When furries attack: Zweitesich criticized for marketing fursuits as expensive luxuries.
by Patch O'Furr
“Being mean and shitty to people doesn’t make you interesting” – Kaiser Neko
Everyone knows furries are silly. Many of them even claim a tongue-in-cheek Furry Trash label that sells truckloads of t-shirts. So what kind of oxymoron is “Designer Fursuiting”?
The launch of fursuit maker Zweitesich (Second Self) presented the trappings of an upscale luxury brand, complete with slo-mo fashion modeling, and dismaying logo placement right on the faces of the products. (Cool logo design, though.) It emulated the most pretentious of mainstream hype, including eye-popping prices and one of the most overanalyzed sentences ever written to sell things to furries: “created by a designer, not ordered from a tailor.”
Flayrah’s Sonious summarized how the marketing flopped: Fursuit entrepreneur learns rocky lessons about advertising.
Sometimes hype is just hype. Image is part of selling anything. Of course, if you know furry drama, it predictably didn’t stop with a failure to connect. Not when there’s a fandom complex about image that’s way out of proportion to how much the mainstream cares. With this complex, it’s like The Normies are always lurking outside the door, and they’ll break in here if there isn’t constant gatekeeping against fictional entertainment (like the 2003 CSI episode. If it’s been stale since last decade, insecurity keeps the resentment going.)
So Zweitesich gained over the top backlash against what fans saw as capitalist encroachment. But commercial overtures do happen and the sky hasn’t fallen yet. Borrowing a little street cred never gets as horrifying as the specter of a neutered fandom that only has Maskimal-wearing Zootopia fans with all the queer rainbows bleached out.
Still, Designer Fursuits landed on the long list of reasons for why the fandom has been ruined since it started. (Satire alert.)
At first the critics mocked Zweitesich as the faceless product of clueless outsiders; but the drama kept going when the hasty assumption proved to be false and a well-known artist was named (AlbinoTopaz, AKA Tayerr). They shifted to other justification for tearing down the artists talent or personality beyond the business approach. There were also some pretty damn funny parodies.
For sale. dEsIGneR fursuit partial. One of a kind. Starting bid £20k. No Taylors, only d e s i g n.
Comes with head, vest and a free tattoo of my brand on your face. pic.twitter.com/fQfob7HCVJ— Red Baron Wolf ✈️🏁 @CFz (@redbaron_wolf) April 16, 2019
One of the interesting criticisms alleged a case of “apology marketing” – a strategy to cook up controversy and then do a prepared reversal, gaining traffic both ways. It could make sense for a big company with a high budget, or for chasing traffic or votes (rather than manipulating customers to pay a lot for a couple of hand-made objects.) The criticism pointed out how the marketer for Zweitesich boasted an Addy award for guerilla marketing. But on closer look, it seems like just a token from a local chapter of a club with 1/15th the following of the furry critic. Be careful of overanalyzing a simple misunderstanding.
Critics should also remember that social media negativity is capitalized. Outrage = traffic = profit, and that’s a far more nefarious scheme than fears about targeting a tiny niche fandom. They have bigger fish to fry.
The hype wasn’t even 100% off base. Mainstream news has covered “furry couture”:
- (Racked:) The Fursuit of Happiness: High Fashion in Furry Fandom
- (Vice:) Who Makes Those Intricate, Expensive Furry Suits?
It wasn’t that overambitious either. Flayrah’s Equivamp commented:
“AlbinoTopaz’s suits already have a distinctive enough style that she could probably actually get herself to the level of the fursuit studios that kinda come as close as they can to “designer” brand – the highly-sought, recognizable designs whose commission slots sell for $10k+, that people refer to themself as an “[X Brand] fursuiter”… I think her main problem was being too explicit in saying what she wanted the company to be, LOL.”
It’s funny how furries worry so much about the media, but nobody’s harsher than they are to each other. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
The attempt landed poorly but actually there isn't just a clueless outside marketer/designer, there's someone who has history in fandom who is unhappy. pic.twitter.com/9dRCS8M9ku
— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) April 16, 2019
Nobody forces people to throw money at such things. It's funny when high prices bring hate for fandom stuff that is handmade, but some of the same people cheer about movies they like making a billion for Hollywood. https://t.co/Wetv2sFx2U
— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) April 16, 2019
TOMORROW: Forget Designer Fursuits… It’s Time For More Bonkers Concept Fursuits.
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The funniest thing in this matter is that if somebody really wanted to take the fursuit market by storm they wouldn’t need any bizarre marketing ploy to do so. All they’d need to do is set up their workflow so they can guarantee that the suit will be ready in 3-4 months from the moment they receive the tape dummy. That would make an immense difference from the many months or even years it takes to get the suit done from most makers. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but with so many experience makers already in the business I think it would be perfectly feasible if two or three of them joined efforts along with the tools and materials they already have in stock. In fact I’m a bit surprised nobody has done it yet since demand keeps increasing and quick delivery time would certainly bring in a lot of people who wouldn’t bother with a years long queue.
You’re right. There was one maker like that recently featured in some mainstream media. The maker name is escaping me and it’s not coming up in a minute of news search. But it was one of the top 3 or 5 makers and they said the secret to success was having enough staff to turn commissions around in months, not years.
Having a staff and dedicated workspace all set up with supplies is a significant investment though. And what fights that is the pro/fan approach where hobbyists and younger people compete with more pro adults who want to make a living.
The $2000 fullsuit cost that was (until recently) a pretty standard cost would leave these makers with very little to live on after all the work. Who’s going to invest into a business that doesn’t let you be comfortable and afford stuff like a house, healthcare or a family?
After all, the really good stuff is super professional, and it’s not bad to consider it as worth supporting that way. But people just see a $2000 price tag and get bent out of shape about it going “too high” with little idea of what work is involved.
The recent rise of premium priced high demand auctions, like $6k and up, and sales records approaching $20K, was actually a positive development for this cottage industry. Still not a corporate thing, just fans showing support and artists doing well for themselves and getting breathing room.
With that comes plain envy and pretensions about socialistic access. I really like that ethic, but that’s more about events and experiences.
What we see here was a maker who’d had one of those record sales a few years back when the curve was just rising, and getting their project and ambitions absolutely trashed with vicious, over the top backlash for daring to openly call this stuff what it is – a luxury. It violated a possessive sense of what fandom is for.
People wanted to knock her down a peg before even connecting the brand to a real person, and even when they did realize, oops it’s that person who’d designed some well liked personal suits and won dance comps by doing what any furry does, they didn’t put the bashing on pause. They shifted over to finding other excuses for it.
While the marketing was a serious miscalculation, the backlash was toxic as fuck. There’s no excuse for the personal attacks, digging into her past, etc on top of fair business criticism.
Fan entitlement is a good word for it. It involves backseat-driving and pretension of everyone being a critic except without being invested stakeholders, and no accountability for lashing out without limits.
Yeah I hate the whole brand thing, I think it sucks, but this was still one person’s project. All she was doing was hedging about raising it above hobby level, in a miscalculated way. She’d been afraid of all that invested effort fizzling out. And rightly so.
I had a spreadsheet of about 100 active makers a few years back, and after about a year the turnover was high. The ones who managed to get in a regular groove and keep the work coming were just a fraction at the top. Like any pro art. There was a lot of burnout with the market just barely letting people scrape by or hobbyists dipping a toe and not finding it worth going all in.
Anyways, this whole thing absolutely sucked on the human level. While it was taken as a fandom victory against trends of commercialism, it also peeled back the ugly superficial cliquishness, envy, and petty sadism that social media enables for immature people to revel in.
I hope Tayerr takes a different approach rather than moving on to other things out of fandom, but wouldn’t blame her if she does. There will be plenty of catty people saying “bye bitch,” but she has real talent and passion we saw when she was winning dance comps. So we’d see the ceiling that keeps fandom as a kind of ghetto where vision isn’t as welcome as high school cliquishness is.
That’s one reason why this fandom doesn’t have better indie movie making ideas, or when we do see the kind with more than fandom relevance, it gets trashed for not preaching the right message or just not being cute and nice. Same goes for news sites if they don’t conform to narrow content too. 😉 Posting this story struck a nerve and drew petty viciousness to take it down a peg.
Not saying this was the right kind of vision, but it’s like the top quote says, “Being mean and shitty to people doesn’t make you interesting”.
I think many fans would be willing to pay a premium if it meant much shorter waiting times. This combined with the fact shorter times would mean more commissions done could make the business more sustainable for makers.
I agree there was an overreaction, I can see making fun of what happened but getting aggressive over it was unwarranted. It seems obvious to me that it was not a case of apology marketing but a mistake due to inexperience with conducting larger scale business. I understand the fear becoming a soulless heavily commercial fandom, but I’m way more annoyed by some artists who put up a facade of fandom buddies but in practice adopt exploitative practices. The community is so large now that the raise of larger scale enterprises is unavoidable anyway. I think the important question to ask is how can the community preserve its soul in the face of increasing scale and increasing economic interest in it. I’m quite confident it can, but not by getting overly conservative like it did in this case.
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