Ret-Con
[Barny Cusp] New Things! A brand new On the Cusp and startling new Forbidden Film! Either of which is good enough to make your pants explode.
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Zeitgeist Factor Four, Mr. Sulu!
Chapter 3 – The enlearnening
In this episode our plucky heroes learn an important lesson about life, love and marketing.
[Barny Cusp] Around the corner we just passed…We here, at Hardlywood (being the cousins Cusp) have had, and continue to have, a surfeit of, while not necessarily good certainly numerous (and in some cases quantity may actually be a substitute for quality), ideas that we have endeavoured, at some expense (in both time and crayons), to bring to both the light of day and market (our limited experience telling us that this is the sort of time markets are likely to be open). While we feel, with absolutely no justification, that our ideas would translate into products that, in some form or another, would be both entertaining and, most important, marketable such has not been readily realised. We have made the grave, yet somewhat predictable, error in judgement of putting the metaphorical horse before the equally metaphorical cart and created products for sale before establishing an audience at the market (which if you are following closely is both a metaphor and not really one).
This has resulted in the above (or possible hereforto) effort being slightly incongruous with limited success in the column of accounting that is usually attributed to “the black”. While only a pedant would argue that the other column (“the red”) actually has much in it either we have, after some deliberation, inwards reflection and beverages, decided to forgo the section of this illustrious endeavour (we make comics or something I think) until such time as our audience demands said products from us (presumably when we are well-known enough that they seek to show their “coolfulness” to other patrons in the “matter universe”). At this future juncture we will, of course, be willing to create and distribute (for shiny gold rocks) any number of cheesy, ill-thought out items of merchandise.
For the other issue we find at hand is what has been described (by those in the know) as a certain lacking in the quality of products created by Cafepress. The advantages of said systems are numerous (set-ups costs are insignificant and distribution global and simple) but in some key elements we feel that various aspects of the shirts (their mugs are, by contrast, fine) are less than ideal. We hold ourselves to a high (and some might say at odds with our personal hygiene) standard and are recalcitrant to put our name and imagineering towards products that we would not be wholly satisfied with ourselves. Thank you for your kind consideration.
[Johnny Cusp] The short of it is that the image quality produced by Cafepress does not consistently meet our requirements. As such we will be taking down all designs which are being manufactured below a standard we consider acceptable. This also means that there will be no new designs until we have enough demand to warrant moving to a process of high quality output but one in which the manufacturing costs are outlaid before the sale.