TopatoCo
The Topato Corporation is a widely recognized online retailer of webcomics and related merchandise. It was established around 2004 by artist Jeffrey Rowland.
History
After Jeffrey Rowland lost his job in 2004, he started TopatoCo to help sell shirts, stickers, and other merchandise linked to his webcomics. When the 2004 presidential election was won by George W. Bush, Rowland designed a satirical T-shirt and sold 1000 of them in one month.Rowland later expanded the business to ship products ordered from friends' websites, who in 2007 moved their retailing to TopatoCo. While Rowland founded the company while living in Oklahoma, by June of 2005 he had moved to Easthampton, Massachusetts. In 2006, he began working with his partner Holly. The two were married in 2012, and still run the company together.
The company has been described as "perhaps the largest and most recognizable E-tailer of webcomic merchandise" by Caleb Goellner in ComicsAlliance and takes its name from the Topato Potato character in Rowland's Wigu Adventures. Rowland has described the company's business philosophy as being "give digital stuff away for free, sell real stuff".
In 2013, Holly started Make That Thing, a Kickstarter management and fulfillment service. Make That Thing originally served as a sister company to TopatoCo. Now Jeffrey and Holly manage and fulfill crowdfunding campaigns as part of TopatoCo's daily operations using the nickname TopatoGO.