We recently connected with Mike Fisher and have shared our conversation below.
Mike, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Growth is exciting, but from what we’ve seen across thousands of conversations with entrepreneurs it’s also dangerous if costs aren’t watched closely – sometimes costs can grow out of control outpacing revenue growth and putting the viability of the entire business at risk. How have you managed to keep costs under control?
Recently — I suppose because of supply chain issues as well as inflation — costs for material have been increasing. The costs for a minimum order of shirts from my t-shirt printer have increased so much that I have had to raise my prices. The costs have continued to rise.
I decided that I would order twice as many shirts for my next tee design.
The benefit of this decision is that the cost per shirt is reduced, meaning that I can, at least for now, hold off on raising prices for customers.
The downside is that I have to come up with just about twice as much cash to pay for the larger order. Plus, there is a lot more pressure to make sure that the design is going to be popular. Who cares if you have a low cost per shirt if nobody wants to buy one?! Fortunately, I have had enough experience producing shirts that my sense of a popular design is much better than it used to be. Also, I sell prints of my designs, which are very inexpensive to produce, especially when compared to producing a t-shirt. The prints serve as a sort of test-bed for tee shirt production. Any prints that are brisk sellers are certainly considered for t-shirt production!
Mike, 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?
I have always been a visually-oriented person, drawing since I was a kid. I worked for many years in journalism, first creating visuals for newspapers and then creating visuals, including animations, for news web sites. At one point I spent seven years creating nothing but animations for news broadcasts.
The entire time I was creating professional news graphics, I would go home and stay up late working on my own illustrations and animations, always with a heavy sci-fi, fantasy and horror theme. For several years, I created cartoons and illustrations for Starlog magazine, as well as Ad Astra, Modeler’s Resource and the The Comics Buyer’s Guide, among others.
I accepted a buyout from the San Antonio Express-News and am now creating my own retro-inspired imagery, still heavily influenced by the comics, TV shows and movies of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I also accept freelance assignments as well as teach cartooning and motion graphics for the UTSA Southwest School of Art. Recently, I have been turning some of my ink illustrations into 3-D images, using the old-school anaglyph red and blue glasses!
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
For me, attending shows… comic cons, community events, high school fund-raising markets… is very enjoyable and helps me connect with my audience. It’s nice to hear people say things like, “Every time I wear your shirt, somebody says something about it!” So, the personal interaction helps create that important relationship with the customer.
As for the online presence, I stick to Instagram. I really try to make the Instagram interesting, trying different things. Not all of those attempts are successful, but that’s okay! Instagram seems to be the simplest online presence to maintain, although that seems to be changing!
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being able to make a living doing what I love is very rewarding. Interacting with customers is a close second.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: galacticfishproductions
Image Credits
Images by Mike Fisher/©2022