The Accidental Snowman

The Snowman project this winter has been an amazing ride, and we've found homes for over a hundred.  Even today, while Jill was taking pictures for this article, customers were buying snowmen from her table top scene.  

November 18th, Jill put a picture of a random decoration on our tree onto instagram.  Little did we know that people would want the fun little guys we made to round out our own tree.  For the last month, at least one of us has been working on snowmen every hour the shop's open. I've put in more than a few hours longer than that to keep up with the demand after hours as well.  The guys are a lot of fun to make, and snowmen are really popular during the holiday season, but not so much in August.

The nautical snowman is a combination of a few knots we already make for our retail shop, website, and other gift shops, assembled to look chill for a proper Christmas Tree. 

The bottom is our floating key chain, a 7 across monkey fist tied on a ping pong ball.  The tops are our normal key ring monkey fist.  The hat is actually a turks head that we usually sell as a wine charm.  The center of the body is a different sized monkey fist, and really the only thing we had to get used to making, that and stitching the guy together.

Most businesses plan a product roll out, do market research, focus groups, build stock, and then share with the world.  We did it a little different.  Through an instagram post, Jill discovered a demand.  Suddenly Jill started a snowman cloning program for Santa, enlisting most of our team for their part of the creation, or something like that.

One of the more interesting parts of leading a creative team is watching how a project comes from idea to completion. This one largely belongs to Tom Burgeson.  We were going through a supply cabinet and he saw some wooden balls with holes in them, and asked me what they were for.  I described this project that I had considered back in 2008, but didn't have the time to pursue then. 

He took a few balls home with some string and came back with the basic snowman shape.  Christa saw the body and she thought the wine charm would make a cool hat.  The first snowmen had painted faces, sharpie markers to make a simple face, but Jill wanted better.  Christa and Tom played around with scraps of our seine twine and dipping the cord in a stiffener, they turned a piece of anklet cord into a carrot, then the eyes were a simple change from there.  They opted to keep the snowmen coy by leaving them with a blank closed mouth.  

Everyone thinks they are cute.  Yesterday, Christa spent all day dressing them in different colored scarves and hats as people requested special ornaments for their homes.

Our snowman has found it's purpose in trees not just here in Mystic, or even New England, but over 40 states have seen the invasion of the Accidental Snowman.