THE STORY
From our humble beginnings to our modest and disappointing business today
An unquiet mind
Established in 2021, Tracknasty got its inspiration from decades of bad jokes, an interest in marketing and branding theory, a collection of unusual life experiences, and a cynical and dreadful but optimistic predisposition during the throws of the pandemic. Our interests and designs are the result of daily consumption of gallons of coffee, undiagnosed ADHD, and a very particular set of skills that lent themselves to the material we offer for sale.
Most of the Tracknasty designs are based on hyper-niche jokes, brand parodies, friendly greetings, cats (Floofabelle, more specifically), and a little bit of actual art here and there. We like what we like, and we hope you like some of those things too. We also like to write, so we have a not-very-well curated blog. Some of it are personal musings from the founder, others are insights on some of the ten thousand interests we have. Picking one thing is hard, and you can't make us do it!
A maker for makers and weirdos
Since we've started, we've not been quiet about our passion for making. Besides the weird t-shirts and fun designs for people with bad taste, we also like to tinker. Several of our designs are inspired by our love of CNC, and specifically 3D printing. There are not a lot of unique designs for people who enjoy this hobby, so as members of this community, we pride ourselves on having some of the best 3D printing specific novelty designs on the market.
Generally, when we aren't working our teeth to bone or making self-deprecating jokes, we're building or printing something. This isn't quite the cyberpunk future we all hoped for, but it's something. You can check out some of our best maker stuff on our shop page, or if you're looking curious about some of what we do, you can check out our blog.
The real reason why we do it
If this is your first time visiting, we'd like to introduce you to Floofabelle. She's the company cat and unofficial muse, mascot, and motivation for Tracknasty. Our founder didn't fancy himself a cat person until watching this little fluff monster ravage the streets of the East Side of Indianapolis. She was ruthless, relentless, territorial, and manipulative. Other neighborhood cats scattered in her presence. We understand how this sounds based on the reference image, but she was a bully.
One day, she was fed some fancy Italian tuna in olive oil (non-cat people don't keep cat treats or cat food on hand), and then she started visiting more routinely. She kept coming around, and eventually she decided to stay full time. She made her first cross-country move in 2022, and she likes her new digs. We're happy she found us, and even happier she decided to stick around. However, she has demands for her lifestyle and upkeep now, and that's what motivates us to keep building (we're doing it under duress, please send help).
Pro-gress is better than no-gress
We began as a small print-on-demand company, but we recently seized the means of production, by which we mean we've acquired some equipment to bring our print services in-house. We like knowing we have more control over quality, a closer connection to our customers, and the ability to facilitate one-off design requests with greater speed and at a more reasonable cost. It's modest growth, but better than we could have hoped for.
If you're interested in a commission, let us know, and we can turn around one-offs and custom design work fairly quickly depending on the complexity of the design and number of garments you'd like decorated. Send us a message. We respond quickly because Floofabelle is always hungry and cat food is getting expensive.