Entries by Jim Marcotte/Two Town Studios

The Thrill Is Gone

First, my best wishes to BB King’s family. When I wrote this he was battling serious health problems, and now he’s gone off to the Big Jam. But can’t you hear him singing it? Remember how thrilling the whole idea of a digital revolution and social media used to be? One big party where everybody […]

Break It Down

So, you want to license your chicken designs, or woodland creatures, a particular unique pattern or maybe your poem or clever saying. Good! But before you head off down the yellow brick road, portfolio in hand, recognize that what may seem like a single assumption on your part – that you can license your (whatever) […]

Dude, Like, How About My Stuff?

As someone who has been in the sales business for many years, I was horrified to receive the following email solicitation recently (from a company we all know and many work with):   Hello my name is Xxxxxx. I’m with xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx. I’m here to see if you were ready to place an order with […]

Snippets – Atlanta 2015

Well we made it past the normal incubation period, so apparently have managed to get through another Atlanta without catching colds or flu. This year had us worried with all the hoopla about the expanding pandemic and the ineffective vaccine. Gettin’ soft, I guess. Or just gettin’ old… nah, couldn’t be that. It was a […]

Exploring 2015

  I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question. – Harun Yahya   So here we are – one day we woke up (in Dallas, TX, fyi) and the calendar has turned over to 2015, and […]

We’re Tee’d Off

We spent a couple days in Orlando attending the Surf Expo and the Imprinted Sportswear Show which were co-located in the ORL Convention Center last week. The hundreds of surfer dudes, awesome ski boats, skateboarders and strolling bikini models quickly convinced us that our best beach days are past but we still gathered priceless information […]

Who Is That Behind the Curtain?

Periodically somebody in an art licensing forum will ask for some “manufacturers” to post their opinion on some subject. Fair question, but there is never a response for a couple reasons: there are only a handful of licensees paying any attention to the groups, and most of those that do will never expose themselves because […]

The Great! Idea Company

There has been a lot of talk about how the product licensing market has changed for people on all sides of the equation. There has been an ongoing flood of new art and artists, designers and concepts, coaches and contests, all competing for attention in the market. At the same time to further confound things […]