Important Note about Tariffs

First of all, let me set some things straight:

• Tariffs are 100% the responsibility of the customer, NOT the country of origin. This is money that comes out of the pocket of the small business owner who orders product from overseas.

• Tariffs are charged by customs once the product reaches the US and are based on the declared value provided by the shipper.

It’s been a very tough time to be a small business owner. The unfortunate reality is that the tariff situation is constantly in flux, and with how tariffs are charged at the current rate when the product arrives, it makes it nearly impossible to plan ahead for product ordering. Many products have long lead times of at least a month if not more. Small business owners like myself do not have the massive operating budget that large corporations have and thus aren’t as able to cover massive financial hits due to a sudden increase in a tariff that wasn’t as high when the item was ordered. Due to this, I’ve seen so many fellow small business owners scaling back and worried that the current trade war is going to be the death sentence for all their hard work. Not going to lie, it’s been depressing.

Kimchi Kawaii is not planning on shutting down, but I did want to give an update on some projects and pricing going forward as there are going to be some changes.

• Plush: all plush Kickstarter projects are on hold for the time being. I am a small brand and there is no way I can afford what is currently a 145% tariff on my plush. To do a plush run, we'd have to raise well over $12k just to make ONE plush design.

  • Current, in stock plush will remain at their regular prices, but if you've had your eye on some designs get them now cause once they're gone they're gone.

• You will see an increase in the self-produced plush again. I've fired up the sewing machine once more. I'm also working on developing more patterns like Spam Moosubi and more mola mola!

• Purrista Pawfee: I know this has been a very popular series, but all good things must come to an end. I've had the series around for 8 years now and I've noticed sales slowing down on them. So make sure to complete your collections as I will not be restocking as stuff sells out due to tariffs, but also so I can make room for new ideas (pasta anyone??).

• Enamel Pins: I currently have the Seoul Food pins wrapping up production. They were funded through Backer Kit's Pintopia project before all this started happening. I really hope I don't get slammed with a huge tariff as I didn't raise that much extra to cover something this high.

  • All backers are getting their pins at the pricing that they paid during the campaign, but I will most likely have to increase the price on the pins once they hit general sale to try to recoup some of the tariff fee if I have one. I'll keep you posted. No one is sure what's going on. It changes day to day.

  • Current, in-stock pins will remain the same price they've been, but like the plush, once designs sell out, they may not come back.

  • Some designs I wasn't planning on restocking anyway as I'm retiring them.

• Clothing: my t-shirts all come from a local screen printer. While they source the blanks from out the country and there may be an increase in production cost, I don't see it being as bad as like with the plush or pins.

  • Button shirts will not be restocked.

• Stickers: These are also produced in the states, but once again, print supplies may increase which will most likely push up cost of production.

I know times are super tough for everyone. I know I don't sell essentials and so your support means that much more to me. Financially, you're helping me still keep the business going during this dark time, but also mentally, helping me to keep creating. I'm not going to lie, as an Asian woman, I've been feeling very stressed as this administration makes it obvious that I'm considered an 'other'. It's hard to be creative in times of stress, but seeing people liking my posts and buying my art helps me keep going. And I sincerely thank you. I hope to keep creating things that can bring some levity to people as we all struggle through.

Even before the tariff issues, I had a goal for 2025 to start doing more illustration stuff and growing my sub-brand, Haetae Illustration (I might change the name, tbh). This focuses on fantasy and more full color illustration pieces done both digitally (Procreate) and with traditional media. I'm even looking into getting back into linocut printmaking. Follow me on Bluesky or Instagram to see the works in progress as I get them!

Once again, thank you for sticking with me!

Sincerely, 
Holly
Owner/artist of Kimchi Kawaii

Support Small Business This Holiday Season!

Small businesses rely on this time of year for a majority of their income. Many of us are single or very small staffed operations doing what we love and using the money that comes in from customers like you to create even more things that we couldn’t afford to make on our own. So if you want some unique presents this year for friends and family, please shop small!

To help your holiday budget stretch (or make it easier to treat yourself), I’m running a bunch of daily specials this weekend from 11/28-12/2!

• Thanksgiving Day, Thurs, 11/28: Free enamel pin, no code needed. Pin is random pick by me, but I’ll try to match theme if there is one.

• Black Friday, 11/29: Free US shipping with code BLACKFRIDAY24.

• Small Business Saturday, 11/30: 20% off your order with code SHOPSMALL24.

• Sunday, 12/1: Free lanyard, random selection by me, no code needed.

• Cyber Monday, 12/2: Free US shipping with code CYBERMON24.

Additionally: 11/28-12/2 - All orders over $50 will get -

• Free keychain (acrylic or pvc)

• 2 free enamel pins

• 2 free vinyl stickers

All items are random select by me, but I’ll try to match theme. While supplies last. No code needed.

Felt ornament of a kawaii holiday ham.

12/1: 2024 Edition Holiday Ornaments Go Live!

Fully hand crafted by me, the 2024 limited holiday ornaments will go live in the shop on Sunday at 11AM PST. This year, I’m bringing back the felt ornaments, but also adding cookie style ones as well. These are hand painted, signed and dated. Once they’re gone, they’re gone!

It's Wombat Week!

What’s Wombat Week? Is it like Shark Week, but less teeth?

Many years ago, my friend introduced me to a Youtube clip that was talking about wombats’ talent for making square poop. My inner kindergartener thought this was hilarious and I started making designs about it. I now have shirts, pins, stickers and plush, all dedicated to that rolly, cube pooping, ball of fur, the wombat.

Running through October 1, 2024, purchase anything wombat-related in the shop and get a free Wombat Chocolates 3” vinyl sticker and a surprise gift! No code needed. While supplies last.

Driving Adventures

My brand turned 16 this month which means, Kimchi can legally drive, lol. So I drew this little sketch of Junghee driving along. and it made me think of my own adventures relearning to drive. The second one is what I was feeling like when I started up again after 20 years of not doing it.

I live in a smallish town and so you really don't need a car. However, it was long overdue for me to start driving and actually get a car of my own and so I bought the one off my sis that she was selling. This was during the tail end of the pandemic lockdowns and since there weren't many people on the road still, I basically relearned how to drive by doing runs to my storage unit and small errands around town

I would get soooo nervous and had a death grip on the wheel. One day, I decided to go through the drive thru about 7 mins from my place. I was too chicken to merge lanes and so I missed my right turn and ended up driving 45 mins beyond town into the country before I found a place to turn around. LOL.

Now, I drive all over, even in places I swore I’d never drive when future me had a car - namely San Francisco and SoCal. It’s definitely been nice to have a car as it has allowed me to expand the amount of events I do. But every now and then, I still think about how I started out, scared to get behind the wheel!

Sweet 16!

August is here and that means Kimchi Kawaii is celebrating another year around the sun. It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for 16 years now! Kimchi is old enough to legally drive in CA, LOL.

Anyway, to celebrate, I’m giving YOU the gifts all August long!

• All orders $25 and up will get the free 2023 15th birthday limited edition pin shown above. Once these are gone, they're gone! You will also get a free lanyard!*

• All orders $40 and up will get a free mystery pack containing 2 pins, 2 vinyl stickers and 1 washi tape!*

• No code needed! Gifts will be applied automatically to all qualifying orders.

• Freebies ends 8/31.

*lanyards, stickers and washi are chosen at random from my in-stock designs and while supplies last. 15th birthday pin while supplies last. Offer only valid on purchases through my site.

Goals Bingo!

At the start of 2023, one of my art friends posted a goals bingo board and it looked fun so I did one too. Since today is the start of 2024, here’s how I did and what’s to come.

I originally wanted to go for blackout cause I’m crazy, but I ended up doing 20 events this past year and 2023 threw all kinds of punches both to the business and in personal life. But in consideration of all that, seeing I only missed a few squares, I feel it was still quite an accomplishment.

Some of the goals were all about revamping my booth display. After 15 years of business, it really needed some updating so there were squares for that that I got to mark off (finally). Wombat was successful and made. The lions got funded and are currently at the factory. The groundwork for HoneyBun’s Kickstarter was laid out yesterday. I got more Korean culture pins done.

As you can see, the ones that mostly got missed were the ones that involved more detailed art. Which brings me to 2024.

Most of the squares on here are art focused. Lesson learned this year that 20 events while still working a full time job was just too much. I’m cutting back and want to really use the time to focus on my art. I’ve always loved doing fantasy and illustration stuff and just haven’t had time to do it since I started Kimchi. Many of these on here will fall under that and help to expand my illustration brand, Haetae Illustration. I also miss doing traditional media work too.

I know one of the reasons this worked so well for me in 2023 was cause I actually printed out the board and had it on my coffee table. It was a visual, daily reminder of what I wanted to accomplish. There were times when I knew I wanted to create something, but I wasn’t sure what and I’d look at the board to get inspired. And it was also motivating to see the blue check marks stacking up.

So I hope you’ll join me on this year long adventure! I’ll be posting on social every now and then with the Goals Bingo progress and will do a year-end summary like this one. Let’s do this!

What's in a Name?

Kimchi Kawaii turns 15 this August and so I’m going to be doing some blog posts about the adventures and things I’ve learned since starting.

Today, my Facebook memories reminded me about the name change I had to do. I was the first person in my group of friends and family to start a small business and so a lot of the stuff I learned was through trial and error. One year into everything, I faced my first major teaching moment.

My initial logo for my new brand at the time - Soy Happy.

I knew I wanted to do pun-based Japanese kawaii style pieces (kawaii is ‘cute’ in Japanese). And so I came up with the name ‘Soy Happy’ for the new brand. I liked the pun. I liked the use of soy sauce. I figured it was perfect and everything was set. Except that, I didn’t think to search the name online and see if it was already in use.

Fast forward to a year later when I got an email from another company that already had the name Soy Happy and it was registered as a trademark. The email was totally polite, but it did state that I needed to come up with a different name as they already had it registered. I definitely didn’t have the means to do an expensive legal battle - heck, I didn’t even have a lawyer at the time. When I started, I never thought to check the US Patent and Trademark (USPTO) site. Trademarks were for big corporations and stuff like Disney and Target. I was just small potatoes. Surely, I didn’t need a trademark!

At least it all happened only a year in. To be honest, my previous marketing efforts had largely failed. What I thought was super punny was leading to some confusion as to what I offered. See, ‘soy’ is also the Spanish first person conjugation of the word ‘to be’. So some people thought I was doing some Spanish/English mashup saying ‘I’m happy’. Everyone should be happy in any language, but it wasn’t really giving the public an idea of what I was offering. Thus, letting go of the name wasn’t really difficult for me.

I brainstormed a bunch of names through the highly scientific method of spewing random words that related to my art out on scratch paper and then placing them in combos that sounded appealing to me. Then, I ran the phrases through search engines and the USPTO. Some got axed that way when I discovered bigger brands with the name already (spoiler alert, they’d get all the traffic on search, not me) and/or more registered trademarks. But I did have one that passed - Kimchi Kawaii. I revamped my marketing stuff, the site I was selling on at the time and hired a lawyer to get my own shiny trademark. I didn’t want to put in more effort to lose it again!

Why the name Kimchi Kawaii? I was born in South Korea and adopted as a baby. My parents always wanted to make sure I knew about my heritage and I wanted to reflect that in my brand. I’m a Korean girl (the Kimchi) doing Japanese style cute art (the Kawaii). Plus, I really like alliteration. I felt that this name reflected a lot more of what my brand was all about and it also was general enough for me to grow with as my art and subject matter evolved.

My first logo design for the rebrand showing Roary my tiger with an ongii - traditional ceramic pot that kimchi is made in.

I came up with a new logo that pulled from Korean traditional art - the Korean tiger. Korean tigers, sadly now extinct, were favorite subjects in Korean art. Tigers were believed to be messengers from the mountain gods and also guides to humans. They were frequently portrayed with magpies, believed to be messengers from shrine deities. I originally had a magpie sitting with the tiger, but took it out in the name of a more easy to reproduce logo. The tiger was named Roary from a Facebook poll.

And so that was pretty much it! Kimchi Kawaii has been my brand name for 14 of my 15 years of business. The tiger is still my main logo, but I did update it recently to Roary’s sister, Junghee. I have no idea what the next 5 or even 15 years hold for my brand, but I do know my art style is evolving as I suspected it would when picking this name over 10 years ago. I hope you’ll stay on for the new paths that Kimchi is taking in the years to come!

Celebrating My Asian Culture

May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI) and so I though this was an appropriate time to write about something that is so important to me - my own Korean heritage and some changes coming to the shop reflecting this.

Now before you panic, I’m not ditching the puns or the cats (so many cats!!). There are plenty of kawaii designs brewing that will keep me busy for the next few years at least!

In February of this year, I did a post talking about the rebranding and reasons behind it. It touched on some of my Korean roots behind the logo. This time I want to talk about some of the designs I’ve got and am working on. During the pandemic shut down, when cons were cancelled, I used the time to work on developing some more designs for the shop. It’s been a bit ironic to me that my brand is named Kimchi Kawaii, but the only thing Korean for years was just me. I’d also walk around anime cons and see a ton of Japanese themed things (obviously) and even some Chinese themed things, but really not much Korean beyond a few kpop things or kdramas. Korea is so much more than the hallyu wave.

I started a series of designs as pins and stickers showing the traditional elements of Korean culture. I bought some books on music, art, clothing, architecture and food and read all of them to get ideas. It was also really interesting to go more in depth on my birth country. My parents wanted me to know about my culture, but let’s face it resources for Korean stuff weren’t that prevalent back then, especially in my town which wasn’t going to win any diversity awards. And as a kid, you don’t want to learn about history, you want to be playing outside! So it was really interesting for me to learn more about Korea. I love learning in general. I’m a big nerd.

My Korean tiger, Junghee performing a traditional sword dance called geomu.

The first set of designs cover mostly the performing arts as they were the most fun to draw. I also included two mythological creatures - the haetae and bonghwang (phoenix). I’ve been drawing them in my Kimchi style, but pulling in elements of Korean art as well. For the performing arts ones, I’ve used Junghee and Roary. The pins have done really well at cons and I’ve had fellow Koreans come up and say they really liked seeing some Korean stuff which is rare.

Cons started back up again as stuff related to the pandemic started to ease and I found my art time cut down. The Korean designs ground to a halt. But I’ve set a goal for 2023 to make at least three more with Roary and Junghee and I want to start a series celebrating Korean food - from traditional to street foods. I’ll probably end up craving tteokbokki and Korean fried chicken. Here are some initial sketches of the new designs.

Sketch of my Korean tigers, Junghee and Roary dressed in Korean hanbok and holding talchum masks - traditional Korean masked drama.

I hope you’ll continue on my journey as I further explore all that Korean culture has to offer. I have so many more things planned, including another plush! Follow me on my social media channels like my Haetae Illustration Instagram and Kimchi Kawaii Facebook to keep up with all the new designs.

Freshening up the Kimchi

Making kimchi requires putting a bunch of veggies and seasonings in a container to ferment, but even kimchi has a shelf life. 2023 marks 15 years of business for Kimchi Kawaii and it was time to freshen up the kimchi for sure.

So this past weekend, I revamped my theming, logo and colors. I’m still wrapping up stuff and replacing things here and there, but you’ll see the changes on my website, social media and in person displays when I sell at events.

First change was to update my logo/mascot. From the start of Kimchi, Roary the Korean tiger was the image on all my profile pictures and branding. A few years later, I created a sister for him. Originally, her name was Fleur and she was a white tiger with a heart on her forehead who covered my lolita fashion and decoden themed items. As time went on, I phased out Frosted Fleur di Lis and those items. Fleur got revamped as another orange tiger (still has the heart) and her name was changed to Junghee which is actually the name I came with from Korea when I was adopted.

I’ve been working to bring in more of my Korean heritage and since I’m a girl, I felt that Junghee was a better representative for the brand. Roary is still here, he’s just letting his sister shine now.

Here are the logos that I’ve had over the 15 years I’ve been in business.

Evolution of Kimchi Kawaii’s logos.

I’m pulling in some inspiration from traditional Korean art for my branding as well. Below is detail of elements that you’ll start seeing in some of my social media and other display items. This design is inspired by the colorful details you see in traditional Korean architecture. The style is called ‘dancheong’ which translates into ‘red and blue’. I adapted the colors, making them more saturated to fit with the brightly colored designs that make up Kimchi Kawaii.

It was a lot of work to vector and would have been a lot more if it wasn’t for copy/paste and reflect!

Detail of decorative elements that will be in various Kimchi Kawaii branding.

I currently have a new table runner and backdrop for my dealers booths in production. I’m also getting an overhead banner for when I do smaller spaces like artist alley tables. I’m super excited to debut these items this year. The first will be at Anime Boston in April.

Anyway, time to get back to work on more of the rebrand! I hope you enjoyed this brief look at Kimchi’s history, the new look and the story behind it all.

On this Day in Kimchi History

It’s a morning routine for me to wake up in the morning and look through my Facebook Memories. Today’s took me back to the beginnings of Kimchi Kawaii.

Facebook status post from 14 years ago stating, ‘Holly Guenther is contemplating finally making a move to sell art online’.

On this day 14 years ago, I started thinking about selling my art online. My mom had told me about this print on demand site called Cafe Press where I could upload art and sell it on stuff like clothing, drinkware and more. It was really appealing cause it had practically zero overhead which is great when trying to start a business. I researched what I needed to do (like permits and other not so fun things of small business) and got going in August of that year under the name Soy Happy.

Screen shot of a Facebook status post from 13 years ago saying, "Holly Guenther just put up the Soy Happy fan page on Facebook. Anyone want to join?"

And then exactly a year later, I launched the Facebook fan page for the business and was pleading with people to join my tiny little page. I’m honestly not sure who did the two shares cause I know my mom wasn’t on FB at that time, lol. I’m assuming two of my art friends shared.

Over the years, it’s definitely been a roller coaster ride with the proverbial ups and downs of small business ownership. About a year and a half in or so, I had to change the name to my current one as I discovered that someone had the rights to the name Soy Happy. At the time, I didn’t even know about the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) so hadn’t searched their database when picking my original name. It was totally solved on friendly terms and honestly, Kimchi Kawaii fits so much better with what I was doing anyway.

Since my little call out into the void for followers, the page has grown to have a 11k following. I started an Instagram account that currently has over 6.5k. My Twitter was somewhat neglected for a few years, but that’s getting more use now and is just over 1,200. I remember when I was super excited to hit 100 likes on the FB page!

I’ve also launched 17 Kickstarter projects, most of which funded well over the initial goal and allowed me to expand my business in ways I’d never have thought when starting out. I’ve been able to travel around the country selling at anime cons. I’ve met a ton of awesome followers and fellow artists through online groups and in person at the cons.

I admit that the pandemic was rough on my creativity. At first, I actually surged in doing art as life came to a virtual halt. Since I couldn’t go anywhere and wasn’t hurrying off to cons, I could spend all my weekends working on new designs. But the constant uncertainty and anxiety was a slow build and hit hard this past summer, manifesting in burnout. My art output dropped and my social media posting for the business slowed to a trickle. It was starting to feel like a chore to keep the business running. The fact that my last Kickstarter products got caught in the factory and shipping delays didn’t help as I had no new product to promote. I was honestly starting to wonder if it was just time to move on and close out this chapter in my life.

But these two statuses this morning took me back to the excitement of planning out and starting the journey and I feel a little flame has been rekindled. I’m marking out cons I want to sell at and starting to feel the urge to create again. So the goal for 2022 is to shift out of neutral and start driving forward again with Kimchi and seeing where this road leads. I hope you all stay for the ride!