We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex and Oje Loveman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex and Oje below.
Alex and Oje , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The “100 Pajamas Coloring Book” characters were created for children in our family and extended/created families to color during Covid lockdown in 2020. These illustrations are full of joy. The characters are unique, drawn perfectly imperfect, and are a collaborative manifestation of finding fun in times of turmoil. Our nephew was very late to coloring within the lines. His sisters were both perfect colorers. He didn’t like to color, because he was unable to stay within the lines. Wow, he was amazed when we showed him our first character that broke the border line, that refused to stay within the lines. He really began coloring with our illustrations! It was great, goosebumps great. With our new book, “100 MORE Pajamas Coloring Book,” we’ve gone even further with that concept. The penguin wears pinstripe pajamas, but one arm of the penguin also got accidentally pinstriped. We loved the penguin’s expression so much that we decided to run with it, striped arm and all. Another character, the warthog, has a blackened tooth. We tried three versions of this character and each time, we kept coming back to the first one, because the expression is so dear. Who cares that the warthog has a blackened tooth? That happens to teeth sometimes. We are a unique coloring book because there is no coloring book like ours. There are no characters like ours. One of the things that we love most is seeing how you make our characters yours! So, send us your colored pages, tell us your ideas. Maybe, your idea will be featured in our next series edition of 100 Pajamas.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Alex Loveman is an artist and illustrator and loves drawing these quirky animals in quirky pajamas. Oje Loveman has a background in marketing and education and together with their nieces and nephews created “100 Pajamas Coloring Book,” and 100 Pajamas Brand. About ready to release their new, “100 MORE Pajamas Coloring Book,” the 100 Pajamas team is excited to be speaking with CanvasRebel! Thank you, CR. At 100 Pajamas, we encourage creativity and self-guided play. Our backgrounds are intentionally blank, and each character is drawn perfectly imperfect. Place your character wherever you like, in an underwater scene, or on top of a rainbow. What we are absolutely most proud of is how children and adults joyously respond to our characters. A walrus is the smartest pinniped, and our walrus is lit up bright in their lightbulb pajamas. A butterfly has thousand of eye facets, and a snail has teeth on its tongue! It’s like our Grandma used to say: “We are all so perfectly imperfect!” And then she’d smile her big toothy grin, and kiss us on our cheeks. 100 Pajamas is a family affair; we are delighted for the chance to be welcomed into yours!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
You asked us to share a journey that illustrates our resilience; we are literally in the middle of that story right now!! Haha. Our book designer uploaded images for the book to our publisher, who then sent them to the printer. The printer sent us a proof, and it looked great. A proof is a printed version of the uploaded files; it’s our chance to see what the “100 MORE Pajamas Coloring Book” will look like when it is published. We OK’d the proof and were excited to order our first copies. But, when those first copies arrived, the character outlines, the coloring book images, the entire interior of the book was printed grey. In our first 100 Pajamas Coloring Book the images are crisp black contour lines, outlines, ready to be joyfully colored. But our first copies of the new book were a dismal sad grey. (REST ASSURED, this has been fixed! and here’s how…) We went back and forth with the book designers and with the publisher and with the printers. We reordered proofs and wrote elaborate emails, and patiently waited. We kept coming up short. Eventually, through diligence and patience, we discovered that the files were sent in one color pattern but needed to be sent in a different color pattern; our original uploads were RGB, and they needed to be CMYK. Whew, well, now we’ve figured that out. Time was and is important, though. A very popular holiday gift giving season is upon us and our window is short. We stayed polite. We smiled until we got a yes. We kept our email open throughout the night. We implored, we cajoled, we nurtured and we reminded. We reminded ourselves how wonderful a team we have and of our good fortune to have them. We reminded our team of their importance and their professionalism and tenacity. Being mindful helped us keep our heads. All of us. Together, we figured out the problem, and together, we solved it. In the end, it was a very simple problem with a very simple solution. Oh, hindsight. Oh, the simplest answer is most likely the best answer. Oh, figuring out WHAT QUESTIONS TO ASK is the BIG ASK. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, and yes, “100 MORE Pajamas Coloring Book” is Out Now, and yes, it is in high contrast, black contour lines! It is simply ready for you and all your wonderful colors.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
The most effective strategy we know for growing clientele is HUSTLE. We attended NY Toy Fair 2023 at Jacob Javitz Center in New York. We didn’t have a booth, or even a ticket. Equipped with sample “100 Pajamas Coloring Book” pages, we descended upon the Javitz Center’s lunch rooms and restaurants. We gave out more than 150 coloring pages, and talked with more than 600 people about our brand. We were lucky to meet Create a Castle co-founders, Kevin and Laurie Lane, artist, Laurence Gartel, and April Showers, author of We Are Afro Unicorns! Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, and Clifford the Big Red Dog all posed for photos with our 100 Pajamas Coloring Book. We made red carpet videos for our social medias, and collected many business cards. Then, we followed up. While living in Brooklyn, one of our team cold called the Brooklyn Museum gift shop, walked in with books in hand, and got their buyer at the time to say yes! The same thing happened when we walked the coloring book into The Rare Bear in Woodstock, NY and into Atomic Books in Baltimore. In Miami, we were talking with the gift shop manager at ICA, Institute of Contemporary Art, and she introduced us to her friend that was doing a pop up shop that very night in the arts district. Twenty coloring books sold. Hustle.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.100pajamas.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/100pajamas/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/100pajamas/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-logan-11b088210/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/100Pajamas
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AAlex+and+Oje+Loveman&s=relevancerank&text=Alex+and+Oje+Loveman&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1