Frequently Asked Questions About RAYGUN
Here are some FAQ's about RAYGUN! Mike is making video explanations of each question (with written explanations below). More questions will be answered as we have time, so email us any you have?
Answered questions:
Where did the name RAYGUN come from?
Where did the cat come from? And why is he named Gary?
Next questions to be answered:
Who comes up with all the ideas?
What is Mike's business advice to others?
Why does RAYGUN use only one font?
Did we ever think about quitting?
How do we stay in business with "controversial" content?
Will you ever sell to private equity?
Do we use AI?
What is your management style like?
Why hasn't RAYGUN opened in Minneapolis?
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Here are some written answers:
Does RAYGUN use AI for Design? Short answer: never. Longer answer to follow, but will be other ways of saying never.
Unbelievably, this september marks 21 years of RAYGUN.
Even though I own this place, I’m even a little surprised it’s still here,
This started a small store in 2005. Total staff of 1. I opened the store, closed the store, rang up every sale, printed every shirt, unclogged the toilet after you clogged the toilet (you know who you are!).
And yet, we have grown into a $19 million company with 12 locations and 130 employees.
We're as surprised as you are.
After all, we have not exactly picked the easiest route for business growth:
- we have no controlling investors,
- have never taken private equity money,
- have no corporate board — it’s just us and a bunch of debt!
- we have made brick and mortar, community-based retail the core of our company, instead of the internet;
- we still design and print everything ourselves, refusing to outsource production or to move from screen printing to digital printing;
- heck, we even unionized our entire staff, production and retail;
How did we do it?
Well i’m not quite sure!
Even when you are running something, you are kind of along for the ride with everyone else.
We have had several financial near-death experiences. There have been some absolutely painful stretches. We’ve mainly done just well enough each year to keep doing it another year.
So the RAYGUN model is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme.
Heck, not even a get rich slowly scheme.
But the fact that we’re still here makes people curious about how we did it.
Over the years i’ve fielded lots of questions from customers, students, other companies.
And i’ve decided that to celebrate 21 years.
I will make a series of videos through the fall answering questions about out.
These are not necessarily meant to be business advice videos (some of the best decisions i made stemmed from ignoring advice!).
The main lesson from this place is that it has been a mix of circumstance.
We’ve worked hard, but circumstances have gone our way to this point.
These videos will probably just re-emphasize that building anything is hard, keeping it going is even harder, building it from there is EVEN harder.
And that difficulty is what makes the satisfaction of it’s MERE EXISTENCE so satisfying!
Being a part of this place has been an incredible experience.
Since high school, I've always wanted to be a part of something creative, and I feel lucky that RAYGUN is a small link in the never ending chain of cool stuff people make.
I owe a lot to customers, the community, and especially to my co-workers.
I've learned a lot, and i hope this video series can convey that.
So if you have questions about RAYGUN, just leave them in the comments, emails us, come into our stores and ask them.
I'll make a video for each one and we’ll steadily put them out.
I hope my appreciation for all those who have worked with us and supported us comes through in these things!
So let the questions fly!
Where did the name RAYGUN come from?
This is the number 1 question we've gotten.
The short answer: we used to be called SMAH until someone tried to sue us!
The store opened as SMASH in 2005, and in 2008 we got a cease and desist letter from a company in California called SMASH.
We decided it would be cheaper to change our name. So we started making a list of words. RAYGUN landed on that list because Mars Cafe in Des Moines had a "Rock vs Ray Gun" DJ night.
We liked that it was a noun, spelled correctly, even number of letters. And we could trademark it!
I always wish that there was a better story than that.
But a lot of business is reacting to things that are out of your control. It's planning and reaction.
Most people think of a plan and then steady growth for that plan.
Really, it's more like dropping your plan into a Plinko course -- bouncing into obstacles and seeing where you land.
SMASH was the plan. It had a back-story. It was named after the first CD I ever bought -- The Offspring's Smash.
Our original font and style was southern-California-punk -- typewriter font, heavy distressing, etc.
But that font has issues as well -- hard to blow up, not as readable, too pigeon-holed stylistically.
So we moved our font around the time that we changed names.
Our core content remained anchored to our 3 pillars -- funny, midwestern, progressive.
But the name an appearance changed.
That's the balance: consistent enough to have a voice, flexible enough to change when needed.
I'd love to chalk this place up to my own genius and planning, but a lot of our major decisions were just things that were out of our control!
Where did the cat come from? And why is he named Gary?
Where did this cat come from? Why is his name Gary?
Like a lot of things, Gary was a group effort.
In the beginning, there were no cats or cat designs. But as cat memes started taking off in the 2000s, and as our design team grew, we started working them into our designs.
We laid out the slogan “you’ve cat to be kitten me right meow” and must have had extra time on our hands because we decided to illustrate a cat to go with it.
One of our designers, Jen Leatherby, illustrated our cat in "one take."
Her art is the masterpiece you see today!
But he still didn't have a name. But since we didn't want to illustrate a bunch of cats, we used him on everything!
In 2014, when we were moving into the building we’re in now, we had these huge letters spelling out RAYGUN that we were going to hang in the upper window.
One of our employees, Dylan Boyle, was holding them up inside while we were outside checking the height. He arranged them to spell GARY NU, then was like, “oops, mispelled the name of the store” and were like "ha ha ha etc etc."
After that, "Gary" became a kind of inside joke for a bizarro RAYGUN.
But around this same time, as the creative team grew, we looked for ways to give the company a voice for commentary on news, etc. We decided that we need a cast of characters who would be stand-ins for individuals -- we kind of stole this idea from Gorillaz.
The cat was character number one, and he took the name Gary.
The second character was actually my idea: Nitro the Spaceman. His name is a nod to our original store, Smash – Nitro was the first musical track on The Offspring’s album Smash,
The third character was the dog, Pancake. And, TBH, i’m not sure where Pancake’s name came from! I know our designer, Rachel, named her, and she’s from Magnet, Nebraska.
But Gary, our fearless CFO, divorced father of 4, driven and grizzled, will always be our first…