mayakern

[mayakern]

sometimes i wonder how my life woulda been different if had actually written spitfire under a pen name

tbh the prospect of drawing promo art, pretending it was fan art and faking a reaction felt too weird and using a separate name but being like hey that’s me!! constantly just sounded exhausting

[mayakern]

it’s that time of year when i stare at my work calendar (and impending book release) and try to decide if i can do artfight

[mayakern]

Will you be restocking the astronaut shirts at some point or was it a one-time thing? I really love the design, but I just realized that I forgot to order one and now my size is sold out :(

i’m so glad you like the shirt design so much!

like with all our designs, it just depends on how long it takes the majority of our inventory to sell out bc if something sells really quickly that’s a good indicator that we could sell through a restock.

our minimum order quantities are really high compared to the size of our business so restocking things can be really risky.

despite our high minimums, we pay very close attention to which sizes sell out the fastest and every single time we order a garment type we are adjusting our order ratios by size to try and match what sold out fast vs what lingered in the store for weeks or months, but it’s not a perfect system and sales can be unpredictable from design to design or month to month.

so if you have any friends in our in stock sizes that you think would like a design we have in the store, please share it with them bc selling thru our remaining sizes is the best way to give us confidence in a restock!

[mayakern]

anyway i have already received 98 applications sooo i may close the form sooner than expected, sorry y'all!!

i will at least keep it open until friday since i only JUST posted the tiktok about ARCs today

PSST--would you like an **free** ARC (advanced review copy) of Spitfire: Rekindled before it releases on July 25th?

I'm looking for readers to give early, honest reviews of the first book in my queer, polyamorous romantasy series in trade for a free digital copy.

Applications are open until July 2nd:

[mayakern]

in response to the question "where do you primarily review books" someone wrote "[I] Mention[ed] books in anime reviews on Crunchyroll before they removed comments 😭" and i have so many questions

PSST--would you like an **free** ARC (advanced review copy) of Spitfire: Rekindled before it releases on July 25th?

I'm looking for readers to give early, honest reviews of the first book in my queer, polyamorous romantasy series in trade for a free digital copy.

Applications are open until July 2nd:

[mayakern]

My EcoVero viscose shirts are retiring soon to make space for our upcoming cotton button-up shirts, which means the button-up shirts in stock right now are the last ones we'll have for $65! These shirts are lightweight and breathable, but not see-through, and the designs by myself and our collab artists are made using high-quality roll printing that doesn't fade in the wash. These shirts are made in a unisex cut with hip gussets on the side to accommodate for hips. Most designs are available in 4XL-6XL in the US store (with a couple still available in medium-3XL), and the Canada and UK store have more sizes in stock!

US: http://store.mayakern.com CANADA: http://www.mayakern.ca UK/EU/INTERNATIONAL: http://www.mayakern.uk

[mayakern]

I got the shipping notification for my suspender skirt today and it got me so giddy and excited ♥️

I can't wait for it to arrive!

yesssss im so excited for yall to get the suspender skirts and summer loungewear!!! i love them soooo much and am super excited for y'all to love them too!

[mayakern]

My astronaut fabric has already sold out, but there are a little less than 40 yards left of my microorganism fabric!! This is leftover fabric from my EcoVero viscose Microorganism button-up shirt! This fabric is lightweight and breathable without being see-through, and is suitable for non-stretch garments. This fabric is a little slippery and is recommended for advanced beginner and up skill levels! Ships worldwide:

[mayakern]

PSST--would you like an **free** ARC (advanced review copy) of Spitfire: Rekindled before it releases on July 25th?

I'm looking for readers to give early, honest reviews of the first book in my queer, polyamorous romantasy series in trade for a free digital copy.

Applications are open until July 2nd:

[mayakern]

trying to figure out what my energy/work capacity is for the spitfire rekindled launch. like i defs wanna do ARCs this time and that's not too hard but i keep seeing recommendations to do virtual book launch parties and... it seems fun but also like a Lot of work that i probably dont have time for 🥲

[mayakern]

ahhh look at these combos omg! 🥰🥰🥰 i hope you like them 🧡🧡🧡

Got a bunch of new clothes today!

Some gorgeous skirts from @mayakern and some cool tops from @freshhotflavors

[mayakern]

so how would YOU reconcile having slow burn yearning and instant gratification spice in the same story? 🤔

[mayakern]

does anyone have advice for doing digital ARCs for self published books?

[mayakern]

art vs final product

[mayakern]

Is there a chance of the picnic tops coming back sometime? I just stained my white one irreparably 😭

ah im sorry to hear that!

but yes im hoping we can bring them back early next year, tho it might have to be as a preorder!

im not sure yet what color(s) to do (we might keep it to the black and white, or maybe do the blush color from the petticoats or some sort of brown) so if y'all have colors you particularly want to see let me know! we're also developing a skirt made from the same material to maybe go with it

[mayakern]

Hey, I just wanted to say that your Luck and Folly t-shirts and farfalle tops are some of my favorite items of clothing right now! It’s so hard to find plus size basics that are flattering, but you nailed it. Can’t wait to see what other basics L&F comes out with down the line!

yay i'm so glad you like them so much! 🥰

unforch the basics did not go well for us other than the wrap shirts, in part because they were new and ppl didn't trust them, in part bc it seems a large part of our customer base is anti-crop top (tho the wrap and picnic crop tops still went well so 🤷‍♀️) so i'm not sure when/if we'll do more basics bc with how rough this year has been we are having to be super careful about what we choose to release 😅

[mayakern]

we're working on a new style of skirt that could potentially make solids viable again, i just can't guarantee anything, even with the UK store, due to how high our minimums are relative to the size of our business

right now, even tho the UK store launch was successful, you have to understand that it was a pretty conservative launch and we cannot entirely base our product decisions on UK/EU tastes. right now, 80-90% of our product is still going to the US store and if something does well in the UK store but flops in the US, that means over all it is still a flop for us.

we do plan to slowly increase the amount of product we send to the UK, but have decided to be very cautious about it given how bad sending too much inventory to canada has been for us.

i hope this makes sense and let me know if you have any more questions! we kind of exist in this weird limbo space where we are neither a huge retailer or a tiny one person show making everything at home, which means we don't have the financial cushion, resources or workforce of a larger brand or the flexibility of a smaller one, which can be really confusing for people to try to understand.

Is there any chance that the older patterns and especially the single color skirts would be available at the EU/UK store at some point? (I'm dreaming of the fig, chanterelle and clover skirts)

if a design/color is retired, it will take a HUGE amount of customer interest to bring it back!

the way having different storefronts works isn't that we're ordering different stuff for different places. basically, we place a single order for a set of designs and then we designate how much of each size of each design we want in the different locations.

and keep in mind, even with opening more storefronts, our minimum order requirement is still quite high relative to the size of our business. so we can't just go "oh the UK never got to have this design, we should make it for them!" we have to think "how many of these have we sold previously and how long did it take to sell out? did we sell them all at full price or did we have to discount them? what percentage of garments did we have to discount and how steep did the discount have to be for them to sell out?" and a bunch of stuff like that.

the clover skirt will probably get a restock at some point tho i'm not sure yet when, but the solid color viscose skirts are dead and gone. we may try something else for solid color skirts in the future, but those specific ones are not returning. if solid color skirts do return at some point, i'm not sure about fig (it's a beautiful color that sold well for a while but started selling really slowly towards the end), but i can say with 100% certainty that sadly the chanterelle color is never coming back. the people who got it got it, but sadly there weren't very many of those people.

(including pics of those skirts for context for other ppl)