Name of your website?Monkey in a Dryer Screen Printing
Your name?
Dallas Poague
Your Location (city, etc)
Richfield
Please give us a short summary of your website?
We are a smallish screen printing company in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. We have been in business for 2 years and printing for 6 years. Our business consists of myself and my wife Andrea. I am a graphic designer/web designer by trade. She is a designer as well. I started out screen printing as a hobby out of my garage. I printed my own shirts for a while and then started printing shirts for friends. Then I landed a large order for a retail chain to carry my designed t shirts. After slowly building the business, Andrea started to market the business on the web. After a while, we started getting more jobs and I was able to quit my day job and go full time in the printing industry. A year ago we were able to purchase a house with a barn on the property. Yes, we are in the city and it's unusual to have a barn in the city. Our house is the 3rd oldest home in Richfield. Our barn was built in 1855. We renovated the 1200 square foot barn into our printing studio. We have grown to the point of purchasing our first auto press. This year hopefully will be our biggest year yet.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
My inspiration came from 60's kid food packaging, cereal box art, toy packaging, pop culture and my personal mascot DCB. He is all over my site causing trouble.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My first website was www.seussnavy.com. It started out as a showcase of my personal collection and then became an officially licensed website dedicated to showcasing Seuss collectibles from the 1930's-present day.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We often get asked the question "what the heck does 'Monkey in a Dryer' mean?". The general answer we give is: "it's a long story". This will usually satisfy people (or at least they don't want to push the question any further).
Though the name is pretty humorous, the origin isn't really all that funny. Thus the reason we don't usually get into the details of the name or it's meaning... but since you HAVE to know, here it is... the "long story"....
Way back whenever... several years ago... DCB and Mr. Frothy were talking. Frothy was observing how DCB's life was a constant fight between people pulling him this way and that... everyone wanting him to do stuff for them, but they never returned the favor back to him. He was (and still is) always busy. Doing this or that for everyone else and never getting a moment to himself.
Frothy recalled an experiment he heard of (though he can't confirm if this is a true story or something he made up in his mind)... well anyway - in the experiment he 'heard' about - these scientists would take a monkey and put it into a tumbling mechanism that would continually rotate the monkey - around and around again. The monkey was not allowed to sleep, or eat or just get a moments rest at all. The monkey eventually went insane and died. It seemed to parallel DCB's life quite a bit. (excpet for the dying part). Frothy said to DCB - "YOU are that Monkey". Somewhere in that conversation, the tumbler was referred to as a dryer. Thus Monkey in a Dryer came to be.
DCB liked the name very much and quickly registered the URL. He used the domain as a homepage for all his miscellaneous personal sites. Over the years he has gotten a lot of compliments about the name. One ad agency out east even wanted him to make tshirts with the name and logo on it (before he was even making tshirts). He didn't understand the enthusiasm people had for the name - but decided not to question it and eventually adopted it as the official name of his t-shirt business.
So there it is - DCB is a Monkey in a Dryer. If anyone knows if this experiment was real - feel free to let us know - or maybe it's best if we didn't know for sure.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We feel we stand out from other companies by not just offering typical screen printing but helping to create the artwork with an artistic flare of wimsy. We also like to offer the best customer service to each person we come in contact with. Since we are a smaller business, we rely on word of mouth to build our business.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our goal is to make enough money to enjoy life. We may want to open a retail location one day but at this point we are not interested in that. We enjoy working from our home base and spending time with our kids and our dogs.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
We have been working on our business constantly without much of a break in the last 2 years. We hope to be able to take some vacations this summer and next winter.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We spend alot of time on our site. I am constantly updating it with new designs and information. The only thing I want is for more people to visit and maybe provide some useful information. I have a few websites that are information related and forums on cereal. www.cerealbits.com and twiggybits.com
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Unexpected costs come from scammers. A good learning experience for us not to ever let that happen again.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Andrea handles the office related duties. It was a learning experience for her. Learning new programs, getting organized. She's doing pretty good. I'm constantly learning new techniques with screen printing. It can be frustrating when I can't figure something out, but then it hits me and makes my day!
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
People just seem to like our site. I think they like the way it looks over other screen printing sites. We try to make it fun place to visit for our customers.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I've been designing websites for a long time. Only thing I have trouble with is SEO. The only reason I know this term is because Andrea is researching how to market our site more. Otherwise I don't know anything about it.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
We have had monkeyinadryer.com for 7 years. It was a gateway to our other sites. So far, it has been successful. We are planning another website launch Feb 2008. It's a t shirt submission site for Star Wars Fans. That's about all I can say about it for now.
What would you save from your burning house once your family and pets are safe?
My original painting used for the production of the Vintage Twiggy Lunchbox.
What is your website address?
Monkey in a Dryer Screen Printing