Warwick Levy, founder of the ethical and independent streetwear brand Lonely Kids Club, joins the Owner to Owner podcast to discuss 15 years of staying true to independent values, battling massive corporate retail counterfeiting, and championing local sustainable production. Tune in for an inspiring look into scaling an authentic brand on your own terms.
In this episode of Owner to Owner, Michael sits down with Warwick Levy, founder of the legendary 15-year-old independent and ethical streetwear label, Lonely Kids Club. Warwick shares his incredible journey from dropping out of a university construction degree and printing shirts in his bedroom to building a thriving Sydney-based creative studio that prints thousands of unique, custom-designed garments on demand.
Discover what it truly takes to stay independent in a fast-fashion world, how national media attention from prominent public figures wearing their collaborative designs catapulted the brand into the spotlight, and the brutal realities of fighting global marketplace intellectual property theft on fast fashion platforms . This conversation is packed with raw insights on ethics, mental health, creative community building, and standing up to corporate greed.
Key Takeaways & Highlights
Fighting Global IP Theft: A frank discussion on the vulnerabilities small creators face against cross-border budget marketplaces and the urgent need for platform accountability.
Connect with Lonely Kids Club
Michael (01:21): T-shirts are way more than clothing. T-shirts can be art, they can be a form of protest, they can be an education, they could be a great way to promote a mate's independent business, and they can be a badge of community. Warwick Levy couldn't shake his addiction to t-shirts, so what do you do? You make a business out of it. He's the founder of Lonely Kids Club.
It's an independent label, an ethical clothing brand. It's now 15 years old. Today we're going to talk about what it takes to stay independent, what independent actually means, who should really care, and what were the biggest battles for Warwick in remaining an independent business.
And we're also going to get to the personal side: what does it take personally to do what he's done? So a big welcome in Warwick. Thanks for making it onto the Owner to Owner podcast.
Warwick (02:11): Thanks for having me.
Michael (02:12): What's the three-minute Warwick story?
Warwick (02:14): A three-minute Warwick story. Well, I went to school. I didn't really fit in too well. My parents divorced when I was quite young, and I had a pretty unconventional childhood, but still, in a very positive way. I love who I am now. And I feel like I didn't really quite fit in with other people a lot of the time. I sort of met another bunch of strange mispergy boys that I became close friends with and I still talk to today.
I finished school and my dad very much wanted me to go into construction. He felt as though if I did graphic design, I was gonna end up homeless on the street or something. So I did this construction degree, didn't enjoy it at all, could not have been further from my personality. And halfway through one of the assignments, years in, like three or four years in, I was raving on about t-shirts because the older I got, the more obsessed I got with t-shirts, designing t-shirts on MS Paint and all sorts of tools I could find, making my own t-shirts at weird sort of kiosks that printed them back in the day. This is maybe 2005, 2006, that sort of thing.
And then eventually I was going on and on. And I remember in an assignment I was doing, the guy I was doing the assignment with said something along the lines of, "If that's all you want to do, do t-shirts, then why are you here? Why don't you just go into t-shirts?" And I remember saying, "You know what, you're right." And I walked out and I remember him saying, "No, hold on, wait, we still gotta finish the assignment."
And that was it. Then I dropped out of my construction degree, launched Lonely Kids Club without any idea of what I was doing. It was a big failure initially. I think I sold seven t-shirts in my first year, and then I just did everything possible to keep it moving. I put stickers up everywhere in my community. I was selling t-shirts at the markets at cost price and eventually got enough money to do more ranges.
I used to go whenever there were gigs that I liked, I would go and sell the t-shirts out of the top of a big Tupperware container outside the gigs until the bouncers chased me away. I used to sneak into fashion events until I was escorted away to try to connect with people. Just anything you can think of, I tried to do. And eventually something worked. But yeah, I think I spent the first seven years of the brand just inside my bedroom.
Michael (04:11): It's not an unusual story. Was there one T-shirt that really kicked it off for you? You've gone headlong into T-shirts. Did you see a T-shirt on the street and you go, "That's a great T-shirt, that's what I want to do?" Or what got you about T-shirts?
Warwick (04:25): I think when I was younger in particular, I had a lot of social anxiety. And I think my way around that was wearing sort of interesting, cool t-shirts. I felt very frustrated by the supermarket—like the super center culture. I guess it's Westfield culture, to be honest, where everyone would go to two or three shops at Westfield and buy the same t-shirts and everyone would wear the exact same looking t-shirts. This is in sort of the early days of e-commerce when there wasn't all the different available stuff there is now.
And I found that sort of this idea of this manufactured look to sort of look independent when it was so manufactured to not even be independent was just really boring. And so wearing kind of interesting things was like these conversation starters. I would find these weird websites all around the world and get these sort of strange t-shirts that I would find. And then that would sort of be an opening conversation, like, "Hey, what's that about?" And I think I just sort of fell in love with it from there. And I just always was fascinated by t-shirts.
Ever since I was maybe like five or six, I would just be drawing all the time. And my natural progression from drawing was I want to do my drawings on t-shirts and I want to see how the drawings look if I could wear the drawings. And I think that's where it developed from at a pretty young age. I was already thinking about that stuff and looking at t-shirt designs and spending way too long looking at the t-shirts in the shops.
Michael (05:36): Yeah, so did it spark conversations for you? You confessed a bit awkward, but you were obviously okay to wear something maybe even a little bit contentious or on your T-shirt to spark conversations.
Warwick (05:48): Yes, yeah. I think I just really wanted to challenge a lot of those norms when I was younger. I also dressed in strange ways and wore interesting t-shirts or I'd wear really tight jeans at the time and I would sort of wear—almost like I jumped between what's traditionally men's and women's clothing.
I remember one time my dad had a really funny conversation with me where he was like, "The way you're dressing sort of implies something, but if that's what you want to imply, then that's fine." But you could tell he just didn't know how to quite approach it. And I remember thinking, "I don't know, I just kind of felt like expressing myself in this way." And I just didn't know why I had to dress a certain way because I was kind of told to.
And I think I kind of took that aspect into the brand as well. Because when I launched in 2011, it was gender neutral, which wasn't even really a thing at that time. There were no men's and women's sections, because I didn't think we had to identify things that way. I thought it was more just what you want to wear and what you think you should wear, just wear it. And I think I still try and keep the brand true to that to this day. We don't gender anything.
Michael (06:45): Yeah, it's a lot of you in the brand. I love that. So what is Lonely Kids Club today? It started 2011, 15 years on. What does it look like? How many staff?
Warwick (06:55): Sure. Well, it's grown a lot. It's gone from my bedroom to—I got an opportunity, maybe 10 years ago, to move into a creative space and have a retail shop at a very subsidized rate through a creative program, which was awesome. And then that partnership agreement stopped working because the building we were in failed the fire inspections for the whole four years that I was there, and we all had to leave. Then I moved into my first commercial contract. So I've gone from a few boxes in a bedroom to a warehouse-slash-studio. We have our own t-shirt printing machines, which we didn't have before. I've got staff—two full-time staff and a casual. And then I work with another two freelancers. And we have artists from around the world we collaborate with.
When we launched, we had maybe five to six white t-shirts with a single color print. Now we have thousands of products. And we've gone from just t-shirts to jumpers, hoodies, tote bags, shorts, some socks, lots of hats, and even track pants. We have a few retail shops that we stock; I don't really promote it that much, it just happens on its own. And we've built a community. We have a Facebook group called Lonely Kids Club Club, which I thought was quite catchy. And there we sort of work with our community. When people say they want stuff, we just make it. And we've grown to a point where I would say we're still probably somewhat underground, but people seem to sometimes know who we are.
Like the other day I got a really bad spasm in my traps—that happens sometimes from all the t-shirt presses. And I went to a physio and the physio was like, "Wait, are you Lonely Kids Club?" And I was like, "Yeah." And I remember him saying, "I love that brand." And I was like, that's so nice. And every now and then I see the t-shirts and I kind of look awkwardly and smile then look away, so some of that awkwardness is still there, evidently. And yeah, I think it's grown into a point where it's a company instead of just being a person with a few boxes putting stickers up in my neighborhood.
Michael (09:04): Yeah, it sounds very much like a platform where you're connecting artists who want to display their art and also individuals. It's two-way. Is that a fair way to describe the business model?
Warwick (09:04): Yeah, totally. I think that was one of the things that was tough as I never really did a business plan per se. I sort of never really knew what I was doing. I kind of just jumped into a pool, learned to swim sort of style, and probably drowned for a bit, but kind of resuscitated. I had a bit of luck at the time. So I work with artists; we'll approach some artists or they approach us and then they'll get a commission of the sales.
I think one of our big points of difference is all our products are made ethically with AS Color, and then we print them sustainably here in Sydney one at a time. So we don't contribute to any of that landfill and waste. So it's very much a step away from mass-produced cheap crap t-shirts and fast fashion.
It's much slower fashion, and then we don't have the landfill, we don't use any nasty chemicals. And the artists that approach us know that we'll represent them in a positive way, and they like those sort of values we have in our ethos. It is very two-way. And I think that personal connection is still such a strong point of the brand—of genuinely being a personal thing. When you buy from us, you know that we're individually printing your t-shirt. We look at it, we pack it and ship it ourselves. There's no drop-shipping. If you call us or email us asking about anything, you talk to us directly—like myself or Claire or Jen will actually respond to you. So it's a very personal touch. And even on the website chat, if you message, I'll usually be the one to respond. We don't have any AI in any of our designs either. We try to move away from generative AI. I think it removes the human element, which we actually really like. The imperfection is kind of what makes us human. So yeah, I think we kept a lot of those initial principles.
Michael (10:33): As a business, do you print on demand or print to order? What's the smallest batch you've ever done and what's the biggest batch number you've ever done?
Warwick (10:44): So we literally—I built a system out actually a few years ago with a guy in the Philippines so that when an order comes in, it creates a QR code for each one that we then print. And the QR code says what t-shirt it's for, because we have a lot of different t-shirts we keep. We have all our fits and then all the different colors. And so when they come in, we'll label it and then we'll print one design at a time. And so when I'm doing a print run, I might print for like six, seven, eight hours when I can. And during that time I might print like 200 or 300 different designs—constantly doing different designs, every single t-shirt is a different design.
But the biggest batch we ever did was by far, I think it was last year or the year before. We had someone order a t-shirt and I sort of recognized the name, but I didn't think much of it. She was an Australian of the Year, Grace Tame. And she then wore this t-shirt that happened to say "Fuck Murdoch" to meet with Anthony Albanese at a press conference. That blew up astronomically. That was a collaboration with The Chaser. And that wasn't something that I was aware of was going to happen; it was awesome. She just did it on her own accord. She's very cool. And she even paid for it in full, didn't even use a discount code, so props to her.
And then we suddenly had hundreds and hundreds of orders that we had to do. It was a huge match, something that we hadn't seen before. That was just a really exciting time, because at that time the website would only ever have 5, 10, 15 people on it, then suddenly I had hundreds of people and I thought, I'm getting a DOS attack bots thing happening.
And then it turned out, no, they're real people, they're really ordering—all these bots have really good taste in clothing! And then boom, we just had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds to do.
Michael (12:18): Just a real takeoff moment. I said at the start, a t-shirt can be many things, and it can be a statement or a protest, and she's gone to you to get that printed and then put it on display. It's fantastic. It's the power of that little bit of front of a t-shirt, isn't it? That real estate is so—
Warwick (12:37): Yeah, it is. It got to the point where I think the Prime Minister ended up commenting on it and talking about the t-shirt and stuff, which was so funny at the time. I think at the time I was a little bit disillusioned with the media because it seemed like they were just jumping through loops and hurdles every chance they got to not mention who we are or give us any publicity. I guess Murdoch didn't want them to or something. So they'd be like, "This t-shirt made by a local brand." They just kept finding a way to not ever say who we were. I think two journalists did mention us and I actually messaged them both individually saying thank you and that I really appreciated that they chose to do that.
But it was really cool. And I think it made me feel as though it's the right thing to do to put out designs that you agree with, even if it can be controversial and potentially divisive. Because traditionally in e-commerce, you don't want to be divisive—that can ruin your business. And so I think in working with The Chaser, we sort of took on board all the stuff they wanted to do. And that's what we touched on at the start of the conversation: being independent means that I don't think any other brand in the world would do a "Fuck Murdoch" tee, but we would, because that's being independent. And I think working with people that you believe in, we genuinely try and take a stand against corporate greed and corporate corruption, which is why we also work a lot with a lot of different artists like that.
Michael (13:50): Just that rather than going and picking a trend and saying, "I'm going to print 5,000 of these cool t-shirts just before Christmas and I might sell all and make a fortune, I might sell none," your business model is very adaptive and it's driven by people wanting more than clothing. They want to wear something with pride, and you're able to meet their quite small order quantities. Being so flexible, it's so powerful. I'm sure you have days where it feels like a lot, but I love that customization part of it.
Warwick (14:27): Yeah, that's a really good way to put it actually. It can be a bit brutal if we put out lots of designs and then a ton of them might never sell and then some might not sell at all and then might just pop off like years later. That happened recently with it. We did a t-shirt with Anthony Green, and then we released that one, I think, in 2023. And then last year in 2025—I don't know what year it is anymore—he then had his last election that he was announcing, and then just suddenly it exploded out of control because everyone was obsessed with him and wanting to wear him on a t-shirt for that. And we happened to have the t-shirt for it that we've been slowly building up on over years and years. So yeah, I think it can be really fun doing it that way.
And we end up—it's a pretty chaotic environment. We'll have buckets and buckets of all these different t-shirts, and each one will have so many different designs in them. And then we label them by express and standard, and we sort of date them. And then you notice pre-treating and pressing everything, and then we're pressing, printing it, and curing it through the tunnel again, then we're packing everything. And so it's quite a chaotic environment at times and there's lots of ink. But it's just part of the process, a part of the fun of it doing it that way. That just feels nice, you know?
Michael (15:37): Yeah, it feels like you're really well organized because it would just explode. The combination
Warwick (15:41): Yeah, you can even see my studio.
Michael (15:44): I mean, that QR code or that you have an identifier of every individual design, and you can get away with it to a certain point and then you probably just fall over if you're not that well organized. And if something really does catch on like Anthony Green, right, you don't want to miss that opportunity. I just wanted to go back to your take on the trade-offs that you made to go this way to t-shirts rather than to a more traditional job career. Looking back, how hard was that and what are the trade-offs you think you've had to make to get to where you are today?
Warwick (16:24): It is hard and it was hard because you don't have a stable income you can rely upon. If you're not doing well as a business, then that's it—your money takes that hit. And when you're the owner of the business, I think a lot of listeners will understand, the buck ends with you. So I'll make sure that all our staff are paid, all our costs are paid. And then when the money isn't there, the person that gets hit is always me and I'll take the pay cut when I need to and that sort of thing, because I make sure everyone else gets paid. And so that can be hard.
And not being able to switch off can be a challenge. So in the evenings, I'll still be continuing to work and still replying to emails, trying to still do social media posts. Well, if you have a traditional job, you can switch off and you sort of clock in, clock out. You don't have that mentality when you run your own business. But the flip side is I'm not getting yelled at by anyone or belittled. I did work a job—I worked jobs the first half of running the brand. I had one that was like a bigger scale one for a shoe company, I ran their website for them. And in that time I had a weird experience where I had a coworker that was like senior to me, sort of just being quite mean. And then one time we went to a conference and she got quite drunk and then she admitted to me that she got divorced and took it out on me. And I thought that was quite sincere, and then the next day she went back to being mean again. I thought, "All right, well, there you go." So not having to do that stuff is nice.
But that is a trade-off that I have to constantly make sure that I'm hitting a certain mark. And the operating cost can be quite high. You're paying rent, insurances, the cost of the products keep going up, the cost of all the ink and everything keeps going up, advertising, the website running—all those costs add up. And then if you're not—once you hit a certain point, when you go above that point, then you start making a solid income. But if you're not hitting that point, you just don't really make an income. And that can be very hard, especially if you're trying to explain it to your wife, for example, who you know—you have three kids and the wife is sort of saying like, "You need to be earning more," and then you're saying back, "Well, that's tricky".
Michael (18:50): Yeah. But it's not a one-off thing either. It's like at every point you can go another layer or another level with your business and that means more risk, more upside. There's always more purchases, more staff, more rent, more equipment or whatever. I think a lot of it's about deciding at what point you're happy with that, if you could sustain that, that feels like a good business to you. I don't think that gets enough scrutiny by owners. It tends to be that chasing the deal and going to the next level constantly and, you know, "Why am I doing this?" So yeah, they're great reflections.
Warwick (18:51): No, continue, continue. Sorry, I was disagreeing with—
Michael (18:53): Yeah, I wanted to ask what your dad thinks of this now. Like a lot of parents you want the best for your kids and you go, "I'm going to do something wild and crazy, I'm going to go into t-shirts." Where's he at now?
Warwick (19:08): I don't think he loved it at the time. I think he felt as though I was sort of running away from something that was challenging. But I later went to—I think it was like a career counselor or career specialist or job professional or something, where you sort of do a test and talk to them and then they work out a percentage of how suited to a career you are. And for construction management property, it had me at zero percent—I couldn't be further from being suited to that sort of field. I think he was glad when I then did a communications degree at UTS, and that I think that made him happy. For me it was a win because it was just quite an easy degree for me and I just liked cutting corners to get things done. I didn't really take it that seriously. It was a glorified arts degree, but I loved doing the art stuff. To me that was really fun and interesting and I genuinely liked it.
But yeah, I think even to this day it's a little bit tricky for him because I think he probably feels as though if I was in a career by this point, I would probably be earning significantly more than I am. I think also I made choices where I'm just not as monetarily driven as I guess he would like, or may be well suited to my life. So I think I've prioritized things like ethical production, sustainability, charity raising—we try to do a lot of work with charity—and working with community and things like that, as opposed to just how quickly can I scale, how much money can I make, how many t-shirts can I sell. Because that isn't the end goal for me. I don't just want to sell as many t-shirts as I can that just disintegrate after a day and then people have to buy more as cheaply as possible. That's just not my thing. And so I guess that's probably where there's been more of a challenge.
Michael (20:43): Yeah, and having your own business, all those things come at a cost, right, to the business. To be ethical in where you source from—if you got an expert in from the industry and you went through your P&L, you could cut costs here, you could cut costs here. But there's a flip side or a yin and a yang about it, right? It messes with your reason for being in the business or your purpose for the business. So yeah, good on you.
Warwick (21:08): Hundred percent. It takes away from doing what you kind of wanted to be doing. But I do agree it is a yin and yang and it's a balance. One thing I was going to say was a year or two back we joined this e-commerce program and then we were scaling things up. We were running the ads and we're pumping a lot into ads and we were converting a lot, but we didn't have the efficiency in how quickly we were able to print and ship things yet. So we were just spending as much money on our growth as we were on more staff to get things done. So then we were working harder and we were spending as much as we were earning more. And so it ended up being completely meaningless. And then we took a step back and we're like, actually, let's be more efficient. And now I think we've improved our efficiency, but our sales aren't as crazy high as they were a few years ago. And so that's the tricky thing, getting things at the right time. Like now we've got the efficiency, let's get the sales back in. But then it was like, now we've got the sales, let's get the efficiency. Lining those things up can be really challenging.
Michael (22:04): So that was an e-commerce group of business owners running similar businesses so you could share best practice. Is that what the idea of that group was?
Warwick (22:16): It was like an e-commerce coaching program. So you would pay a certain amount of money each month and then you would be getting coached in a group setting. But I think I realized that they did a few months of that where they sort of taught you those quick wins and then you would be able to join into these calls during the week. But otherwise you were just paying like $2,000 a month for I don't know what. And so then I wanted to get out of that program because I was like, actually, paying $24,000 a year is quite a lot of money to be spending now, I'm not really getting that much out of it. And then I realized they made it quite hard to get out. And even the contract you sign, it's a 12-month contract, but then they put in small writing after the first month so it's like a 13-month contract, so that guarantees them something like $26,000. And so then I had to really do a sob story to get out of it so I could leave early, because I realized I actually don't want to be in this program anymore. The idea of making you pay money to talk to other owners!
Michael (23:11): Yeah, well, no good. Lesson learned. And like, there's something about getting other advice because all the day-to-day challenges, they keep coming and you don't always have the answer, or at least you should think about getting another set of eyes and ears to look at that issue or opportunity. With the way you describe, I had this question about: do you see Lonely Kids Club as a business or more as a community? I know it's a bit woo-woo, but I feel like you've made some really great steps to build this platform. You've got inbound, it's a place where you can go and get customized t-shirts that mean something to you. But you need other collaborators to do that. So I see it like a meeting place, like a community. I mean, you've got to pay the bills, but is there an element of that for you that it's more than just a business?
Warwick (24:13): Absolutely. I do a lot of art myself, and then I've got two artists that are in-house—Claire does the majority of our art, she's very talented, and then Nuri does some art as well. But it really is like that. And we do these events—I think it's called LKCC Thank You, because it's the Lonely Kids Club Club. And in that group, we'll invite people to just comment on a post for what designs they want, and we'll try and make as many of them as possible in one day. We might do 14 to 20 designs in a day of just what people want. And it is a community space where we encourage people to just be a part of that community and know that it's a safe space where you can say whatever you want and present yourself. And people will post selfies wearing their t-shirts in a way that they wouldn't do publicly on social media, and they know that there won't be any scrutiny of their appearance or anything like that. It's a very nice, supportive community of really lovely people, honestly. And I think we've prioritized growing that and putting time into supporting that community.
And doing activities and trying to do fun things that we think that they'll enjoy—like we do free drawing books, free calendars every year, things like that, where it's not actually that monetarily driven. We genuinely want people to have that community. My personal belief is as we've built things up more and more, we've gone from kids playing outside their houses to having more people than ever in these apartment buildings not even talking to each other, desperate for a community. And so we've tried to create that element and sort of, if we can impact and improve people's lives that way, that's the win. Does that pay the bills? Not necessarily, that sort of goes back to the difficulty of it. But it's very rewarding. And when you see people reach out just saying, "Hey, this community means a lot to me, I love it so much," that's a really beautiful thing.
Michael (26:24): It sure is. It comes with a burden as well. There were a couple of things that I wanted to ask you about. You at one stage had a whole lot of your t-shirts copied and replicated on another global site. So they've just stolen your IP, printed it somewhere and displayed it. Can you talk about—it seems to me it was a theft of intellectual property and it happens to a lot of creators. How did you handle that and how did it affect you personally?
Warwick (26:39): That was actually really rough. I didn't realize that things had gone to this level. So it was Temu. When Temu launched in Australia, they brought a marketplace mentality from China, and I think their particular marketplace I would say kind of encouraged and still encourages IP theft because they don't put any safety precautions in place and they turn a blind eye to it. And basically their marketplace operators just sort of plugged into my Shopify.
So they went through and took all our content—all our mock-ups, designs, artwork, even the text of the details of the artworks—and put them on their website in the thousands. And so they even put our brand name in there, like "Lonely Kids Club W for Wombat t-shirt" or "Lonely Kids Club Get in the Van T." And that was really brutal because we had a big plummet in our sales for our most popular t-shirts.
When I went and looked, they had done thousands of the designs. But the ones that were most popular, those ones were then replicated hundreds of times as well. And then my collaborators started reaching out saying, "Are you selling our designs on Temu? Because you have all this Lonely Kids Club stuff on there, but it's at half the price, and you didn't talk to me about that." And I had to explain, "No, we're not selling on there, they've just stolen the work." And then it was very challenging.
It was like a labyrinth to get anything taken down, because there's no point of contact there. You've got to create an account and then you have to use this IP portal that closes itself as soon as you let it leave the screen. And then they would let you put down URLs. And obviously we had thousands of URLs, but then once you started uploading images, it would tell you you could only upload five images. And so then you would be trying to navigate that for these thousands of things with no point of contact. And you'd put all this work into this document and then it would just keep closing itself. And eventually I realized, okay, I can get another document open and have one browser open, because I was trying different browsers and different laptops and it kept happening and I was really stressing out. And then I managed to finally submit an IP theft thing through. And then it still takes them a few days to respond or acknowledge it. But eventually that then worked. I realized because I trademarked Lonely Kids Club in Australia and they were selling it to Australia, that had to be taken seriously. And so then I think the major stuff got removed. There's still a bunch up there, never got recompensated. They emailed me recently because I got a few stories about them and they were saying, "Thank you, do you want to have a meeting about it?" And I replied saying, "Actually, I would love some compensation for the tens of thousands of dollars I've lost and the time spent dealing with it." And then they never replied. Thanks, Temu.
Michael (29:00): Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I know it happens to a lot of creators, and this big business mentality of suffocating smaller players with process and procedures and having for all intents and purposes a resolution process, but it's just so cumbersome and you can't talk to anyone and it just strings you out for so long.
Warwick (29:26): There's no transparency. Yeah, it's crazy. And the onus is on you. The onus should be on the marketplace selling to Australia that if they're stealing intellectual property. Because the other aspect I didn't even jump into is that they were going really hard on Facebook meta advertising. So they basically had their Lonely Kids Club products competing with mine at half the price. And there's not enough space in those ads to explain that ours are ethically made, sustainably printed, and their ones are made unethically, they've stolen the work, using these nasty chemicals, drop-shipped from some dodgy factory, probably with sweatshop labor. And so we were losing out to them on that. And that was really hard. And they've actually increased the spend of all the businesses in Australia because they advertise so heavily and it's done on an auction-based system. And if you're a small e-commerce business in Australia, chances are you rely on Facebook meta-advertising to some level. And so that was a really hard one to deal with, because we then have people emailing us saying, "Hey, your quality's gone down, can we get a refund?" And then we're ordering it through Temu—we're like, well, that's not us though.
Michael (30:29): Right. But it also drew in some of your—these are quite well-known t-shirts or pieces of art on t-shirts, but you got people helping you in that process of getting them to delist the t-shirts, right?
Warwick (30:47): Yeah, the actual artists were helping. The actual artists were contacting us saying, "Our art's on here." And then we had a few people reach out who are other artists just saying, "Hey, I checked Temu for my own art and actually saw your stuff on here." And then one of them ended up joining us as an artist and it's done quite well since, so that was a really nice thing to come from it. So yeah, we did get some help from that, and our own community were trying to help in flagging everything and trying to also do what they can to report infringement to the best of their ability. Obviously they couldn't do that much, but it meant a lot that we had our audience backing us, supporting us through that battle. Because it was an uphill battle and it's very overwhelming because you're going up against this giant company in another country and we don't have any legal representation or resources or income to fight them. And the very vague and difficult process had no real guidelines to how to actually do it intentionally.
Michael (31:47): For sure, it's intentional. In some cases it probably meets high-level standards of a customer being able to complain or having a process for dealing with it, but how it works in reality is a whole other thing, and it's disproportionate if you're a small independent creator. Some friends of family, same thing happened, a side hustle, but no way that was ever going to get resolved in her favor—a tiny operator versus a huge e-commerce platform, and it was just bullying. There was no efficient or accessible arbitration, let alone the energy at a personal level to start to document and build the case for it. So yeah, it's just one of those things that you face as a small independent business.
Warwick (32:41): I was just going to say, the fear I have is that you've got these small artists in Australia coming up, and there isn't necessarily a parameter to how big you are or how talented you are. If you've got these smaller artists coming up with amazing artwork or something goes viral, it can get picked up by these AI systems and then sold on Temu, and that can take that revenue stream. And by the time these smaller artists work it out, they can likely have lost out on that momentum that would have pushed them up in Australia. And I think especially for our culture and our arts community, they need to be supported. And I think you're taking away these opportunities for these people that are coming up to get that momentum on a popular design. And there's nothing to replace that or structure in place to support when that happens. And so you could just end up with these artists then losing that momentum, getting disillusioned, not proceeding forward like they otherwise would have. And I think that just affects the whole country in a really negative way.
Michael (34:25): It does. In other industries as well—music, independent music. There's some really interesting models emerging for aggregating independent artists. There was one I was reading about from the UK: it's a cooperative and it's a platform to sell and to distribute music just on creators' or artists' favorable terms. But somebody's got to get to the point where they say that everything's weighed against us with corporate music—the structure, they own everything from venues and ticketing to artist rights all the way down. So no surprise you get fed what they want. But then bubbling in every city there's just incredible new talent emerging in all sorts of fields of arts. We've got to find a home for or an audience for them, so sometimes it's cutting out online, going out and seeing some live music and buying them one of their t-shirts at the gig or something.
Warwick (35:33): The level that goes to would be mind-blowing. Our old shop was behind record studios and some of the people in the studios had some very interesting stories. One of them worked with people from The Voice or one of those shows, and one of them did an album or two and then they didn't do well, so they got shelved—which is what they call it when the record label says, "You didn't sell enough, so we're not letting you release anything else." And so that person was then busking, and they even put into the contract that they were taking a cut of this person's busking money! So they couldn't release music and they couldn't make much money from busking, so they had to just quit music altogether. And this sort of bullying is just at such a high level.
Even before they let the AI stuff happen, the AI stuff was really sad because they just let AI train on people's music without their permission, which is just stealing. I think they're trying to do something about that now. If the actual artists were getting paid or compensated and had consent that they're happy to let their work be used to train AI, that's one thing. But just taking it without permission is a whole other kettle of fish, and it's mind-blowing that it happened.
Michael (36:35): But the positive—I think there's some emerging models, and it's more about cooperative or collaborative ownership, community ownership. But it takes a lot of effort to get something like that up, so I'm not for a minute thinking it's straightforward. But going being independent, maybe you've got to think about it in a way where you're open to collaborating with other independents and it's not just all you. You talk about artists coming to you because they've heard about you and they want more distribution, and that's a great example of collaboration between micro-businesses, right?
Warwick (37:30): Yeah, and it's awesome when that works out. And for the most part, we very rarely have any issues. Like generally they always just stay for a really long time and they send us new artwork and we make it really nice for them. There's no upfront fees. We put the time into mocking up all the products and then marketing it. Every day we invest money on advertising and search engine optimization, and also we have an email database that we really segment. So we do a lot of stuff to promote it and they get a cut of the sales with a transparent dashboard or reporting. So we try to make it really accommodating and then we let people leave anytime if they want to. They just let us know and then we take it down and wrap it up. Every now and then that happens because if they're a YouTuber, maybe their actual marketing agency wants to take things in-house and that's just easier, or they're giving up art or starting something new. But I really like when we get to collaborate with people and have new styles on the website we wouldn't otherwise have.
And getting to let people go to a space where they have all these different artists that can be quite similar to each other, and then we categorize them in different ways—like funny t-shirts or Australiana stuff, cats, dogs, things like that. And then you end up with all these different designs and artists all together that really suit someone's personal taste. And then they'll buy from different artists and learn about them as well. I think that's a really nice idea, you know?
Michael (38:50): Yeah, you're helping them make a purchasing decision based on curation—it's a personal curated selection.
Warwick (39:01): Well, it's curated. We curate what goes in what collection, and we curate how it's displayed. So we'll set it up so we'll have some of the new products, some of the most popular products, then we randomize it so it shuffles every few days. And so we've curated our own selections of what we think people will like if they like one product. We try to have as little algorithm as possible and as much of it with the natural human experience. Like one of my favorite music platforms is called Bandcamp.
And I like Bandcamp because it's very human. Humans curate it and the money really does go directly to the artist. I think that's a really cool way to do things. They're nowhere near as big as Spotify and the other big players, but it's much more independent and much more in line with what it is to actually be human. People are very excited to move away from that algorithmic corporate stuff, and I think that's an exciting thought.
Michael (39:59): Yeah, I listen to Bandcamp every day for at least an hour or two—curated selections of best new found sounds or jazz or instrumental stuff so I can keep working. But yeah, by algorithm I was speaking loosely; it's a personal curated selection. It's the same on community radio where you tune into particular programs because someone comes in and plays music you won't hear anywhere else, and you just go for the ride. It's so cool.
Warwick (40:52): That's funny, I do the same thing with Bandcamp actually.
Michael (40:55): Yeah, it's an incredible thing. But yeah, they have artists come in and play their 10 favourite tracks and it goes all over the shop. But anyway, I digress. I wanted to talk about 15 years in and your plans for Lonely Kids Club over the next 15 years. What do you have in mind?
Warwick (41:34): Such a good question. I think to try and just build upon what we're already doing. I don't think we're ever going to be super driven by scaling and sales and that sort of thing. But I think we want to keep staying close to our roots of what we want to be, which is ethical production, high-quality prints without any nasty chemicals, sustainability so we don't contribute to landfill, and trying to grow and support a community. Continuing to do that as hard as we can and continuing to try to find really cool artists to collaborate with and letting it grow that way is probably the main plan.
We jump in and out of potentially jumping into the American market. We have a contact I've just made over time through the t-shirt printing communities who has my same t-shirt printers that potentially could do our printing over there. And it wouldn't be drop-shipping because it's just the same guy who has the same printer I have. There's something to that. And I think we've nearly got things set up with a wholesaler to potentially be able to ship to him and him to print and ship into America. But letting go of things is quite scary. Even though I know he's a really good printer and a good guy, I think that would be a next big step for us, kind of going to a new market. But we're sending more and more stuff to America, more and more stuff around the world to places like Europe, where they just buy from us even though they know we're shipping from Sydney and they're paying a lot in shipping and they're okay with that. So I feel like there's some sort of market there. We haven't done any advertising or marketing to those regions, it's just very organic. So potentially that'd be one thing. But otherwise we just want to keep doing what we're doing and growing it out that way, while making sure we keep our principles.
Michael (43:10): Yeah, I see why letting go to somebody else is a big leap for you. You're in your business and you've got a view of everything that goes on, you make all the key decisions. So to trust somebody else to do that is a big step.
Warwick (43:31): Yeah. And it's scary when you're not used to it.
Michael (43:34): Yeah, and I guess it challenges you to think about how much you really want to chase that down. But those things can—there are ways to go about assessing whether it's a good business decision. You can be quite rational about it, put in place a structure to at least move it from "I'm not sure" to "this is a considered decision." But underpinning your business: do you still see yourself in the t-shirt market? Is the t-shirt market growing?
Warwick (44:29): I think so. It's still 70% of all our sales. For every 10 products we sell, seven or more are t-shirts. If the market's growing or not, I don't think it'll ever stop. People like t-shirts. Graphic tees have had a strong comeback; it faded away a little bit 10 years ago when people were less representative through t-shirts and more through technology like iPhones or Apple Watches. Over time people have moved back towards t-shirts because that sends more messages. And I also think the growth of fast fashion has steered some people back towards wanting sustainability and ethical responsibility with garments. Because stuff from fast fashion brands like Shein is so poor quality that it can't even be sold in Vinnies because it just disintegrates. They would rather something made by a real clothing brand years earlier because at least it's still a full item that hasn't disintegrated into crap.
Especially in younger generations—one of our staff has a younger sister going to university at 18 or 19, and a lot of kids are wearing our t-shirts and know the brand. They actually like that it's not fast fashion and it's not greenwashing. People are smarter than big brands give them credit for, and they're starting to realize when brands are full of shit and just using marketing nonsense.
Michael (46:38): Yeah. This is the Lobby Land t-shirt that I'm wearing from Michael West—they're an independent investigative journalist organization, so they're using it for messaging and branding. Is that kind of business an increasing part of your overall business where you do that sort of collaboration?
Warwick (47:03): Yeah, Michael West was a really cool one. We were introduced through a videographer, and he's one of my favorite people to work with. I love Michael so much; he's genuinely one of the best guys, a really good-hearted person. His values—wanting to stop corporate greed, stop punching down, and stop big companies taking as much money as they can from the little guy through dodgy backdoor deals—is everything I agree with. I'm very anti-bureaucracy. I hate the idea where the everyday person pays more money for an administration fee for people to process stuff that doesn't need to be there. And he's so much in line with that. Working with him has been amazing. Since working with him, we've started working more with some other political people and gotten more into Australian political culture with our designs.
Michael (48:03): Like who?
Warwick (48:06): We've started working a bit with someone called Left On Meg, she's very cool. And we do a lot of our own political designs, actually. We've grown our own range out. We did something with a guy named Ash Politik. Those are more like collaborations where we send them designs or they tell us ideas that we work on together. Not to the same extent as Michael West, but our own political range really grew a lot afterwards, and having someone in that space give us advice and guidance has been really helpful.
Michael (48:46): There's an emerging number of independent journalistic organizations and media organizations—like FriendlyJordies or others on YouTube. They're very visual. And everyone with a small business should have some of their own merch—ethically made and printed, promoting your own business rather than some big multinational.
So the underpinning demand or market of t-shirts you feel like is quite strong. You don't have any other plans in the near term to do anything other than keep running your business?
Warwick (49:46): When you say it like that, I feel like I should have some more stuff in place! I think because currently I've got two one-year-old twins and a three-year-old as well, I've had to take a little bit of a step back the last couple of years. So currently I stay home with the twins on Monday and Tuesdays and only work three days a week. But I've also really upskilled in search engine optimization. I had an agency that was doing a terrible job and charging money and moving us backwards, and then I fired them and I've grown our organic traffic through Google by over 100% in the last three months or something. So that's a big part of it. I've really grown our Google traffic. I know everyone's obsessed with AI traffic, but I'm really loving SEO. And we started doing more custom stuff, like badly drawn pet tees—that's really taken off where it's anti-AI, someone actually draws your photo of your dog or cat and then we print that on a t-shirt. We want to keep trying to grow that sort of thing.
Michael (51:37): Building organic traffic capability means you feel confident about where the business is going, and being able to work from home two days a week because it suits the family—those are excellent reasons to be in your own business. All right Warwick, one final question: if you somehow sold Lonely Kids Club and you were appointed the head of Australia's small business department, what's the first thing you would do next Monday morning when you put your feet under the cabinet table to help more owners build enduring and valuable small businesses in Australia?
Warwick (51:37): I think one of the first things I would do based on my experience is set firmer rules in place for platforms selling into Australia in regards to stealing designs. I think that's a much bigger problem than we realize. The current guidance from the government is to go through the platform, but there should be something firmer in place. So if you report to a platform that they're stealing your art, there needs to be a responsibility from that platform to remove all the other replicas of your art. In my case, there were thousands of things, so instead of having to go through all thousands, being able to report once and have them remove all cases of that stealing. And putting a further guideline in place that they need transparency about sellers not being allowed to resell your products on their platform, and giving information about how much they actually sold so you have something concrete for reimbursement. We've spoken to so many people in the same boat as me—spent ages getting things removed, still constantly finding things coming up, no compensation for the amount of money lost. In my case, I took screenshots where a lot of designs had over 600 sales, and that's a lot of money we've lost and never get back.
Michael (52:50): It's the lost sales, the extra effort to document and chase and try and get compensation or a hearing.
Warwick (52:58): Yeah, I don't think it'd be possible for one government body to manage everyone individually, but you'd put policies in place so platforms that want to sell in Australia have to actually follow those rules or they can't sell here. I would be a bit firmer on that: you need to give a portal that actually works for people to take things down, and take some responsibility where if the platform's caught doing something dodgy, they have to put effort in to remove the stuff for you and tell you what's actually happened. I would love to put in place that compensation has to be given—at least something concrete for how much money has been taken. Otherwise you're letting people sell your stolen work imported in; it's a loss on every level. My two cents!
Michael (53:46): Yeah. You can log what's happened and quantify it, but it's a great effort for the individual.
Warwick (53:59): Just platform responsibility. These platforms have billions of dollars; they could set up a portal that actually works and put a small amount of resources into it. It would be AI-generated anyway to go through and flag all the same designs from other sellers and take them down. They could do that if they wanted to, wouldn't be hard.
Michael (54:19): The advice to go deal with it—the fact that there's no guidelines for how platforms have to behave is the missing link that needs rectifying. There's the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO); you should flag it with them if you haven't. All right Warwick, thank you so much. It's a really great story. I'm so glad that you went with your heart and started this business, and 15 years in is a mighty fine effort. Lots of great achievements, and you're still happily contemplating a lot more time in the business. I wish you well, thanks very much for sharing.
Warwick (55:14): Thanks, I appreciate your time as well.
Michael (55:18): If somebody wants to have a chat, what's the best way to reach you, Warwick?
Warwick (55:22): Just through lonelykidsclub.com. There's a mail there they can contact through, or they can always email me at warwick@lonelykidsclub.com.
Michael (55:29): All right. We'll share that in the notes. Go well, and I really do appreciate your time. Thank you.
Warwick (55:36): Thanks as well. It's been an absolute pleasure getting to chat to you. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks so much.
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