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Crystal and I have now nurtured her through the years, building a solid family of fans along the way, and, despite endlessly ridiculous obstacles and ironies both big and small – from dotcom blow ups and bankruptcies to small-minded executives and lazy agents – we kept coming back to kick the football, just like our pal Charlie Brown.  And now we’re proud to say we’ve achieved our longtime goal to get our little girl into Target stores nationwide.  Our first line of Cranky Girl Valentines Day cards are currently available in stores and at Target.com, and now we’re poised to sell many more licenses.

When we met, Crystal had graduated art school in San Fran and finished an extended internship at Pixar.  She was in LA, pounding the pavement with her portfolio, trying to make rent and get paid to create art.  Mostly, she was drawing little comic strips for Metal Hammer magazine and working an endless succession of crappy and varied jobs.  Thus, Cranky Girl was born.

I was taken by her immediately and we began to develop her with an eye towards launching her as a series of animated internet webisodes. But timing is everything, so we found ourselves pitching one company after another one folded.  While showing up to one signing meeting, Crystal actually arrived to discover employees literally selling the office furniture and filing cabinets in the parking lot – I guess we didn’t get that memo.  We hustled around to traditional television and animation studios, all to no avail.  Everyone loved little Cranky Girl, but no bites.  We were discouraged, and took a beat to reflect, whereupon Crystal sent me a rather hilarious and sweet hand-painted card with a biker bunny thanking me for all my hard work.  It was a touching sentiment and put a smile on face, and then I had tears in my eyes – tears of JOY!  You see, in that instant I had a vision, a flash of clarity, what Weight Watchers might call an “A-Ha! Moment”.  Crystal Jones was some sort of idiot savant greeting card genius!! 

We got on the phone and Crystal began work on an assortment of greeting cards while I made a contact at a new online greeting card site. They loved Cranky Girl’s offbeat and sassy sensibility and ordered a dozen prototypes but, once again, right out of a Cranky Girl comic strip, our timing was “unfortunate.”  This was still the tail end of the go-go 90s, and the tech bubble was continuing to deflate, so literally as I flew to San Fran to deliver the cards personally to the Sparks.com facility, the company went under.

We were discouraged, of course and we put the cards aside, figuring maybe we’d re-approach the dotcom world  after it shook out some and companies merged together to better create the online market. So we went about our lives: Crystal left LA and moved home to Reno where she met a smooth jazz radio DJ named Doug, and the two got married.  They moved to northern California.   I continued scrapping around the entertainment business, and then, as luck would have it, I met a gal at a friend’s birthday party – somewhat cranky myself by now, I almost didn’t even go! – who turned out to be working for the groovy new online and mobile division of American Greetings.

The online marketplace had finally emerged, and for once our timing seemed right.  So we were able to make a license with AG to sell e-greetings and cellphone wallpapers, and the advance was just enough for Crystal to take some time off from work to generate new Cranky Girl artwork.  We decided to reinvest some money in Cranky Girl, “putting it all on red” as we used to like to say. So we trademarked, created a partnership, built the crankygirl.info website and we waited for folks to show up … Well, our sales were building steadily but they were still pretty small in the grand scheme of animated characters.  Folks just didn’t know about Cranky Girl. 

We needed to find new ways to spread the word and began to research the licensing industry.  Armed with a bunch of great new artwork as a result of the AG deal, I went to New York to meet with top licensing agency Cop Corp, which was having great success building the Happy Bunny brand.  They loved our girl, but just couldn’t move us.  We tried apparel and tchochkes and stationary … you name it.  Everyone loved her, but nothing. Timing, it seemed, was bedeviling us once again, and no one wanted “attitude!”  And s,o much of our art was “seasonal,” linked to specific holidays because of the AG license.  Good Grief!

So we decided to “crank” out more generic art, research retail stores in malls around the country and develop art for specific products such as mugs, lunchboxes, watches, hoodies and anything we thought we could sell.  And now, it seems that the marketplace has once again caught up with us and we’re right on the curve.  “Attitude” is in!  And we’ve got plenty to spare.  Not to mention a suitcase full of seasonal art.

We’ve just this week made it into Target with a line of honest to goodness real paper cards from industry giant CSS/Paper Magic, and I think it’s somehow appropriate (or maybe just a little ironic) that they’re Valentines cards.

Just like the folks at Tastybaby, who are also in the business of building connections through community and selling a product which nourishes and enriches lives, we too have stood behind our product – our own baby girl –confident we would eventually find a market, or ate one if need be.  We’ve persevered and flourished. And we’re excited and looking forward to whatever comes next for us and Cranky Girl … puttin’ it all on red.