Love. It's the single word that’s been the through-line of my journey to the dream that is Trend Riot. I am overcome with emotion. Now that Trend Riot is here I find myself looking backwards on over a decade of planning and the hard work it took to bring Trend Riot to life. The idea started small, like most. It was how can I help my friends get their creations to a larger audience than just our town? That question pushed me down a rabbithole i never came back out of.
The first problem to overcome was exposure and over saturation of our market. Also, like many of you I understood that it's a hard thing to keep up. Bills, life, hardships, there are many things always competing for time with creativity. In most cases the pathway to justification was profit; also not an easy thing to do.
I started looking into options online and at the time there weren't many, but some existed. On the surface it seemed like an opportunity but the options never sat right with me. Taking money away from artists and creators never felt right. I couldn’t wrap my head around why they would take money from people who really didn’t have much to give in the first place. They had a captive audience and they were willing to exploit them.
So I started dreaming up something different then I started to plan. It's been a long journey but it's finally here. Trend Riot is my love letter to you the creator. I hope you find a home here and it enhances your love of creating and most importantly your quality of life. This is just the beginning.
I’ll leave you with my hope. This revolution was born grassroots, it grew grassroot because you fostered you bet on yourselves and you promoted it. For your efforts you got fees and fee increases. That doesn't sit right with me and I know it doesn't sit right with you. I say we take it back. I say we remind them all that without you there is no industry. Together we will make this industry what it could have, should have, and would have been. I bet on you. I bet on us. -JD