We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sket One Andrew Yasgar. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sket One below.
Alright, Sket One thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?
The most innovative thing for me personally, and my business would have to be the fact that I do not rely on one stream of revenue as an artist. Every single month my job description can change from doing corporate design work to creating murals for clients to creating my own personal art, whether that be canvases, designer, toys, designer, custom toys, having different streams of revenue, and being very versatile in many different areas of being an artist I am very grateful for. Having to work for yourself and be your own boss you need to stay consistent and motivated and having options is a big benefit, especially in today’s economy. You need to be prepared..
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.
My name is Andrew Yasgar I go by the name Sket one. I grew up, primarily a graffiti writer/artist in Connecticut.. Around 1996 I was a creative Director at the sign shop, and in 2000 I became an art Director at a marketing firm called Silverman Group which I still hold a position as VP of creative services. In 2003 I stumbled upon a small art subculture of designer toys with meeting Tristan Eaton at Mark Bodè’s art show in New York City.. I was given the chance to designed for an unknown company at the time Kidrobot and that started my career in designer toys.. a Subs genre of this particular movement was custom choice, which was creating one of the time pieces of art/toys which I took a liking too. As I started to show my artwork, I started to include these custom toys, along with canvas artwork, and creating a Crossover of every day. Products with these toys became a very big moment in my career.. because I worked in the marketing world learning about branding and logo design, I realized mashing up these two worlds would bring a comfort or a familiar reality to the viewer. These pieces have been my most popular, and through that have gotten to work with companies like Huy, Fong foods/Sriracha and jinro the Korean Soju company to name a couple. Being able to cross over audiences who enjoy these products and have brand loyalty and a new and different light. Being a designer now for 20 years plus, I’ve always wanted the world of commercial art and fine art to live as one, and if the commercial world could understand that having an artists brand affiliated with their particular brand would help and be a new form of promotion to expose new people to a new product and a new idea Has always been a personal mission of mine.
Have you ever had to pivot?
When you are in business for yourself, you will learn you will have to take risks and having different skills set is very beneficial when those risks rear they’re ugly head. When Covid hit most of my design work for the marketing firm dried up, we mainly focus on events and event promotion, so when the doors were shot on large crowds gathering. Personally, I had to find another way to survive this particular situation.. it just so happened that it was a very busy year for me, producing toys and creating new products and with everyone being at home and wanting to dress up their immediate surroundings what better way to do it with some cool art so I focused my attention on my art releases, and my product releases giving unique and very rare opportunities for people to own pieces and doing so I was able to weather the storm and get through paying for bills and surviving for this. I am completely grateful for to persevere that Storm was a big deal for me personally, and showed myself that given the challenge, I can make it all work
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
I took on manufacturing my own product very early in my career. I was approached by a company out of Singapore called play devil to fund and produce my first toy. The manufacturing process to me at the beginning was an unknown I was introduced to the factory, and from that point was shown in the process of designing a toy step-by-step.. talking with other artist that I’ve done this process before, was also very helpful. Today this process is a lot easier and a lot more trust worthy with sites like Alibaba that have insurance protection to make sure that the money that you invest will become a product and delivered.. there’s a lot of extra fees that people don’t realize that come in to play when you produce something overseas receiving product from overseas there’s taxes, and then there’s fees of getting the product scanned at port and getting the product from port to your particular warehouse. Manufacturing your own product is a very big task but well worth it once received and you start selling there are distribution companies out there that could help you reach new clients, new stores and people to carry your product. All this did not exist 15 years ago within the genre of designer toys it has grown so much in the last 20 years as a viable business, both through brick and mortar stores and online stores
Contact Info:
- Website: Sket-one.com
- Instagram: @sket_one
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sketoneproductions?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewyasgar
- Twitter: @sketone
- Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mWYaQNK1ifg&pp=ygUIU2tldCBvbmU%3D