We were lucky to catch up with Stephen & Natalie Morris recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Stephen & Natalie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

For many years, we attended anime and comic conventions as attendees enjoying the various activities and wares for sale. Over time, we noticed that one of our friends had their own unique artistic ability. We encouraged each other’s strengths to design products with an art style that incorporates the elements from Japanese Culture and anime/manga. We believed that other people would share interest in what we had to offer. We started attending conventions studying what made other vendors successful and what challenges they faced along the way. After 5 years of attending conventions, we decided to take a leap of faith and pursue our own business with hopes of returning to future conventions as vendors. Early on, there’s so much to do! Because we were investing our own savings into this, we had to be very thrifty, weighing the risks against our confidence of what we believed would benefit our business the most. Our first year was expensive. Some of this money was used to set up a website, financial business accounts, establish an LLC, pay for state and county business licenses, and other legal fees. A good portion of funds were also used to sample various brands of shirts for our apparel lineup, sticker samples, business cards samples, enamel pins samples, you name it! If we wanted to sell something, we invested into it first and worked diligently with the other businesses to help get the product designs to what we envisioned. We knew that for this to be successful, we had to have a quality product and that if we priced things fairly, people would connect with the art and be able to afford something they would appreciate or be proud of owning. We thought we really had something when we finished our first 3 shirt designs and a handful of posters, patches, and enamel pins. The world threw us a curve ball right as we were ready for our first convention season; the Covid Pandemic shut everything down. Instead of waiting a year to vend at conventions, we pivoted and invested time in reaching out to local small businesses to see where we could showcase our products while we waited for the world to return back to normal. All our hard work and efforts started to pay off. To this day, we reinvest all our sales back into the business to keep it growing. We have so much to offer and many more ideas that we want to see become a reality. With everyone’s support and love, we have been fortunately to make it a successfully growing business for over 3.5 years now. We look forward to continuing our growth, sharing our passion and offering new exciting art and apparel for everyone to enjoy. Thank you!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

An anime convention is a bustling place filled with people of various backgrounds and interests. There are so many unique treasures that you can find at these conventions. We love the adventure of all the activities, like meeting famous voice actors, anime/manga artists, and of course shopping! Attending conventions is a great way to meet other awesome people with similar interests. After many years of attending conventions, we wanted a way to give back to the community that fostered our love. Our goal was to start a business that enabled us to bring our own flavor of unique art and apparel and share it with the convention community.

Mochi Panda Studio, established in 2020, is a partnership working together to share our passion for anime art and Japanese culture. We each have different strengths and skills, which enable us to work very independently, but cohesively towards our common goal. We specialize in selling unique Japanese culture and inspired art and apparel. We are very particular about quality and want everyone’s experience with our products to be exceptional. We offer unique art in a style that can speak across generations and levels of enthusiasts.

We are local to Raleigh, NC. We hope to spread our roots and grow like the Oak City we love. We are very appreciative of our business partners and all the supporters we’ve met at various anime and comic conventions.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Mochi Panda started as an idea in 2019. As we worked on the art and branding for the company, we also investigated various suppliers for their quality and professionalism. We wanted to be more than a business; we wanted to partner with other businesses who shared our philosophy of quality and customer value. After finalizing our first three, anime inspired unique designs, we purchased a total of 150 shirts and inventoried them in various sizes. We also stocked a handful of other small accessories like posters, patches and pins. Originally, our plan was to attend local conventions hoping that our passion for anime art and Japanese culture would be recognized by others. With the pandemic quickly shutting everything down, our dreams of going to a convention to sell our art and apparel left us with despair. We realized we had to do something because we couldn’t let our hard work sit idle on our shelves at home. We took our passion to the streets and started meeting various local small business owners here in the Raleigh area. We met with one of the owners from Niche & Dime in Crabtree Valley Mall. He was impressed with what we had to offer and we connected right from the start. Our art and apparel were selling on their own in the mall! As we designed and released more products in Niche & Dime, other small business owners began taking notice and wanted to stock our products in their stores as well. Working with other small businesses, like Seekers’ Cove in Wake Forest, has really helped Mochi Panda to expand our exposure to enthusiasts all around the Raleigh area. We invested that success back into the business in 2020, which allowed us to create more designs and products by the time conventions opened up in 2021. This was especially exciting because we were finally able to connect with others that recognized our products from the different local small business stores around Raleigh. Our reputation first started with the quality and unique designs that we offered in stores. Interacting with others in person at conventions helped us connect with people who traveled from far away. We want Mochi Panda to be synonymous with unique, high quality art and apparel at a great value while also representing our passion for Japanese culture and anime lifestyle. We believe that sharing that motivation and passion with others can motivate them to chase their dreams and their passions. That kind of positive energy and support is something we can all connect with and it has definitely helped us build our reputation within the market.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

The anime world gives its viewers perspective. Perspective gives an individual the ability to ‘Go Beyond’. Every person involved in Mochi Panda has a different anime/ manga preference that impacts and reflects our own philosophies. Anytime we find ourselves under an unfamiliar ceiling we look toward the things that inspire us. A few of these would be Naruto, My Hero Academia, XXX Holic, Evangelion, Yu Yu Hakusho, Pokemon, Fist of the North Star, Initial D, Bleach, and Death Note just to name a few. Each of us have connected to these animes and mangas that share a common theme of inspiration and chasing one’s passion.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mochipandastudio.com
• Instagram: @mochi_panda_studio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MochiPandaStudio

Image Credits
N/A