Designer, photographer, fashionista Katya Moorman interviewed artist, musician, designer, entrepreneur Bethany Shorb of Cyberoptix in Detroit, MI. Here’s one meeting of creative minds you don’t want to miss! (AN)

Katya Moorman: When I was at Cranbrook (design 04) I knew Bethany Shorb as the girl who maintained the website and looked like she just walked out of Blade Runner. A Cranbrook Grad herself, little did I know that she was also an amazing designer/entrepreneur.

She founded her company, Cyberoptix, in 2001 and began by making custom clothing for stage and film. The Tie Lab division was founded a few years later and offers “a subtly subversive, well designed, handmade alternative to the men’s uniform staple while strictly adhering to ethical manufacturing processes.” She has recently expanded to scarves as well and her work is represented by more than 100 stores in a dozen countries: from Fred Segal in Los Angeles to Libertine in Western Australia. I caught up with Bethany over the summer in Detroit.

KM: So you make these witty and clever ties. This seems like such a random object to develop into a business! How did it start?

Bethany Shorb: I started doing the screen printed ties back in 2006. And at the same time I was doing costuming work. I worked on a movie called the Gene Generation and I made full garments out of recycled, re-claimed truck inner tube tires and bicycle inner tube tires. Although they were really fun projects, they weren’t lucrative for the time involved so it wasn’t really sustainable nor was it something I wanted to do full time.

I was attracted to working with ties because it’s the complete opposite of the costuming work in that it’s a comparatively very fast process. Also, I found making a compelling graphic on such a restricted size and shape was an interesting design problem—the tie “canvas” is only 3.5 x 16 inches.

KM: I have to say that I really love that there’s a narrative in your work. How do you come up with a design/narrative?

BS: I’m fascinated by language and double entendres so I’m always looking to interpret those visually. And I’ve noticed it attracts people who appreciate if there’s a quirky little story or pun -another layer of meaning within the design.

And as far as patterns and themes, I enjoy subverting traditional tie patterns. Like the hound’s tooth; I put little eyes on it and gave it a quarter turn and it turned into cat’s tooth.  It’s not that clever but it entertained me for a second. I’ve been doing a lot with viral and disease motifs so I took the paisley and the Black Plague and did a little mash up of those so it’s Plaguesly…I like that it doesn’t obviously say Plague right across it, you can wear that design to a work meeting and no one would know you have Black Plague on your tie…bad puns come to me when I’m sleeping

KM: Yeah, they’re really funny.

BS: People like to laugh and if they see a design that they can laugh about and something that’s not usually laughed at at all it works. People are used to funny tee-shirts but you don’t have a funny tie that’s not just a gag gift or cartoon character..

KM: Do you ever think of doing other clothing?

BS: Well I’ve added scarves as well but I really want to take some of the patterns that I’ve developed and take them larger because I feel that they’re not getting the air time that I’d like them to, the visual air time so I want to do some wallpaper. I’ve got one of my patterns called “plaid habit” and it’s all interlocking antique syringes that make a tartan. I’d like to see it a little bit bigger than just 3” wide. But I have to somehow make the time. Right now I’m still printing every single tie myself. I’ve probably printed close to 12,000 ties.

KM: Are you a control freak?

BS: You think? (both laughing) just a little bit. OK it’s a huge problem!

KM: So you do everything?

BS: Well, I have one full time person who is excellent, he wraps, packages and ships everything out (and keeps me sane) and there is a family in Thailand that weaves all my silk and they fabricate everything by Fair Trade practices.

KM: How did you find them?

BS: Online. That’s pretty much how I do everything. I’m a little phobic about talking to people sometimes and I communicate really well on the internet, so I found this really nice couple, I think the guy is Dutch and his wife is Thai and communication is really easy and I just ordered a couple of samples and we got talking back and forth and they told me all about how they make it and we just established this friendship and now that I order hundreds and hundreds from them…

KM: …you’re buds.

BS: We’re buds. I like to help out people who are doing a good thing in their community even if it’s far away and after having this relationship with them I know they’re not just blowing smoke up my ass about their principles.

KM: That leads me to another question: how does the internet allow you to do your business or create your life how you want it?

BS: It’s made it 100% possible. Detroit is an amazing place to make things but I don’t believe it’s a big enough market to solely sustain a designer. So being able to sell my stuff all over the world and get it out there fast has been absolutely invaluable.  Right now I can come up with a design, make the screen and have the webpage for it online in two or three days. So that kind of immediacy is key to getting a product out before someone else does and sometimes I capitalize on bad puns and a lot of current events and you know that’s going to go stale if you have to have someone put up a page for you, if you’ve got to call your webmaster

KM: The immediacy of doing it – yourself!!!

BS: Right. Yeah, it’s always getting back to the control freak. I actually shoot all of the models, I do all of the editorial and honestly I think that’s more fun for me than screen printing ties. I really love doing photo shoots.

KM: How do you get your ties out there? Advertising? Word of Mouth?

BS: Well it’s become this really interesting organic animal that powers itself. I started by looking through a couple of stores that I really liked and sent out a couple of little packets like “hey I’m doing this want to do a little trial order of say 10 things” and a few stores picked me up and then once I got on a roster of a few stores other stores became.  And it just snowballed from there and I’ve been fortunate that people on the internet, blog writers, have been really kind as far as saying great things and it’s just propagated that way. I do very little advertising. I have a few banner ads and I sponsor a couple of things on ETSY but my ad budget is about $50/month, I do very little.

KM: You’re one of those who came to Detroit for school and stayed. Why is Detroit such a good place to do business?

BS: People who have stayed here are more focused on making, rather than just consuming, and that makes a great environment to work in. Plus, the overhead’s really low. I have a 3000 square foot space. I’ve been in there for almost 7 years and almost everyone in there is an artist of some sort whether they’re doing music or fashion or painting or kung fu…there’s people baking bread –and for me to be able to really spread out like that, if I were in NY my place would be like $4000/month. And that’s just insane.

KM: yeah, for sure…

BS: so…if there’s an opportunity for me to fly somewhere cos there’s a great show for me to be in I don’t have to eat Ramen for the next couple of months, you know, that freedom to not have to worry financially is really liberating and I couldn’t do that if I didn’t sell stuff online and elsewhere because if I had to rely on people consuming here it’s bad…and I really would like to encourage artists and makers of product to come here and not…use it per se- but take it for what it has to offer.

KM: Right. It’s like Berlin at this point. If you can make money elsewhere, you can live and produce there.

BS: Right now it’s working but sometimes it’s frustrating. I wish there were more places to go eat…I wish more friends still lived here…

KM: that there were margaritas at Margarita’s [restaurant]…

BS: (knowing laugher) No there are no margaritas at Margarita’s…

KM: Do you think your experience at Cranbrook encouraged or prepared you to be an entrepreneur at all or do you think it’s just intrinsic?

BS: Well, I was really young and naïve which was kind of tough but in hindsight I really liked it. I went to Boston University for undergrad and Cranbrook and BU (which is a very traditional program) are the absolute antithesis of one another. I think having that totally bi-polar education really helped me figure out what I wanted to do because I didn’t fit in either of them so had to find my own way.
I wanted to do graphic design, I wanted to do photography, I wanted to do sculpture…so I was a little scattered. But I also really wanted to do fashion photography. I think I almost started my own company because I couldn’t figure out how else to do everything. I’m really good at self-motivating, really good at working on my own. I’m not such a good team player.

KM: Being a team player is over rated. And you get to do everything now.

BS: Yeah…it’s really fun, it’s really exciting having your own company. People always ask me “don’t’ you get bored just making ties?” I tell them making ties is only 5% of what I do all day. It’s marketing, it’s coding, it’s photography, it’s photo editing, it’s product research, there’s so much different stuff I have to do all day – I’m not just making ties. So that’s been really fun.

KM: Anything that you consider to be the best part of what you do?

BS: Well personal responses from people are pretty cool…I’ve gotten letters from people that have told makes me that wearing one of my ties in a super corporate office makes them feel kind of mischievous or devious, and that they can have their own fraction of a sense of style while stuck in this horrible environment…and I’m like awww, I hope I can make your life suck one quarter of one percent less.