From Kanto with Love
Crafter, Buttons, Keychains

Transcript

Voiceover: Meet Zack Serda. He is an Alabama-based artist. His business, From Kanto with Love, focuses on creating manga and anime-based collectibles. 

Zack Serda: So I'm Zack, my business is From Kanto with Love. I'm in Smith’s Station, Alabama, so it's kind of in between Auburn, Alabama, you know, Auburn University and Columbus, Georgia. I have a focus on using old and unwanted Pokémon cards and kind of upcycling them making those into buttons,  keychains, but I also make like pop sockets and stuff like that. I also recently started doing manga pages. I’ll take cutouts from old and unwanted manga books and make those into kind of some of the same products. I've always been into Pokémon and I saw a couple of people doing buttons and stuff like that. I was like, hey, you know what? I think I can make that better. 

VO: Zack's interest in Pokemon, as well as other anime and manga, became a catalyst for him to sell his art, as well as providing a positive channel for him to face life's challenges.

ZS:  I got really stressed out at my former job. I’m no longer employed there. And I was, you know, face-to-face high-stress customer service. And it kind of turned into something that I could really kind of focus into and just kind of work my frustrations through. And friends loved it. So, you know, I just started selling to a couple of friends here and there, and it just completely snowballed from there. 

So I'm branching out, you know, I've got booths that I've set up for our local farmers market coming up in the spring, which is what I did last year. It's really got me, that got me a lot of exposure as far as like local community. So I do other little, you know, craft fairs and stuff around town. So that just kind of, kind of a little bit gets me through. So that's going to start up back in the spring. 

My one big goal for this year was, I have some friends who are in the convention circuit and they do Renaissance art and stuff like that, so they kind of do a couple Cons, you know, all over the Southeast and they really kind of push me to start doing Cons because that's where a lot of people thought, you know, I could really succeed in doing conventions and stuff like that, you know, just because the focus is what I sell. So my big goal for this year was to get into a Con and, you know, I finally had the means to do it. So I went ahead and did that, and got that all set in stone for now. 

VO: Zach's passion can be seen through his work.  If his story resonates with you or if you're into Pokémon, anime, and manga, be sure to check out his business From Kanto with Love here on Eventeny.