hello hello and hello!

you’ve probably noticed things have been more than a little slow around here lately, and it seems to have been years since our last release. we’ve received several e-mails wondering when we’ll be releasing new designs, or even restocking the ones we have now. thanks for being so patient! it probably isn’t noticeable from the outside, but Linty Fresh has been going through some big changes internally. among many other things, Linty Fresh now has a new home. it got a little crazy around here during the tear-down, relocation, unpacking, and reorganizing of our entire inventory, [so if anyone's order seemed to take longer than it should have to get shipped, or wrote an e-mail that took a while to receive a reply, we apologize! it won't ever happen again. . .hopefully.]

but now that the dust is finally starting to settle, it can be said that we have two—you read that right: TWO—new designs being released sometime in September. one by yours truly, eric terry, and one by me, shea trenbeath. [you were wondering why you kept reading 'we' didn't you? admit it, you were.] since this is my first release under the Linty Fresh banner, i’m a little nervous about its reception. my design style is. . .a lot different from what goes on around here. i’ll try to start off a little more consistent with what’s been done in the past, and we’ll see how it goes from there.

for those that don’t know me, I’m shea trenbeath [if you didn't catch that earlier] I’ve known eric for quite some time, and always have been impressed at his design skills. i myself started dabbling in graphic arts over ten years ago when I was in high school. after graduating from kennesaw state university with a BFA in fine arts with a concentration in graphic design, i worked for the university’s college of the arts for a few years in their PR department. my art director, joshua stone [who's a stellar designer, by the way] and i made up the entire design staff, creating over a hundred pieces of work for all four departments in the college of the arts every semester. so my forte is print/advertising, but i also love illustration. and as much as I hated leaving ksu, i had, and still have, a wife to support and bills to pay, so i found a position teaching graphic arts & communications at a local high school. and this is where i am now, along with keeping things running as smoothly as possible here while eric is building Linty Fresh v2.0 : The China Edition.

in the mean time, you can start checking back here a lot more often, as things will start picking up. and tell your friends!

Hey guys! I’m here. Still not dead. Just, as you might imagine, crazily busy with life. For the past 6 weeks I’ve been working yet again as a substitute teacher at a local preschool. Between that, continuing to jump through hoops in setting up Linty Fresh China, and a recent obsession with documentaries, I’ve been online only sporadically in the last month. It’s funny, other Americans here will mention to me some news item from back home and I’ve just got this blank stare on my face… I’m more and more disconnected from stuff back in the States.

And that disconnect has pros and cons. As I’ve mentioned before, I think my life here is less stressful (though busy) than the one I left back in America. I feel healthier, too, since the diet here contains less meat and more fruits and veggies. And I’m getting a lot more exercise as well. I should get a pedometer. I think I’m averaging 2 miles a day. But life here has its drawbacks. Getting ripped off, getting hit by cabs, busses, and other motorists, and food poisoning are daily concerns. But you learn to take that sort of stuff in stride after awhile. Taking advantage of my downtime, I’ve found, is essential. A couple hours a day where I can just unplug from the world and relax. It’s important to maintaining my sanity.

So, I mentioned documentaries. In the month of July I watched about 3 a week. I do this a lot, get on these kicks where I’m sort of addicted to one genre or artist or director or whatever. And this month I [almost] totally boycotted traditional cinema to quench a sudden thirst for some reality. I started off with four Michael Moore films: Capitalism: A Love Story, Sicko, Bowling for Columbine, and Farenheit 9/11. The first two were my favorite. If you haven’t seen any of these, you should. You may not agree with all of it, and of course every form of media is slanted one way or another, but the insights and questions raised are worth thinking about.

I still remember this one day, about 8 years ago, in my junior year at Harrison High School in Kennesaw, sitting in American History class. Our teacher was going through the events leading up to the close of World War 2, and in his discussion of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he skimmed over a lot of the details of the aftermath of the bombs, the effects of radiation, and the tens of thousands of innocent citizens killed. Now, having grown up in Hawaii, where the population is roughly 25% Japanese-American, I’d known a different story about these bombs. I knew about the propaganda (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that had been built into the media in America to make the Japanese look like crazed animals, and the plans that had been in place to drop more nuclear bombs throughout the country. It just didn’t seem like a very objective recounting of history, so I raised my hand and challenged him on it.

I guess what I’m getting at is that, one thing that’s always gotten under my skin is mankind’s proclivity to adopt baseless prejudices. We’re always looking to label people, to measure them up and put them in a box and figure out what makes us better between them and ourselves; to find a reason to put ourselves first. It’s funny to me that these invisible, manmade lines in the ground have had such a profound grip on our psyches for all these years. And I see it here too, the gap between rich and poor, the haves and have-nots.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the few travels that I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy, it’s that we’re all people. We have families, people we love, hobbies and habits, pets, favorite foods, things that make us laugh. We’re equal.

And to conclude this post that’s arguably way too deep to be on a tshirt blog, I give you a picture of the current view outside my balcony window.

You may have seen this on my Flickr – it’s the latest LF product for China. Sort of a spur-of-the-moment creation. I was downtown looking for shipping materials and came across a place that sold blank tote bags. I bought a box full of them, dropped them off at my printer, and told them I’d send a design for it the next day. When I got home I put some sketches together, one of which later turned into this kid playing a ukelele. Sent the design over and had the printed bags back at my apartment in 4 days. Gotta love the turn around!

Got an email from a fan yesterday regarding a tattoo he’d gotten of Keith. I was a bit skeptical until I was emailed the picture above. Wow! That’s dedication!

Writing a new blog post has been on my list of to-dos for awhile now, and I’m only now getting around to it after a couple of months of pure insanity. To make a long story short, I had an issue with my passport that required me to temporarily leave the country. So, for a few weeks, I’m staying with my parents in Georgia while I wait on some paperwork to be sorted so I can return with a renewed visa. I have a lot to say about being back in the states and getting reacclimatized to American life, but to put it succinctly it’s been a difficult transition. More so than I would have thought. I feel like a stranger here and miss “home” (yeah, China), like crazy.

It’s weird how being in a foreign country can change so much in such a short period of time. Coming back to the USA and being reunited with all the things that used to mean so much to me has been a weird experience. Things I thought I really missed, it turns out, aren’t all that important anymore. And I’m talking possessions here, not people or relationships. (Yeah, this blog post is about to get introspective and personal, be forewarned)

Relationships are what matter in life. Period. The good ones. The ones that count. The ones that will be around for good. We all hear that a lot, but sometimes we forget to really think about it. A good friend of mine once told me something I’ll never ever ever forget on this subject. He first asked me who I’d miss the most if they passed away. I guessed it’d have to be my parents. He asked why. Because they are family, because they love me, because I’ve known them all my life I said, etc etc. But he challenged all that. He said that wasn’t it at all. He said I’d miss them because they do more for me than anyone else. Therefore, he said:

“If you want people to miss you when you die, be a person that always does things for other people.”

That was several years ago, and though it took me awhile to really put it into action, I never forgot it. And as I get older and meet new people from different backgrounds, cultures, and social statuses, the more I realize that this simple measuring stick for relationships is totally reliable.

The fact is, we all have a selfish streak in us. Society tells us that it’s only the ladder-climbers, the back-stabbers, and the throat-cutters that get anywhere in life. But they don’t ever tell us exactly what kind of a place that “anywhere” is. The truth is, there’s only one rung at the top of the ladder, and the top of money pile is a lonely place to sit.

In the four years of running Linty Fresh, my motto has been the same – LF is a company I run and not the other way around. Once it stops becoming fun and starts becoming a job, I’ll be ready to do something else. Has that time come? It’s difficult to say. There are aspects I still enjoy immensely. Communicating with you all as supporters is the most rewarding part of it. Hearing how you’ve been inspired and knowing that some of you have even used it as fuel to start your own enterprises is something that gives me a real sense of pride and accomplishment.

However, it’s impossible to hide that my passion for the brand has wavered in the last year. Managing things from overseas has been a real headache, and though my employee back in the states has done an excellent job keeping on top of things, I know my absence has been felt online and off. So where does that leave us?

As an email I got this week put it bluntly (though I appreciate this kind of frankness), my disappearance has been “like a slap in the teeth” to my supporters. The author of the email likened it to a TV show whose writers lose interest and let the series die off after attracting a large fanbase. And the last thing I want to do, after garnering such an awesome community of supporters, is betray them. So, I have to consider my options. There are a few things on the table, all of which I need to analyze carefully to weigh out the pros and cons.

But I’d like to know, since those of you who read this blog have an important voice in this, what do you think? If you were in my shoes, where would you go?

I’ve been here 6 months now. Wow! Half a year. That is pretty crazy.

I like to think I’ve changed a lot in that time, but it could be in my head? I don’t know. I like to think I’ve gotten more patient with life, even though sometimes it still gets to me, some of those little irksome things that I run into each day.

Looks like another apology for lack of posting is in order. To be honest, I haven’t been on the internet at all lately, just to answer business emails and what not. Between the teaching job I was doing (which just ended) and running around like crazy with the coats and other export projects, I didn’t feel like logging into this and filling everyone in on the latest with Linty Fresh.

And I’m sure there are at least some of you out there wondering what the heck is going on with LF. 2 months and no new releases! What?!

Well, for now, I’m trying to focus on Linty Fresh China. I want to launch the store in just a few weeks, which means I still need to take model shots (which will be done back in the US), design ads, and set up an ad campaign for several big college campuses here in China. This kind of stuff would’ve been way out of my budget back in the states, but it’s a doable thing here, so I want to try it out. This first batch of shirts was pretty small though (just 500 pieces!), so I’m not certain that such extensive advertising is wise… But at the very least, high demand + low supply is good, right?

Yeah, I’m nervous about it. There can be SO much red tape here. Red tape and lack of efficiency. In a previous post I complained about the Post Office. I finally stopped going. I’m looking for another shipper now. Some of my customers in the states that ordered jackets have been waiting over a MONTH for their things to arrive. The orders aren’t lost. China is just slow like that. Some of the coats were apparently sent by barge across the Pacific for who knows what reason, since everything I ever shipped from the States abroad was ALWAYS delivered by air. Dark ages? My goodness.

Anyways, these are things I’ve been dealing with. I’m hoping to get out a new episode of LITM soon though. I find it to be a really good way to unwind, seeing my life through a lens like that. Suggestions? I’m always open.

So, as optimistic as I manage to usually be about life here in China, I have to be honest and say that it’s not always smooth sailing. There are days that have me on the verge of screaming and throwing someone out of a window. It hasn’t happened yet, but most of my Western friends assure me that at one time or another I will probably lose it. Each time I visit the post office I expect to have just such an incident.

To be fair, American post offices are just marginally less frustrating. Long lines, unmotivated personnel, and silly procedures are enough to drive me wild. But here, there seems to be more of all that. For the record, I have a MAJOR pet peeve for innefficiency. I’ve run a handful of business operations in my life, and I know that having a system for everything is a MUST. In any new venture, I like to find the quickest, cheapest, simplest method, implement it, and leave it alone. China doesn’t allow me to do this.

For example, every item I take to the post office must be searched. This means nothing can be prepackaged. Instead of having a neat little shipment taken to the post office to be scanned and paid for quietly and efficiently, I have to wait while the inept clerks to sift with painstaking slowness through each box’s contents. Then, they use about a whole roll of tape wrapping each box up. And it takes FOR-EV-ER. I was at the post office today waiting for 3 shipments to be sent out, and it took 45 minutes! Back in the states, I could just drop my stuff off and leave. I miss that a lot.

Sigh!

Life in the Middle – Episode 6 from Eric Terry on Vimeo.

Whew. It’s been a busy few weeks. Not only have the coat orders been coming in steadily, but also bigger orders for cards and other promotional items. On top of that, I’m launching Linty Fresh China in March, so there’s a lot of prep work to get ready for that, including advertising campaigns on college campuses in Beijing and Shanghai. Advertising to a Chinese market is going to be an interesting challenge, but I have plenty of reason to believe that this venture is going to be even more successful that the original. Excited!

I was also pleased to recently find out that China has it’s own line of Chupa Chups, the lollipop brand that I’ve included with outgoing Linty Fresh orders in the states. I still have yet to track down a candy wholesaler, but I have some good leads that I’ll be looking into next week. I’m also currently working on packaging design and production for the orders here. Like I said, a lot is going on.

On top of all that, I’m working as a substitute English teacher at a local private kindergarten. It’s just a couple of hours each morning and pays really well.

Anyways, that’s what I’ve been up to. Still alive, and busy. By the way, if you’re thinking of getting a coat made, get on it soon. I will probably stop doing them once LF launches here, just because it’s too many things to balance at once. (I may turn the business over to someone else, as well, haven’t decided yet)

And finally, check it out: Tintin comics! Just 10 yuan at the bookstore (about $1.50 US). And they’re in Chinese, so I get to really work on my character recognition, which I’ve been super lazy about…

Life in the Middle – Episode 5 from Eric Terry on Vimeo.