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Skeletal Dropkick | Episode 676
Located in a small studio on the Pacific Coast, Skeletal Dropkick is owned and operated by a single human. Skeletal Dropkick’s inspiration is found in horror movies, old monster movies, folklore and years spent as an angsty teen-punk-goth in the 80’s. Exact proof that it was not just a phase.
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How does one become goth? (laughter)
It is a state of being. One does not become goth, one is goth. I’m totally kidding. (laughter) I don’t know. You get enough repression and people throwing food at you in high school and at some point you just shave the sides of your head and you just put on leather and make it so that other people know that you are not like them. And then the people that are like you instantly know who you are and you are friends with them already.
Is it too late if you are in your 50s to become goth?
Heck no. Not even.
There’s hope for me.
Yeah, you too can become goth! With my easy ten step plan. (laughter) I don’t have a plan.
Okay, I’m really curious, give me your first two steps.
I don’t have a plan. No plan. I don’t even know what the first step is.
Was it hard to build out your website? Because your website has got a lot of action going on there?
I had built a website previously, it just wasn’t capable of having a store. So I had to get the site that I have now because it is store capable. It took me probably two or three months of you know, testing it amongst friends and family and asking them how easy it was to navigate, what would they change, do I have any typos, all the various things. I actually think right now it is a little too busy. I would like to thin it out but there’s so much information that I want to put on there it’s a hard balance between getting everything that I want on there and it being cumbersome.
It important to know your audience. What is your typical buyer or collector of your work?
Well, I can tell you from analytics that it is about 65 percent female and majority between the ages of 25-40 years old. As far as who that person is and what they look like, I really think it’s everybody. When I go to a craft fair, there are people, even if they don’t find themselves drawn to my work they say, Oh, I have a friend who would just adore this mug. So I don’t know that there is a particular type of customer. There are definitely craft fairs that I do better at, then not. Like the oddities craft fairs.
When you are at shows do you dress the part?
It’s like the only time that I actually think about what I wear. I normally put on the same pair of shorts and a tee shirt everyday. So I have some really fun clothes that have got my typical plaid skirt from when I was a kid. Crisiswear is amazing and they are all handmade so because I don’t dress up very often I buy from very small handmade people so I can spend it all at once. So I kind of dress up the part. I don’t put on makeup and I don’t do my hair because I am not that sort of person but I will wear something fun for sure.
What kind of tools are you using to keep track of sales?
Oh man, I am so bad at that. I am so bad. I literally write it down on a piece of paper what mug sold and how much it sold for and then I tally everything to make sure I have the correct sums or close to it at the end of the day. But then I throw that out. It’s really bad. I do have a google document that I keep where I have numbered every single piece that I have made and I have given it a name. So I know that if I sold those pieces I can search the google document I can know how much of what I have sold. So I can kind of keep track of what sells but it shifts. One year zombies are huge, the next year everybody wants a ghost or everybody wants a creature from the black lagoon. So I don’t know how helpful it is to keep track what designs are selling or not.
You’ve been doing ceramics a long time. What’s your favorite piece to make?
It changes. Zombies used to be really fun. I make all of my own stamps so I don’t have to carve out the mouth or carve out the eyes, I just make a stamp of the mouth. So I have been making these mouths bigger and bigger so lately my favorite thing has been to put this big old mouth on a ghost or a jelly-fish with these little adorable beady eyes next to it. So I don’t know if I have a favorite but there are definitely some aspects of the pieces that amuse me more.
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