Joystick Junkies interview Chris Birch

For the people following us here longer than 5 years you might remember that nisute and joystick junkies have gone a long way. And since we’re into gaming lifestyle, we figured it would be nice to pay our friends at Joystick Junkies, one of the ground-breaking game T-shirt designers of europe, a second visit. Chris Birch owner and Founder of JJ will be answering our burning questions today. Have fun reading!

NiSuTe: Hey Chris.
Chris Birch: Hi mate.

NiSuTe: Can you tell us something about the company and the start of it all?
Chris Birch: Back in 1999 I was wondering why no one was selling cool tees based on video games. It was strange that with such cool graphics no one had taken advantage of the imagery to design tees. Finally after talking about it for maybe a year, people got fed up of me dreaming and I decided to just do it. I drew the logo in a bar on a napkin one night, walked in to the office the next day and said: “Hey we’re starting Joystick Junkies”.

NiSuTe: Did you start on your own, or did you have a partner?
Chris Birch: Back then I had a public relations company working with a lot of games companies. So I got some friends at the trade paper CTW to sponsor us with some advertising. We invited everyone in the industry to a launch party including people from TV, film, model agencies, advertising and other PR companies. Then we designed some cool clubbing style t-shirts based on some classic gaming graphics. And our first party was a roadblock. 30 arcade machines on free play, marshall jefferson the godfather of house music DJ-ing and a self confessed gaming addict. I dreampt up the idea and started it with a couple of other guys – one who did the t-shirt production for us- another who owned the arcade machines we used for the parties. But we re-launched the company with new partners a few years later.

NiSuTe: Wow that is really cool. So JJ is more like a hybrid between the gaming industry and the fasion industry?
Chris Birch: My challenge to myself was to make gaming so cool that non-gamers would want to wear the designs. I loved the idea that I could bring together to different industries that at the time were so far apart. While gaming parties were traditionally full of guys, we threw the hottest parties in london with a nice mix of girls and guys, great music, arcade games, 80’s vibe.

NiSuTe: And, is it working?
Chris Birch: Well we’re now in some of the biggest high street stores across Europe and some of the coolest fashion boutiques stock our clothing. The reason we’ve been so successful is that we’ve designed the t-shirts or hoodies to look really cool. They have to be fashion first, not gaming first.  That means someone has to be able to walk in to a store who is not into gaming and get the design and think: “Wow that’s cool I want to wear that”. Now if I’m a gamer and I see the design there’s a bonus, there’s always something extra to it I’ll get. I realised there were people doing ‘gaming’ t-shirts but there weren’t commercial – to survive as a business let alone a fashion business you have to be commercial – so the challenge is always to make t-shirts that are commercial and will sell. But still to be true to the game and make it even cooler if you know the game.

NiSuTe: Well that must be getting harder and harder to do for you guys.
Chris Birch: We have to constantly re-invent ideas – so for winter 2010 we’re now designing a whole range with a comic book vibe.  It’s all about heroes, but the gaming inspiration is still there. It’s just everything is drawn in a pop art or comic book style.

NiSuTe: But how doe this work? Do you contact the developer with a nice design or do they contact you?
Chris Birch: You can’t just keep designing the same style of tees. Most of the time we design for ourselves. Sometimes we’ll go to a company like Atari or THQ and say: “Hey we love Saints Row. Why don’t we design some tees around the game”. We have to submit detailed proposals but if we get a licence we can then get access to all their graphics and development art. We then spend time designing a variety of graphics that we think will fit the commercial fashion trends – the guy who is the buyer for say the hip store in paris or the big chain River Island in the UK has to look at the design and think: “Yeah this is going to sell thousands in my store”.

NiSuTe: Speaking of Capcom just a minute ago. would you like to create some T’s for them (and us eventually), too? (I would love to see a JJ sir om nom nom t shirt)
Chris Birch: Hahaha. Yes i love capcom they’ve got some great games – and times are changing – when we started we were doing retro designs which then were late 70’s and eary 80’s games, recently we’ve been doing mario and sonic designs so things are catching up, and with Saints Row 2 it’s now been shown that we can do cool designs based on modern games.

NiSuTe: modern games have very detailed graphics, doesnt that pose you any problems?

Chris Birch: no because we don’t necessarily use the full graphics. Often we’ll take sketches or logos and make 2 or 3 colour art from this.

NiSuTe: and that isnt a problem for the developers?
Chris Birch: with fashion design you have to consider the costs of producing the prints and what is commercial – often this is not full colour artwork. The developers or publishers are more interested in seeing their games get in to fashion magazines and as long as you can show you’re respecting the brand and making it cool they’re usually happy. When it’s really detailed high res art of a game this isn’t necessarily what will sell as only fans of the game will understand it – that’s not a big enough market for a major high street fashion chain to justify buying the t-shirts. So you have to consider art that looks cool whether you know the game or not, you have to research the game a lot and see if there’s any cool development art or logos or poster art. We do a lot of work to find out what will work – but usually we won’t try unless we have a feeling it will work. However, for some newer bigger games we’re considering designing just for the community, with designs that are only available online.

NiSuTe: So how close are you with the developers?
Chris Birch: Some better than others – most have been to our parties in the past!

NiSuTe: Can you tell us more about the parties and the drive behind it?
Chris Birch: Well originally it was the idea to help build the brand doing great parties. Getting lots of different people in the entertainment industry together. Fashion-shows of our clothing, old arcade machines. The challenge of throwing a gaming party that was actually a fashion party. Again I loved the idea of making a gaming party the coolest party in london that night. And we did it. They were packed  every time. We’d invite press down for fashion shows of the new range, buyers, possible sponsors. It all helped promote the clothing with the sheer number of emails being sent to invite people, flyers and other press.

NiSuTe: But its all UK based? I mean the parties.
Chris Birch: We have done a party in the US. In Hollywood during E3 with lots of celebrities.

NiSuTe: But never on europe’s main land? Will this ever happen?
Chris Birch: We have cut back on the parties because there is so much work involved and it detracts from selling the fashion, however, we’re talking to some sponsors about throwing a really big party at Gamescom. I’d rather do a few really good events now than lots of smaller ones. the costs are quite high so if you don’t have sponsors it can be a difficult thing to do.

NiSuTe: True. Tell me about the celebrities ^.- who have you met and how is their reaction?
Chris Birch: Well we had a lot at the party in LA – Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jessica Alba, the Rock. That was about 6 years ago. They were all doing their thing with friends and it’s always best to let them enjoy the party than hassle them. Jessica Alba was rocking out dancing on one of the speaker’s. I meet a lot of bands in the UK – I find with our gear that people either love it or not, our colours are very bright and the graphics bold so it’s more for people who want to stand out. This is perfect for guys on stage.

NiSuTe: So lately you’re into bands ? They must recognise the games right?
Chris Birch: Yes they do – sometimes they love them as they’re playing whilst they’re on tour.
There’s some good pics in the VIP section of our site of bands wearing our gear:

NiSuTe: That must make you feel good.
Chris Birch: It’s great when people like your hard work.

NiSuTe: But it wasn’t always this easy was it? (not that it’s easy now, but you get what I mean, right?)
Chris Birch: No, you’re right. We’ve been working hard for ten years to get to this point. That’s a long time, and we’ve had hard times and good times. At the beginning we had no stores selling our products, just online on our website. Then gradually we started to find stores then distributors in other countries – most of that has happened in the last 5 years – then in each country you’re starting from scratch, gradually building things up. There’s a huge amount of investment, time and money to make each country successful. And when you’re spending time on one country you can’t focus on another so you have to be careful to grow slowly.

NiSuTe: So how big is the JJ team now?
Chris Birch: We’re  a 7 people operation; me and my business partner Rick ( I handle the creative side of things ), Rick manages the business and handles the sales, there’s Ansa who is the production manager who sees the designs through from finished artwork to actual t-shirt, sources fabrics and colours, does trend research. Then we have Lee who works with some of the big retailers managing the sales, Cindy who handles the admin and shipping, Ghurkan who does the accounts and Vicky who just joined us as an intern from Germany for 3 months. Oh and I forgot Tim who’s our finance director and one of the investors – he makes sure we don’t spend all our money! We have agents and distributors who don’t work for us directly in each country in europe as well.

NiSuTe: Okay, I think we can start rounding things up ^.^ Is there anything you want to show us or tell us?
Chris Birch: Well the new Christmas range is going online in a few days. Be sure to check it out on Joystick Junkies.

NiSuTe: What makes the Christmas range special this year?
Chris Birch: It’s got some cool designs from next year’s range brought forward especially. The christmas range is not the full winter range though, just some last minute designs we do for christmas itself. I’ll try to get you some pics in a couple of days then

NiSuTe: Anything you want to tell our readers?
Chris Birch: Thanks to those of you who’ve supported us over the last ten years, we really do appreciate it. Every t-shirt sold is like a thanks to us for all the hard work!

NiSuTe: No problem, and thanks a lot for this interview Chris!
Chris Birch: No problem mate!