrate at a professional level and started Cotton Crustacean during my first year at the Academy of Art.
At its heart, Cotton Crustacean is a t-shirt brand. All of our t-shirts feature highly detailed, scientific illustrations drawn by yours truly. Sharks and dinosaurs are our bread and butter.
But with the opening of our first brick-and-mortar in Pacifica, California, we are now also the best natural history museum gift shop you’ve ever been to outside of a museum!
Some of the illustrations I created for our company got the attention of biologists around the world, such as Dr. Helen Scales in Cambridge, England. After discovering an Argonaut Octopus drawing I did online, she tracked me down and brought me on board to illustrate her book, Spirals in Time published by Bloomsbury Publishing. I’ve since illustrated two more books for Dr. Scales, and have done work for The Smithsonian Institute, The Science Channel, Dive Magazine, Harper and Collins, Storey Publishing, Grove Publishing, IDW Comics, and several public aquariums and science museums. All of this freelance commercial illustration work I completed while running Cotton Crustacean with my wife and business partner, Jackie Perez Gratz.
What we do that sets us apart:
We are one of the only, if not the only, American clothing brand dedicated to making unique, illustrated, screen-printed graphic tees focusing entirely on prehistoric and marine wildlife. While similar companies lean heavily on outdoorsman lifestyles including fishing and hunting, we simply celebrate natural history, biology, local ecology, and the weird, unsung fascinating forms of life on this planet.
What sets us apart, even more, is that ALL of our clothing designs are illustrated and designed by me, the company owner and founder. This gives us complete ownership and exclusivity over our designs.
It also gives us the ability to create completely custom designs for other museums, aquariums, zoos, and scientific institutions, catered specifically to their needs and what makes them special. This is becoming rarer and rarer these days as most large-scale public science institutions use the same third-party companies to create and stock their museum gift shops. This means you’re going to see the same great-white shark design at many public aquarium gift shops across the country. What we provide is a means to avoid that, providing unique, curated graphic tees that celebrate what makes these places special.
What we’re the proudest of:
The best feeling is knowing someone learned something new after they’ve visited our store or booth at a pop-up event. Whether they discovered just how many incredible animals lived long before dinosaurs, or just how truly old the earth is, it’s incredible to watch a customer’s face light up with a “whoa!” expression after hearing some truly baffling science fact.
Even better is when hearing that a young child who received one of our shirts as a gift was then inspired to learn more about the animal on their new tee, and eventually becomes enthralled if not outright obsessed with dinosaurs or sharks or some other exciting element of natural sciences. We often have young “fans” that come into our shop and can name all the prehistoric animals on display. Every time this happens—and it is often—it makes our hearts soar.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I have a grand vision of eventually transitioning our new brick-and-mortar location from a Cotton Crustacean-specific store to a Pacifica-focused nature center/micro public aquarium.
The usual products featuring prehistoric life and more exotic animals—the goods and designs that Cotton Crustacean is currently known for—could be moved to another nearby location and continue to do well there. Meanwhile, all the goods and designs we’d provide for sale at the nature center would be curated to showcase and celebrate Pacifica’s rich local wildlife and ecology.
I’ve always dreamt of Pacifica having its own public aquarium or nature center. I was actually part of a group called the Pacifica Ocean Discovery Center which has been working hard for years to generate enough interest and find developers to create such a place. I believe with my current business model and secured location, I have a clear path forward to make a micro version of that vision a reality.
The great thing about a nature center is that its motive for existing isn’t to be profitable, but rather it is to educate and inspire. Cotton Crustacean would own and manage the “gift shop” aspect of it, and use that revenue to pay the overhead of the nature center, which itself could then operate as a separate non-profit entity.
I think it would be a tremendous benefit to the city of Pacifica and its community, providing a place that would inspire education and conservation of our local ecosystems, while also being a draw for tourists to come to our historic downtown area, where they can visit the pier and beaches and shop at the other wonderful local businesses as well.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
I’ve dealt with NFTs in my day job as a product development manager for a major Japanese media company. I have to admit, It took me a bit to wrap my head around it what they were. Ultimately, I’m deeply concerned about the environmental impact of NFTs. But, I also say that with full awareness of how nearly impossible it is to have zero impact on the environment as a maker.
As a t-shirt company, I know how much goes into making each blank garment I buy, whether it’s the production of the actual cotton fabric and/or water used to create the dyes and wash out the final cloth. I’m aware of the energy expenditure needed for the mechanical means of sewing the garments, and the to run the printing machines. Even shipping the blanks from the manufacturer to the screen printer and finally to me has an environmental impact.
But it’s because of that already existing pressure put on the environment by ALL manufacturing of physical goods, whether it’s t-shirts or cars, that makes it feel a bit insane to me to cause even more environmental impact on the world in order to produce products that are not tangible. At best, NFTs are a piece of artwork as valid as any other art, yet one that could have just as easily existed in the physical world with no massive continuous energy expenditure to keep it online on a blockchain. At worse, NFTs are a virtual tchotchke that serves little purpose.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cottoncrustacean.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cottoncrustacean/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cottoncrustacean/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronjohngregory/
- Youtube: @whatlivesdownthere
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cotton-crustacean-pacifica
Image Credits
Photos by Aaron John Gregory.