ilovethesweatshop! so what went wrong?

Personally, I was wondering. I mean, I heard about ilovethesweatshop from a couple of cool and reliable people, got the flyer and it was colourful and eye catching and even conceptually interesting…

click the image to see the flyer.

I even got sent the corporate proposal, a press release and a buyer invite, all of which were convincingly enthusiastic about independent design, safe and inspiring working conditions, and the making of collaborative art. So I rallied up a photographer and friend and went the heck down there. Did you? Maybe I saw you there… were you the guy on the phone telling someone else not to come? ak.

It was a complete non starter. A bunch of stuff set up looking ready to be cool with nothing going on and no one in the know. I have nightmares where I throw events that feel like this. There was something just plain wrong. I mean- I’m exaggerating maybe. It was nice to meet designers I’d never met before, so there’s that, but still - there was a definite vibe of wtf.

So I thought, heck. I wonder if the organizers would do a post-event interview? I like interviews with this perspective because you know, there’s truth in that old adage that goes “hindsight is 20/20“. Do a pre-event interview and people can’t help but do promotion. Do a post event interview, and I think you’re more likely to get good stories.

In the case of ilovethesweatshop, my suspicion turned out to be true…what happened does make for an interesting story. I wouldn’t say it’s an uplifting story, although the narrator is sympathetic. It is sometimes an awful story but it has a sweet ending and a kernel of hope for future well-intentioned collaborative art, and, most importantly a huge lesson in it. This interview will from now on be required reading for any future Indyish event planners.

Nevin was incredibly honest, and that’s a generous and brave thing to do. It makes me want to work with these folks in the future, even if this one time they happened to rain chaos. To me it sounds like they were running late and taking on a lot, but they hit so many of the right bases on their way there (as you’ll read below) that I think that they might really have been able to pull something very cool off if some cruel person hadn’t played a pathetic and twisted power-trip trick and taken half of this partner team out of commission. Had this happened to us, I like to think we would have we would have called it off immediately and postponed indefinitely. I’d like to think so, but in a non-traumatized state it’s easy to think clearly, but when you’re hungry, tired, or completely distracted by something someone close to you is going through it get harder and harder to stay up on that ball.

And in the true spirit of ilovethesweatshop, you could take a second here to think about how the vast majority of people in the world are hungrier then they should be, more exhausted then they should be, and more traumatized then anyone should be.

Here are the questions I asked and below is a slightly copyedited version of the response. I’d like to thank Nevin again for doing this:

who put ilovesweatshop together?
what was the plan?
what happened? what if anything went wrong?
how much research and planning went into ilovethesweatshop?
what was the sponsorship money used for?
what would you do differently next time?

Hey Risa I’m glad you’ve shown your interest in this event. A lot of different things went wrong that day or the day leading up.

Well first off i will answer all your questions my name is Nevin and I’m a designer from Toronto who runs the company FDOE klothing and my partner is Maggie Voultsos who runs proper apparel out of Montreal and Toronto.

Now brace your self this is going to be long but if you want the whole story your going to get it ….

The plan for the event may have been a bit much for two people too be organizing on their own but basically it was intended to be a multi faceted event that had the intentions of exposing up and coming designers to the public and store buyers while making money buy selling their apparel at cost and giving the public a chance to by designer pieces at a lower cost than store costs… this was one aspect of the event the other aspect was to expose the public the complex process put into the production of garments so they have an understanding of the conditions needed to produce such garments therefore we intended to create an artistic interpretation of what an ideal sweatshop should look like but at the same time we wanted it to be an artistic piece where there is live sewing and silk screening and crowd involvement through pain splattering with water guns as the mediums. And we had paints suits and the whole nine set up ready too go …. now I’m sure your wondering why all of this did not happen…..well a number of things went wrong.

First off the bat planning an event from Toronto isn’t always the best idea. All the promo and my ability to address store buyers was not the most personal and I talked to a lot of buyers after the event and they received invitations too late . …. a lot of the radio ads did not make it to air and again i guess it would help if i were in Montreal to make sure the posters where going up and the flyers were everywhere …

I arrived in Montreal Friday morning (the day before the event was supposed to go down) with a lot of sewing too do and sponsorship as well as errands pertaining too materials and location setup,ie; table rentals, racks, silkscreening supplies as well as assuring we got the artists info for our bio sheets as well as fees from the artists, which by the way we waived, anyways needless to say there was a lot to be done… which of course needed to be done during regular business hours and on a poor mans budget aka money i don’t have. And of course this lead to renting a uhaul truck and hoping it could work out.

Well it was working out .. but then the night before the event the worst of the worst happened my partner went our promoting and never came back and I got locked out of her studio, which had all of my contact info as well as anything I could have been possibly working on for the event …….. i found out the next afternoon- the day of the event- that my partner had woken up in the hospital with no recollection of how she had got there … she had been a victim of that whole women getting their drinks drugged thing. The cops found her in a coma and brought her to the hospital… Needless to say it was the randomest of event to occur … a little dramatic and threw us off by a lot. She got her jacket with her house keys taken from her … and alot more but i wont go into details but i took the event into my own hands because my partner was in no state … but being locked out of her house and having spent all my money the day before on a car rental and purchases for the event and she was supposed help out with her check that cleared that night after my contributions so basically i had no money no car and a lot of setting up, purchases and layout to do.

Now think of it this way there’s a designers market to setup which is nothing really but just making sure bio ’s are ready and registration is done and and everything is setup and ready too go of course there’s more but thats the basics. Then the video which i had to make sure i got a projector for which i luckily acquired from a friend then setup…acquiring a dvd..player…

Then the live sweatshop which the basics where already acquired but there was a lot that needed to be set up at the venue to make sure paint didn’t mess up the floor, drying system for screens washing system, hinges and tables that we could bore holes into, purchasing more water guns getting paints from sponsors which we did not event have time to pick up… i had my own silkscreen paint … having a clothes line set up along the stage… It was like setting up a production that never happened then at the end of the day we find out we don’t have enough tables.

Anyways there was a lot to be done and I thought i could do it all without my partner but I really couldn’t do it and I was way too scattered to explain to anyone what to do cus there was like a million things too do and if you where wondering why it looked like there was no organizers there well I was running around the whole time trying to make it to stores to make last minute purchases while running stuff from people houses ie; sewing machines hangers …and so on … while receiving text messages every two seconds from people wondering what was going on. I wish I could be a robot, it would make life a lot simpler …

I’m going to jump to the question about sponsorship money. First off there was no sponsorship money. period …

we were the cash sponsors.. two broke fashion designers who can’t even pay rent

We came up with a proposal targeting companies that could help us with supplies for the event …we were hoping for money but that did not happen but nonetheless it worked- we got a beer sponsor and basically we used the beer to pay for the venue- 20 cases …

Then we used the entry fee which generated very little to cover the costs of our djs, the majority of whom came from Toronto and Montreal but we had to cover the transportation costs and more .. we had an after party which helped with those costs….

Our other sponsors included Guru which offered us 5 cases of Guru which we didn’t even bother picking up .. and t-shirt connexion an art store …which offered supplies …all the other names you see on the flyer were designers that were going to take part in the sweatshop and we decided that because they were contributing their and fabrics to participate in our event that we would give them logo space on the flyer which would normally cost 500$ minimum .. needless to say I lost money and there was no sponsor ship money a lot of ditching on bills and finding ways around every obstacle.

A lot of research and planning went in the ilovethesweatshop event but not enough. Now maybe I’m being hard on myself but I think that because we started off so late- almost 2months and 2 weeks prior (maybe a bit less)- we had a venue change from the Nest to Club Lambi due to problems with licensing which worked out for us financially but not in terms of the dynamic of the venue….

The floor plan was not laid out whatsoever being that I had only been to the venue once in the past. And relying on someone in another city for details is not always the best plan of action … now a lot of ground work went into the planning of this event and the short 2 months that we did work on this event and although we had no budget to work off of we did receive good sponsorship responses although no cash. We are going to be able to build with these companies as a result- for example American Apparel showed interest in our event. Unforntunately companies have a certain amount of donations or sponsorships they can have per year .. and they were over the amount. But because of the parallels in our political undertones they sent the proposal out to L.A. to head office but it was a little too late. But we will be doing follow up with all companies because although a lot went wrong, the concept was an ideal that I held strong to my heart and I want to see it come off correctly. So I’m sitting on the fence still about throwing another. I was hoping to do the same event in toronto and there is a lot of interest…

If I could do it differently I would make sure I could be in the city of the event a week prior… I don’t know if we met at the event but I was running on 4 hrs at most of sleep over a 3 day span. I was delirious but functional. So I would make sure that’s not the case. Planning would involve a lot more than just 2 people. I would get more people involved in this project…. I would send store owners letters in person or in the mail because after talking to some of the owners after the event they said they received their invites the day of or after because it was sent through email … next time i will address people in English and French because I wrote a French press release but that’s about it and I received some flak for that which is understandable … I would make sure I can have a venue that will allow me to set up the day before …or earlier in the day ….9am or something. I will do more tests and look at every aspect more meticulously.

I won’t throw an event if i have no money, although I like the idea of a sponsor paying for it all because I was stuck in mtl cus I had no deniro to get home which was settled later but that’s sketchy. And next time around if there is a next time im gonna make sure that there’s more focus on the sweatshop installation because that was the main thing and I’m really disappointed that I drew people out especially people that came to take part literally in the event that left because it took me a while to tell them what was going on, or brought there screens did not get to print… Either way next time around I want to come correct…because we need more events like this bringing different artists together for a multitude of causes.

I hope this answers some if not most of your questions if you have anymore questions please free to ask.

take care Risa
and I’m sorry if you were disappointed by the event. but it was what it was. I guess have a good day and I will keep you posted on anything else I do.

Nevin Hendrickson