My Card

Putting my name back on the game

It took me until a couple years ago to commission good artwork for The Exile Media & Trading Co., a business I named in a fit of pique after shutting down my former record store nearly two decades ago. The last time I seriously pondered branding, I was flirting with the idea of quickly reopening a shop in Toledo, flexing on the people who I imagined were taking pleasure in my downfall. I envisioned coming back to Bowling Green, the town where that store lived and died, as a conquering hero with a chain of small stores, the exile returning to reclaim my downtown turf.

That place, a legendary local haunt that had been in decline for years, should have been shuttered and liquidated long before I was (rather easily) duped into taking it over and being its fall guy. The life changes that made closing it our best option kept me out of the retail game for years afterward. I never completely went out of business, but I fell into a different kind of retail altogether.