The True Story of Dirty Mechanism’s Beginnings
It was 2006 and the poor Board members of Barton Ct. Productions Inc. were sitting in their founder’s garage, pitching ideas for the future projects of the young company. In the garage that day was Stephen Wolfe, Chris Worrell, James Monaghan, Charles Green, Travis Hallett and his new colleague Roy, an aspiring film maker named Nolan, and an aura of creativity that could only be found in Barton. The company, a new formed production group that had actually originally began in 1999, consisted of a bunch of teens wanting to begin something great, something to call their own. But the company was formed broke, and there was no such thing as immediately giving up a name that had yet to develop its own identity to a bunch of random investors.
And this is about where I come in. I was the other guy that wasn’t mentioned: Scott Lee, who was also in this garage that day. During the meeting, we talked about short films, and what to work on next. The idea behind the entire “short film initiative” in the company, so to speak, was to establish the company’s technical credibility and to learn how to get the fundamentals of film making correct before moving onto major projects in the distant future. Of course, little did we realize that our first major project was going to creep up on us much faster than we had originally expected. Still, major projects or not, we needed money and we didn’t have any. And not only did we not have any, we weren’t bringing in any.
We were a business that was not actually conducting business. I don’t know about you, but to me that doesn’t sound like a successful company just yet. After selling a handful of “Make Movies” t-shirts, it had been brought to my attention the power of an on-demand selling model, where we could produce as many products as we wished without inventory costs, or without the bother of shipping orders or customer service. It was all done through another retailer, which took full responsibility. In short: it was the perfect thing for a totally broke company to find hope in for bringing in some revenue. I pitched the idea to launch a full line of a variety of products, suggesting that all of the people in the company sit down and start making t-shirt designs, and that we market those products first as a way to bring in some income. If we had constant money coming in, even if it was a small amount, we were going to be able to accomplish a lot more.
Looking back on it, I’m sure I said some things that probably scared a few people. But it was namely James Monaghan, an old Board member who was serving with us at the time, who had shot down the idea. “That just doesn’t sound like something that we’re ready for. Maybe later, but that sounds just way beyond the scope of what we’re capable of.” I sat there and pleaded with them a tiny bit.
“No, we’re actually capable of doing this right now,” I reassured everyone. The issue was dismissed quickly after it was brought up. Perhaps the biggest problem that day was that I was pitching a business idea to a room filled with film makers. They were there to discuss how they could create their art. Then again, don’t you need money to do such things? Anyway, I went home and later on in the week sat down to begin putting together what would later become a single unified online store. The first month: no sales, hours of creating basic designs, most of which were purely plain text in different colors. Nothing fancy, no decorations.
By the end of May, 2006, however, after merely 2 months of having a number of small shops and a few designs up, sales began to come in. And by the middle of summer, surprising things were happening. I was an 18 year old barely out of high school and earning what I would probably earn at a low paying job, but I wasn’t working any hours. I sat down with a clipboard one night and wrote down over 100 different names of possible store titles. I called Kimberly(future creator of Expressive Junction), and she decided that ‘Dirty Mechanism’ seemed to sound the coolest.
That’s enough for me, I thought. Dirty Mechanism was born. After spending about $70 dollars total, I had created a business, and with it came an ideology. Meeting the demands of tiny niche markets and allowing individuals to more fluently express themselves was now my business, and in taking care of others I was being taken care of. Over one year and over $8000 later, Dirty Mechanism Apparel is a continuously developing brand with a bright future. Would it make a difference if people knew that it could have belonged to a production company?
It’s an interesting question to consider, but I definitely know for a fact that when hundreds of people all over the country are wearing something that came from your mind and no one else’s, it touches your heart in a very special way. An enormous sense of gratitude develops. Barton Ct. Productions Inc. is still generating little or no income at all from its business at the time of this writing, but I’m still on their Board of Directors. Hopefully that company still has hope of becoming profitable. In the mean time, rock on Dirty Mechanism.
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