We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adam Galek a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Adam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

The naming of things is always tough. The name of the business (pronounced The Galaxy) is a play on words with my last name, Galek. Most of my collages, especially early on, have themes of the moon and space, so it seemed very fitting. I also wanted a name that wasn’t going to be limiting, like Galek’s Greeting Cards. Keeping the name on the vague side of things allows for it to evolve and expand more easily into things you can’t necessarily predict when you start the business.

Adam, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My background in artistic and creative things has its roots in music. I started playing drums in middle school, and throughout high school, my 20s and 30s, I made music and collaborated in all sorts of bands with friends. These days, I’m making music through the outlet of my solo project Contagious Yawns.

Coincidentally enough, I got into graphic design and collage, while playing music in a band. The band I was in had recorded some songs and wanted to put out an album and needed some album artwork. We had a limited budget, so rather than paying someone to make art for us, we decided to figure it out on our own. I signed up for a free trial of Adobe Illustrator and really enjoyed messing around in there. It isn’t my finest work to date, but I was able to put some album art together for our band. This was essentially my jumping off point into graphic and visual arts.

I really wanted to dive deeper into graphic design and signed up for a few community courses at the local art school. I got myself more familiar with Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop and InDesign. During that process, friends were reaching out to make flyers for their bands shows ~ those were basically my first gigs. I also really got into the idea of making logos and graphics, and once I felt comfortable enough, I started offering my services as a freelance graphic designer.

The one avenue I gravitated toward the most was collage. I loved finding old, vintage images and giving them a new perspective. One of my earliest collages was a mix of a cowboy on his horse in a field staring out at a large moon. It was initially used as a show poster to promote a friend’s band, and is now a staple in my catalog of work.

A goal of mine had always been self-employment. I never knew how I could achieve this, but continuing down this new path seemed promising. While continuing to work full-time jobs, I slowly expanded on this idea. Over the next few years, I continued to create more collage work and take on freelance design work. In 2017, I opened my Etsy shop and began selling prints of my collages. Over the next few years, I would widen my offerings to greeting cards, notebooks, stickers and calendars. In 2018 and 2019 the business began to elevate as I entered the world of wholesale. Slowly but surely I was getting my goods into shops of all kinds, all across the country, and even abroad. At the end of 2019, I parted ways with my full-time job and was officially self-employed.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

My capital came from working a full-time job during the day and building The Galek Sea at night. It was several years of basically 2 full-time jobs and not as much sleep as I probably should have been getting, but I knew I didn’t want to take out any loans or get myself into debt, so this route suited me the best. I basically lived off of my full-time job and saved and/or invested everything I made from the business back into it.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Working with local business in Portland has been such a pleasure. I knew from early on I wanted everything I sold to be local ~ it really meant a lot to me. All of my greeting cards, prints, stickers, notebooks and calendars are manufactured by other local small businesses and packaged and shipped by me out of my home office/studio.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thegaleksea.com
• Instagram: @thegaleksea