Temptation from our sponsors...
Temptation from our sponsors...
I’ve been a poketo fan for a few years now, I remember getting this particularly cool monkey wallet from them, in one panel it was wearing a ‘d’ dunce hat, oh how I rejoiced when it arrived. They seemed to have gone from strength to strength since then, adding a whole range of other products from t-shirts, bags, sketchbooks and even some great designs for bands like the shins and postal service. You’ll see some of my favourites dotted throughout the interview.
I chatted to Angie one of the founders about their motivations, hopes for the future and artist relationships:
The Interview pt.1
me: You’ve been around as a brand for a few years now, do you feel like established yet?
poketo: Not at all. we’re still very small. two of us and one part-time intern, mostly full time. we do other side projects here and there.
poketo: Friendships with other sites, not really. friendships with artists mostly. i just google poketo from time to time and i see that many people blog about us but i don’t really contact any sites and try to market ourselves or anything. maybe we should…?
As you’ve probably already noticed, we just try to put out artists and products that we like and hope that others will like as well.
me: Tell me your favourite ever poketo design?
poketo: I don’t know. that’s a hard question. all of them?
me: Come on you must have a few favs?
poketo: Well, i do have some of my favorite aritsts that i admire tremendously. like chris duncan, pcp, marc atlan. susie ghahremani, miki amano.. see, i can go on and on.
really, we put out artists that we both love. not because they’re big or famous but because their work is just awesome.
me: How important is it that poketo is financially sucessful? Would you carry on running it at a loss, as a labour of love if you could afford to?
poketo: At a loss? we probably couldn’t even if we wanted to since we don’t have trust funds but it’s definitely a labor of love… we work a lot but we love it. We work with artists that we love surrounded by art all the time. what’s better than that?
me: That sounds pretty awesome to me.
me: You’ve added some new products recently, how has the response to these been?
poketo: The response to the new products have been tremendous. our messenger bags sold out in less than a few weeks. Two of the styles are completely sold out.
The homeware and stationery as well are getting a great response.
me: You must be delighted, were they added after requests from customers or just a desire to carry different products?
poketo: Desire to carry different products, i suppose. we’re not fashion people and can care less about the miniscule fashion trends like skirt lengths and pencil jeans… and we’ve been interested in homeware and stationery for a long time. just getting older, i guess, i’m totally into homeware but where can you find interesting houseware that’s also affordable? I guess it’s all about what we would buy. we have no way to test market and do market research but i know what i want and need so we just went for it. I mean i love ikea and shop there all the time but i sometimes want something that doesn’t scream out ikea. You know what i mean?
Store Info
Established: 2003
Contact: poketo@poketo.com
Products: Wallets ($20) t-shirts ($24) Messenger Bags ($50) Totes ($28) Stationery & Homewares ($mixed)
Shipping: Cheap! An unbelievable $3.75 flat rate shipping on wallets and t-shirts. $6 domestic, $14 international on bags! Good to see a company with sensible shipping prices for international delivery!
Promotions: None that I know of, if you have a discount code feel free to leave it as a comment. There are some sale wallets for $15.
Wallets
T-shirts
Bags
Interview pt.2
me: Tell me whats planned for the future of poketo then?
poketo: Newer products in home/stationery area and more artists exposure through tees, wallets and etc.
me: You have a poketo ceramics range in the works as well? Can you tell me a little more about that? Why is it store only? Is this an approach you’d like to take for future products?
poketo: It’s for store only just because we need to gauge how much we need to make before we go ahead with full production. Since we’ve got a limited budget, we can’t just throw it into one basket before finding out what the response is. store order will give us an approximate gauge into what the response would be.
me: How much of poketo products do you sell to outside of the usa? do you have plans to try and expand or promote out internationally?
poketo: I would say about 20% – 30% but i could be totally wrong. we would love to promote and expand internationally but we haven’t really dealt with any distributors since their markup makes the products very expensive for the consumers there. so we just deal mainly with individual stores and buyers online.
me: Ah, interesting. I guess the weak $ helps you to sell internationally anyway?
poketo: I guess so. definitely great for you guys in the U.K. Interestingly though I think we only have a few stores in the U.K. Even though the UK customers next to the U.S customers are the biggest online sales for us.
me: Thats a suprise, which stores are they?
poketo: Demo in london and a shop in edinbourough.
me: How do you find/meet the artists that contribute to poketo?
poketo: We meet them through friends/artists or they contact us. recently, it’s been more of the latter. we meet a lot of great artists through their own initiatives which has been great becuase we wouldn’t have found them otherwise. for example, a really great artist from argentina just emailed us yesterday. i totally fell in love with her work. another example is Marc Atlan. He’s one of the top designers in fashion/graphics/tee area. He’s done stuff for comme des garcons, and 2k and he contacted us to work with us. We told him that we probably couldn’t afford him but he was totally willing to work with us.
I’d like to thank Angie & Poketo for taking the time to talk to hiphipuk. Keep up the good work!
