Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joshua Marchant. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Joshua, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

My most meaningful project hands down is the project I am currently working on called Roscoe’s World. Roscoe’s World is an animated story about a boy (Josh) & his dog (Roscoe). Who find themselves on an adventure in another world filled with alternate versions of Josh’s dog Roscoe. These alternate versions of Roscoe are famous people throughout our history, Like Julius Ceasar, The king of England, and George Washington who I call Geroge Roscoton. With these friends they meet on their travels through Roscoe’s World they work together to find the portal home. Unfortunately a couple of cats (Chloe & Ziggy) have also found Roscoe’s World and they want to change this world and make it a paradise of their own, a world without dogs. It’s a race to the finish line to get home before Chloe & Ziggy destroy Roscoe’s World. Now that is the short answer. Here is the long answer. Roscoe’s World is about the Special bond and love we have for our four-legged family members. and the loss and pain we feel in our hearts when they pass away. The characters of Roscoe’s World are based on real-life pets. Roscoe was my dog, He was a miniature Schnauzer. Roscoe died in February 2021. Roscoe was born with a cyst in his stomach. I tried to remove it when he was a puppy but the placing of it made it difficult to remove safely. The vet said that he would live a regular life but at some point, the cyst would grow too big for his body, and then I would have to put him down, And that is exactly what happened, Roscoe was 13 years old when the cyst finally grew too big for his body and he could no longer live a pain-free life. I had no choice but to let him go. Roscoe gave me some of the best moments of my life. This was the least I could do. Let me tell you when the moment came to euthanize him. It was the worst moment of my life. If you have never been in the room when this happens, let me tell you it is soul-crushing. Chloe & Ziggy were also real-life pets. Chloe was my nieces’ cat and Ziggy was my aunt Tonja’s cat. Both cats have also passed on. Are you starting to see a theme? All the pets in Roscoe’s World now and in the future are all pets that were at one moment in time alive but have now passed on. I want Roscoe’s World to be the story you tell kids when the family pet dies, I know it sounds dark but I want it to be a hopeful story. Your pet’s story doesn’t have to end here it can continue on in Roscoe’s World. Because at the moment the only pets that are in Roscoe’s World are Roscoe, Chloe & Ziggy. But as the story continues I want to fill Roscoe’s World with everyone’s pets. Can you see your pet going on an adventure with Roscoe or Chloe? I sure can. As of right now, I have only completed the first volume of Roscoe’s World. I have plans for at least 8 to 10 volumes of Roscoe’s World. All the volumes will follow the same storyline. The loss of our pets. As I wrote the story for Roscoe’s World I wrote it with an underlying message. This message is about the 5 stages of grief and how you go through the 5 stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Each volume will deal with each stage. Volume 1 is about denial. Each stage will change Roscoe’s World for better or worse by the end of it all Roscoe’s World will be completely different than it is now. You will just have to read each volume to see how it ends up. So that is the overall story of Roscoe’s World. Here is what I have finished. As I said before I have just finished the first volume of Roscoe’s World, I have a kid’s book that is the main story (Available for a digital copy on Kindle and Marchandize.com starting August 1, 2023). I have a coloring book and an activity book with 80 puzzles. (available September or October this year) I have a lot of merchandise for Roscoe’s World everything from T-shirts, hoodies, drinkware, games, bedroom products, and school products. plus so much more. All of it is available NOW at Marchandize.com. Also part of the profits earned from the sale of Roscoe’s World products will go to fund a charity I created called Roscoe’s Dawgs. This charity will help families pay for the end-of-life costs that come when their pet dies. I have personally designed each and every single item that has anything to do with Roscoe’s World or Roscoe’s Dawgs. I have spent the last year and a half creating and designing everything. I also have a lot of future plans besides finishing the other volumes of Roscoe’s World. I have plans for the popular card and board games, I just need to get the licensing first but once I do I will release them. I have plans to create several video games about Roscoe’s World and I have plans to create an animated series on youtube, I will start that next year. I created Roscoe’s World shortly after Roscoe died, kind of by accident. I was working on another project and I needed a picture of a dog. I created a picture of a dog as a pharaoh. once I finished it I thought you know this could make a cool idea for a coloring book. and after that, it just exploded and grew to what it is today this monster project that I will spend the next ten years or more creating (hopefully). So as you can see this is a very big project, especially since as of right now I am the only one designing, writing, and creating everything. But I hope as time goes on and Roscoe’s World becomes successful I can work with other creators to make Roscoe’s World bigger and better than I ever dream it could be.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For those that didn’t read my article before. My name is Joshua Marchant, I am a creative designer. which is funny to hear me say, because as a kid I didn’t have a single creative bone in my body. In fact, I wanted to be a lawyer but after high school, I discovered that studying the law is incredibly boring. I was lost for a while because I was always so sure that I knew what I wanted to be. After many years of not really knowing what or who I wanted to be. I discovered that I really enjoyed being my own boss. Working for myself. After many failed attempts to start my own business, I fell into being a creative designer or graphic designer by accident. I started a company called Marchandize. Marchandize has been many different kinds of things over the years from a marketing company to even a jewelry store. in 2018 my father was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer and to top it off he also had thyroid cancer as well. I quit my job to help him fight. and I am thankful I did because he beat both cancers, it took several years but once it was time for me to go back to work covid19 happened, and see how it could affect my father I decided to put that off. Seeing how I had all this extra time I decided to learn a skill. I taught myself how to design using adobe illustrator, I kept learning all the other programs and decide that since I was pretty good at it, I changed Marchandize once again to be a custom appeal company. Since then I have created several other companies and I work every day all day to see that they succeed. Now I call myself a creative designer because I feel calling myself an artist would be an insult to other artists. I have nothing but respect for what other artists can create and it takes great skill and talent to do that. I did not go to school to learn how to design everything I know I taught myself. So I may not know how to do all the tricks of the trade but what I do have is a very big creative imagination and the ambition to see that creation come to life. I am not afraid to learn a new skill to make my project work. I have done work for other clients but I mostly work on my own projects like Roscoe’s World.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

This one is easy for me. What drives me is success. In my last article with you, I told you about how I got to where I am today and how I could have never imagined this life when I was younger. I have had so many failures, From the very beginning when I wanted to be a lawyer, going to school to study law. to get an internship at the Sandy City court office, All the work I put into it to make that dream come true only to realize that I don’t like it and quit. Then starting my company Marchandize when I was 23 years old only to watch it fail over and over again with different attempts to make it work. I have spent the last 13 years working on a single dream to be successful in whatever I do. Success doesn’t mean money or getting rich. It means to be great at what I do. Not to have to rely on a regular job and work regular hours and have a regular life. There is nothing wrong with that if that is what you want. but I want more than that. I am 36 years old I have no wife, no kids, and no prospects of that ever-changing anytime soon, I live my life for my dreams and ambitions. I spend every single day chasing one thing to make my business successful. Doing whatever I have to, to make that dream come true. sacrificing whatever I have to, to make that come true. and it would be a real letdown if I can’t make that work. If everything I tried to do failed. and I have to be honest there are days when I feel that is exactly what is going to happen. Fortunately for me, My views on failure are different than most. There is only one way to fail at anything you do in life and that is to give up. You can fail over and over again and not consider yourself a failure. but once you give up and throw everything you have accomplished away then you truly are a failure.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

Awe NFTs. Well if you had asked me this question a year ago I would have given you a completely different answer. Let me start at the beginning, A little over a year and a half ago when NFTs were a hit and everyone was talking about them, I started my own NFTs collections. In fact, they are still up for sale on Opensea.io. NFTs were the project I was referring to earlier when I told you about Roscoe’s World. Before I created Roscoe’s World I created NFTs I have quite a few NFTs. But I notice one thing, Everyone was doing Character NFTs. That was when I created the Pharaoh Roscoe NFT which sparked my idea for Roscoe’s World. Anyways I learned a lot about NFTs and I felt without a doubt that NFTs were going to be the next big thing for the Internet. I created my own NFT company called SIN or Syndicated Idea Network. This company was going to be all about WEB3. and get a head start on the future. Our NFT projects were going to be about making real money by creating real programs with our NFTs. Roscoe’s World had a great program for an NFT project. but that didn’t work out due to the Howey test. So I scrapped it. Anyways I felt that getting a head start ahead of everyone else would be great so that when NFTs really took off I would be ready. But that did not quite work out that way. lol Unfortunately there are just way too many people pulling scams with NFTs due to there being no oversight on the blockchains. Not to mention the gas fees to mint NFTs. All of that combined completely destroyed NFTs from taking off. At least any time soon. Now I still believe that NFTs will become a big deal in the future due to the world going more and more into AR or VR because after all NFTs are what populate the AR and VR worlds that will be created. But there needs to be a huge overhaul of the idea of NFTs first before anything great can come from it.  

Contact Info:

• Website: Marchandize.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sin_syndicate/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Marchandize.co
• Other: I am getting ready to complete change all of my social media channels for both Marchandize and Roscoe’s World. So a lot fo this will change soon but they can always reach me on my website Marchandize.com for my email Joshuam@marchandize.com