How Organic Growth Effects Design
Building a brand with no money changes everything. With no ads or shortcuts, organic growth becomes more than a strategy; it starts shaping the design itself. This is what happens when you’re forced to build something that earns attention instead of buying it.
I started this business with an idea, a pencil and every free version of software you can imagine, from google docs to the first free-website blog.
I haven’t spent anything on ads, sponsorship or traffic. Yet.
It’s been 8 months since I launched the shop and over a year of solid build from websites to caps. I had to do it this way.
Organic cotton, emblematic of our organic growth journey
Socials are not the only strategy
Organic growth on social media, is like swimming upstream.
You are playing for free, in a pay to play environment.
Platforms that are designed to feed you sponsored content, are not going to prioritise unpaid content, that’s the simple version. Never mind algorithms.
It’s also unavoidable if you’re trying to sell something whether that is a t-shirt, a service or your personality. When you have a zero spend strategy, it’s a brutal combination. Unless you happen to have a large…personality.
It means slow growth, minimal distribution and many nights spent looking at every single little thing to make sure that I have done everything I can to move any kind of lever because that is all I can do.
Which also got me thinking…
What if all socials vanished tomorrow?
How would you promote your business?
No Instagram, no TikTok, no Reddit, imagine absolutely everything was gone or this list will get stupid.
What would you do to get the word out?
It’s made me look at what we offer in a different way.
On platforms made to entertain, how do I entertain? And how do I reach people offline?
I started looking for growth opportunity elsewhere, for story, for development, at strategy and landed on something interesting.
Recognise The Canis
This is fragment one. This is the start of what has been a seemingly endless development journey which has led me to characters, tokens and worlds. It’s unfolding and to be discovered. And the reason why I’ve been scribbling down notes at 1am again.
Cryptic I know
And for good reason. Find The Canis. This is an example of what zero spend can do to design, when you’re forced to design your way out of constraints. It’s conceptual and being slowly released but, on paper, almost brilliant.
Organic design is the outcome
I’m not going to lie, although it’s a constant constraint, zero spend is fundamental for another few months, whether that is fortunate, or unfortunate remains to be seen.
What it does to your design strategy, however, is worth experiencing.
What do you do when you can’t buy attention?
It’s an exercise I’d recommend to any founder. If you can handle it. I have started from zero. I have fully formed business architecture, a designer range in development, a sustainable, circular core system that has just morphed into The Canis, and it all started with a blog called The Pavement Special. I don’t mean to blow smoke up my ass, but no one else is so…
I’m painfully aware of how many businesses fail and how many challenges there are ahead. I just can’t seem to stop. Sometimes I think I should…but then I end up starting another design, or mapping out worlds or fretting over dye, or sitting down to write, or making tiktoks (shakes her fists at the sky), or working on strategy, or tweaking the website, or…
P.S Or that’s how you know this wasn’t written by AI. K’ Bye.
Ultraviolet Fractal
When I drew Ultraviolet in the early 2000s I was wrestling with the same questions I'm wrestling with now. The global issues haven't moved. Unless you count backwards as movement. This is the next chapter.
Model wearing Ultraviolet Fractal - Organic Streetwear for those unbroken.
When I drew Ultraviolet in the early 2000’s, I was wrestling with a lot of the same concerns as I am now. Not because my life hasn’t moved, it has, but the global issues I was thinking about at 17, haven’t.
Unless you count backwards as movement.
Creator or Destroyer
It’s about wrestling with the existential and where you place judgement. If you fix it here, does it break there? How do you know anything? How do you know what you don’t know? Are we creating or destroying? Earth or Purgatory? Are we alive or dead? That’s what I thought about at 17 – read into that what you will.
I’ve just finished Ultraviolet Fractal
The next chapter in the story. It’s the twenty year later version of the same questions. It’s the start of Ultraviolet as a character, and each new iteration, is an exploration of that story. Organic streetwear for those unbroken. Still building, still trying, still fighting. Still figuring it out.
The draughty neck
Zip it all the way up and you've still got an inch of neck to the wind. A quick one about design shortcuts, zips that fail in month one, and what building for lifetime wear actually looks like from the inside.
How many times can you zip before it fails?
I'm obsessing about necks. Hoodies specifically. It's still cold, summer is theoretical at best, and I've been staring at a zip that stops at the collarbone.
That's right. Zip it all the way up and you've still got an inch of neck to the wind. Design shortcut, plain and simple.
Zip’s that fail in month one
I've owned garments that are ancient. The zip still works perfectly. I've owned branded hoodies, and no-name, but branded hurts- selling you hype and tribe hoodies where the zip gave up before the first month was out.
It's easy to fake quality on the hanger. Before the third wash. Before the 50th zip. After that, you find out what you actually bought.
A zip upgrade adds cost per unit. A stitch density change adds cost per unit. These decisions get made, quietly, in favour of margin. The sale is what matters and it ends there.
I get it. Getting things made well is genuinely hard. The entire manufacturing industry is, from a structural perspective, substandard. That's not an excuse, it's the problem. It’s just how it’s done. This is changing, fast.
So, what do you do with that?
You research. Zips that don't fail exist- you’ll find them in mountain wear, for example. Who makes them, who tests them, are they compatible with the garments you're building.
And then you think about everything else. Colours that are kind to sweat. Care and repair. Spares for the parts that can't manage 25 years. A 14-year-old People Tree (RIP) sweater in my cupboard with fraying sleeves tells me organic cotton can go the distance; the rest is just decisions.
That's what building for lifetime wear actually looks like from the inside. Whether it’s zips or fasteners, plastic or metal, recyclable or not, all these designs effect the cost and profit outcomes, do I believe it is possible for Mongrel Logic to change the world in this regard? No, I’m not that naïve. But I am determined to try anyway. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go change my underpants.