So I have to be honest. this past year. I decided to join the Print on Demand and AI revolution trend. I ended up creating a site called Alchemystics.org . Here I will tell you a bit about my journey, some of the lessons I have learned, and will even give you some of my trade secrets (obviously as affiliate links).
But first, let me tell you a little backstory on my life. I used to run a small online record store called Chaos Existence. At the time, chaos existence was actually a fairly innovative site and I was able to not only provide full audio samples but a dynamic inventory website linked to a database. In addition, I wrote all of the code necessary for this ecommerce platform. Calling it a platform might be a bit of a stretch. However, the site was capable of integrating with our suppliers and pulling in their inventory via electronic data interchange as well as pushing our entire catalog to other aggregator sites. Although perhaps some other e commerce platforms with a lot more doing something similar (perhaps), I came up with the idea myself and implemented all the necessary code for these projects.
I have a certain fondness for these days. And even though the the music landscape was quickly changing with MP3's. I did not close the store for lack of business. In the end, i learned a lot about cashflow. I Ended up with way too much money stuck in failed special orders which meant I had a large inventory of things hardly anyone wanted. 😅
Now fast forward to other entrepreneurial ventures and and several career moves to about February of this year, when I decided to launch metazen minerals after going to the Tucson Gem show. I had a small side hustle of trading minerals and silver jewelry i had made a few years back. However with the changing financial landscape and unfortunately being newly single again I found a need ro find some new clothing as I started to socialize again. However, I was not finding the style or art that I wanted. Sure, I probably did not look as hard as I could of, but my local artisan friends and old tried and true websites were either oversaturated or out of business at this point.
The timing of this also coincided with the artificial intelligence breakthrough. in March of of 2023 chat G. P. T was all over the news and subsequently other projects such as mid journey we're at the top of everyone's mind and all over the news.
Being a technological artist, I decided to start playing with. The technology's myself and in turn create some of my own art.
These experiments led me to some results that I wanted to put on t shirts myself. Side note, eventually lead me back to brush up on my photoshop and illustrator skills.
Now Meta Zen Minerals was not a great name that could also include apparel... and I happened to already own the alchemystics.org domain. As you can guess, this lead to the transition to thr alchemystics art collective and website.
I think this is a good time to break as part one of a story series. And I will continue as I get more time.
