For weeks I have been waiting not so patiently for goodies from Little Otsu to arrive - hands down one of the best companies Scribbles carries. Every day giddy me waited for the UPS truck to pull up, the excitement almost paralleling the level it reached when I saw Woody Allen play in Montreal. Woody Allen - you know this product must be the bees knees!
Finally . . . it came!
Little Otsu is small outfit of environmentally inclined, animal loving designers who have created an entirely vegan line of journals, day planners, greeting cards, postcard sets, calendars and more! In addition to using recycled paper and veggie based inks, Little Otsu prints all of their products down the street from their San Francisco store at a family owned print shop - three cheers for original design and small, local businesses sticking together!
I had super pleasure of interviewing Little Otsu founders Yvonne and Jeremy. Here’s what they had to say:
SCRIBBLES: We’d love to know how Little Otsu got it’s start - from seedling to pretty paper flower!
LITTLE OTSU: In 2002, Jeremy had been laid off from a dot com and we decided we wanted to go into business for ourselves. While figuring out what we wanted to do, he had the idea to make a planner, having been inspired by the fun randomness of Slingshot and the practicality of Franklin Covey. While he made some progress with his friend drawing a template, plans to open our store Otsu in San Francisco’s Mission District took precedence. With the store opening in October, the planner got pushed aside and never got finished (also because he’s procrastination king). In 2004, we finally got serious and asked an artist to draw one and help get it done and after that Little Otsu was born (the name “Little Otsu” came from a nickname our intern Kate had for us). We also met Lart [Berliner] (our most frequent collaborator) right at that time and it all kind of snowballed from there. Now we work on the publishing business full-time after moving to Portland last November and still have our store in SF as retail headquarters for all things LO.
SC: How did you decide to make an entirely vegan line? What does that entail?
LO: We’re both vegan and many of the artist we work with are vegan or vegetarian. So because of that we only buy vegan things for our storefront and approach what we buy and what we make from an environmentally-friendly point of view. That’s why we only print with 100% post-consumer recycled paper that’s processed chlorine-free and printed with soy/vegetable-based inks and made on the West Coast (which is where our storefront and production office are). We actually print our projects within 30 minutes of our storefront, so it’s pretty local and made by family-owned printers. We’re not specifically trying to make a “vegan” product per se, but because we are vegan, anything we make goes through the lens of being animal-friendly and environmentally-friendly. Nothing is perfect but we’re always rethinking how we do things to make them as cruelty-free as we can. That being said, we’re also just trying to have fun and make great art like everyone else!
SC: How do you choose the artists in your line? Do they choose you?
LO: A lot of people we met through the store as customers or vendors like Lart, Chris Duncan, Kaori Kasai, and John Porcellino. Others we met through friends or from finding people on the internet or reading their zines or comics or blog or something like that. We have met a few people from submissions as well, which is also great.
SC: What’s your favorite part of the job?
LO: It’s really fun coming up with ideas for projects and getting to explore those ideas with artists. We’ve had a ton of brainstorming sessions with Lart that lasted for hours where we sit around our living room talking about project ideas. It pretty much doesn’t get any better than that, except when you get to hold the finished product in your hand!
SC: What’s ahead for Little Otsu?
LO: We have our Little Otsu Annual Vol. 3 weekly planner coming out in the middle of September in 3 editions (perfect bound, spiral bound, and mini). We also have a calendar hopefully coming out with Chris Duncan and as well two books of comics & drawings (one by Lilli Carre and one by Jo Dery; both artists we have worked with before). We also hope to have another card set ready before the end of the year as well.
(manager) jenny specific: What are you favorite movies?
LO: Oh wow, way way too many to list. But we’re gonna list a bunch anyway for fun… Metropolitan, The Conversation, Masculine Feminine, The 400 Blows, Rushmore, Don’t Look Back, Badlands, Army of Shadows, The Bicycle Thief, Cleo from 5 to 7, Dead Man, The Decalogue, The Gleaners and I, The Grand Illusion, Ikiru, Manhattan, Last Picture Show, Rear Window, Rififi
(web maven) jane specific: What’s your favorite vegan dish?
Anything from Cha-Ya in San Francisco, a vegan Japanese restaurant a block from our store. A few of our favorite dishes there are Dengaku, Summer Green Roll, Cha-Ya Nabe, Curry Udon Soup, Soba Salad. We miss Cha-Ya!
Thank you two so much!
If you’re interested in the Little Otsu products at Scribbles please
contact us and we’ll happily sell you some!
-Jenn
