Pins and Patches Interview on DIY Community

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Image via Emily Malan Photography

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Image via Emily Malan Photography

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Earlier this month, 3,000 people gathered deep in New York City’s Chinatown forming a block-and-a-half-long line leading into a room packed with pins and patches. The aptly-named Pin & Patch Show was organized by Charlie Ambler, aka the brains and brawn behind Strike Gently Co. Ambler and 11 of his friends organized the show as a way of bringing soft goods directly to consumers. Strike Gently, like so many other soft goods companies, primarily push their wares on Instagram, where bite-sized visuals provide a perfect platform for minute accessories.

Pins and patches also represent a DIY ethos in an age of fast fashion: hulking, multinational retailers like Forever 21 and Zara have come under fire left and right for lifting ideas from independent artists and creatives; The Pin & Patch Show—and its substantial turnout—gives consumers the opportunity to support and uplift makers, while also giving them the opportunity to customize their favorite pieces.

HYPEBEAST reached out to the makers behind four of Instagram’s most preeminent soft goods companies—Strike Gently Co., Suspect Ltd., PinLord and Inner Decay—to pick their brains and see how they got into the business, how social media has helped them find their footing, and why theirs is a community of cooperation, not competition.

A selection of offerings from the first Pins & Patches Show.

How did you get into making pins and patches?

Charlie Ambler, Strike Gently Co.

I met Morgan (@innerdecay) at Nowhere FC’s Football Café, where I was slinging coffee while also doing project management and product sourcing.

Morgan Watt, Inner Decay

I became a stay at home dad when my daughter was 3 months old, and I wanted to find some way of contributing financially. I’d actually wanted to make pins for a long time before that, but didn’t have the know-how or money to start, so the first thing I made was a patch.

Eduardo Morales, PinLord

I used to collect vintage pins via eBay since I was a teenager but it wasn’t anything serious, until I discovered @patchgame and found myself spending $100+ a month on pins. I knew that couldn’t last long, and I thought I had a good idea of how to crack Instagram at the time, so starting my own pin business was the only way to keep the addiction going.

Jimmy McMillan, Suspect Ltd.

Eduardo turned me onto the idea, actually, in May 2015 at a Depop meetup.

When did you realize this could be a business?

Charlie Ambler

Tested the waters in October. By January I was confident it could be a full-time thing.

Morgan Watt

About a year ago, so summer of 2015.

Eduardo Morales

I started @pinlord with the idea of making it a business but never realistically thought that I would be getting much out of it, apart from a few free pins. I realized that I’d started early enough in the pin game and my IG growth was doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling in the first three months. I made my first run, the Old Boy pin (Jimmy from @suspectltd hooked me up with the factory), on month four and it sold out within three weeks, then I used that money to make two more designs and it snowballed from there. A few months later I met a few other local BK pin-makers @wormcarnevale and @toughtimespress who told me that other big re-posting accounts were charging to post people’s pins and that I could do it too. I decided to give it a shot and now it’s my main source income. My job now is to build the best possible IG account to make other pin-makers sell and make money whenever I post about them.

Jimmy McMillan

At the time, I just wanted to make a tangible version of this idea I had back in high school, which was to subvert the Yes logo into a No.

So, that one kind of flopped in the grand scheme of things, but the followup, Christ Air, resulted in dozens of orders the day I released it. At that point I realized I might be able to keep this going.

An Inner Decay pin.