Our very first booth, July 4th — back when we were still Black Cat Closet, and still selling a bit of everything
We started this in April.
I don’t have a better origin than that. There was no plan on a whiteboard. Winnie had been drawing our cats for a while, and at some point the drawings stopped being just for us.
Five months later I looked at our own website for the first time in weeks — really looked at it, the way a stranger would — and realized how far it had come. So I wanted to write down what actually happened, while I still remember the parts that were hard.
July 4th. The San Leandro 250th, out at Monarch Bay.
I don’t think I slept much the night before. We had no idea how much to bring, how to lay out a table, or what people would even stop for. We brought too much of some things and not enough of others.
Here’s what I didn’t expect: nobody cared about our branding. They cared whether the tote could hold groceries, and whether we’d met the cat on the front.
You cannot learn that from a spreadsheet. You learn it when someone picks up a bag, turns it over, and puts it back down.
Since then: the K-Pop fest in San Jose. AAPI On The Bay out on Treasure Island. First Fridays at Castro Valley Marketplace, twice. Head West on Fourth Street in Berkeley. Bizerkeley Food Fest.
Seven markets in about two months.
What surprised me most wasn’t the customers. It was the other vendors. Every one of them has a version of the same story — a thing they make, a reason they make it, a day job they’re trying to get out of or a life they’re trying to build around it. People told us their margins. People told us which markets weren’t worth it. Nobody guarded anything.
I came from an industry where information like that costs money. At a market, someone hands it to you between customers because you’re both standing in the sun.
We’ve learned more from vendors two tables down than from anything I’ve read online.
In July we became Nyangi Studio USA.
Nyangi — 냥이 — is Korean for kitty. We’re Taiwanese, so it isn’t our word. We just loved how it sounded, and it felt right for a brand built around two small black cats.
Changing a name partway through is not a thing I’d recommend for fun. New logo, new domain, new everything, while you’re also trying to get a booth ready. But it’s ours now in a way the old name never quite was.
If you met us at a market last summer under a different name — hello. Same two people. Same two cats.
For a while we sold a bit of everything. Apparel, pins, collars, ornaments, coasters.
Now we mostly sell bags. Totes, wallets, pouches.
That was the hardest call of the five months, because saying no to a product that sells a few units at a booth feels like leaving money on the table. But we’re two people. Every extra category is another thing to photograph, price, store, restock, and explain. Narrowing down didn’t just simplify the shop — it made us better at the one thing we kept.
Winnie designs most of what we carry and handpicks the rest. Our own designs get produced in runs of about twenty. When a run sells out, that’s usually it. That’s not a marketing tactic; it’s just the size we are.
We’re working toward designing all of it ourselves. We’re not there yet, and I’d rather say so than pretend.
The website you’re on right now is the third version of this shop.
We started on someone else’s platform, moved to another, and eventually built our own. Live inventory, our own checkout, our own everything. It took months and there were nights I questioned it.
Worth it, though. When you’re this small, the details you’re allowed to control are most of what makes you feel real.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, we moved back to our place in Concord.
Not for the business. For Vina and Ricky.
They needed more room than we’d been giving them — more window, more air, more space to not be on top of each other. They used to fight over the litter box constantly. It still happens, but way less now. Most afternoons they end up on the same shelf by the kitchen window, back to back, watching the trees.
I spent a long time arranging my life around a job. This is the first stretch where I arranged it around home instead. I don’t have a clean lesson to draw from that. I just know I’m glad.
Vina was a stray who didn’t get along with other cats, sitting in a shelter in Southern California because nobody wanted a black one. Five years later we moved house so she’d have a better window. That still gets me.
September 11th, we’re at the Concord Night Market at Todos Santos Plaza.
Our first booth in our own town. A ten-minute drive instead of an hour. After seven markets across the Bay, we get to set up down the street from where the cats are sleeping.
If you’re local, come say hi. Ask about the bags. Ask about the cats — we’ll talk about them longer than you want.
Five months ago we had a folding table and no idea. We still don’t have most of it figured out. But we’ve got a booth, a shop we built ourselves, and two black cats who finally have room to stretch out.
One cat at a time.
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Nyangi Studio USA