LOS ANGELES — Angie Myung’s and Ted Vadakan’s dreams of having careers in the arts hit them right in the wallet. In a good way.
The Los Angeles couple own Poketo, a company they started in 2004 to put emerging artists’ designs on inexpensive wallets. They call it an “affordable art” company, and there’s money in that, even for the small operation they run out of a downtown loft with just one full-time and three part-time employees.
Poketo had nearly $600,000 in sales last year, Vadakan said. The company, which now does about 70 percent of its business in wholesale, sold about 30,000 items.
“We sort of started the business by mistake,” Vadakan said. “We never dreamed of being entrepreneurs.”
For the artists and designers they commission, it’s a chance to get their work seen by a much bigger audience than might catch a gallery show or a university showcase. Santa Monica, Calif., artist Leah Chun, who designed three wallets, two T-shirts and a mug for the company, got steady work as a Web site designer and animator through the popularity of her Poketo designs.
“Artists just starting out are begging for these type of opportunities,” Chun said. “We need to get our names out there and build up professional work, and they give us a shot.”
Myung and Vadakan know what it’s like to try to get creative work before the public. In 2003, Myung was a student at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Vadakan was a budding filmmaker.
“Back then, when we could afford it, we’d throw a party to show off our friends’ artwork,” Vadakan said. “We wanted to have people leave the show with some art, but art is expensive, and that wasn’t really happening.”
They came up with the idea of making wallets out of laminated paper printed with designs by their artist friends. To promote the products, they hosted a two-day gallery show, kicked off by a party. By the time the show was over, the wallets had sold out.
“We didn’t make any money, really, on the first wallets, but that wasn’t what it was about,” Myung said. “We just wanted to get our friends’ artwork into people’s hands.”
But given the way the wallets had flown off the shelves, the couple realized they might have the makings of a business.
In 2004 they relocated to L.A., moving in with Vadakan’s parents to save money.
The couple added T-shirts to the lineup and sold the products on a Web site Myung designed. Within the first year, they were turning a profit. In 2005, they bought a house and moved the business there. Sales got a boost that same year when bands such as Weezer and Postal Service started to sell Poketo wallets at concerts. These wallets worked the bands’ names into the designs.
Dan Field, Weezer’s manager, said he spotted the company on the Internet, where Poketo has a Facebook page and a blog.
“We didn’t want to do the same crummy Velcro wallets every other band sells at their shows,” Field said.
And because Myung and Vadakan have arts backgrounds, he felt they were more in sync with the band than other merchandisers. “In a weird way they feel like a band and not a brand,” he said, “because what they sell is the art itself, not just a logo or something like that.”
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