>> PAYTON: Now, I love a good cryptid.

A mysterious, elusive creature that appears just briefly enough for you to question if you can trust what you're seeing.

But not every cryptid is a horrifying monster.

Some just want you to have a t-shirt or some stickers or something.

It happens, I've seen it.

And today we are on the hunt for one very special cryptid in particular, one that was birthed by two Internet pals.

Ew.

And has spent the past decade growing into a massive pop culture hub of music, and merch and questionable body pillows.

We are in Aurora, Illinois, to track down the Yetee.

♪ Friends and folks, welcome to "Flyover Culture," your guided tour of pop culture and entertainment in the Midwest.

I'm Payton Knobeloch, and I'm very excited for today's episode.

2021 marks ten years of the Yetee making great merch and records and toys, sure, but also highlighting very talented artists and raising money for great causes.

But enough from me, I will shut up and we will go inside and talk to some of the people behind one of the Midwest's largest merch groups.

♪ >> You go to the big box stores, Kohl's, that type of place, and you want cool video game merch, it's just like -- it's what everybody else has.

You can't find our stuff in stores.

We sell direct to the customer.

Limited, cool stuff.

>> We haven't pigeonholed ourself into kind of like we're a gamer site or, like, we are a horror site or, like, we're just -- it's like our mascot, it's a cryptid who likes what is he likes, and, you know, shares it with the world.

>> PAYTON: The Yetee has a number of collections in game merch that stay evergreen in the warehouse, but the company's bread and butter is still its daily shirts two designs that go up for 24 hours and then are gone forever.

>> The platform of having two new shirts every day, brings people back and keeps them interested, but also like we kind of built a community around -- with the artists we work with and just the vibe of the Yetee, that we haven't really, you know, put up ads on sites or anything like that, it's like word of mouth.

>> PAYTON: Mike and Glen met on Twitter, of all places, and the story of the Yetee, like any good startup, starts in a garage.

>> We were both freelance artists, we both have art backgrounds, and we were both interested in, you know, freelance t-shirt design, freelance artwork, that sort of thing.

One of our mutual friends, Ray Frendan, who is a very talented illustrator, was calling out an author who was doing a spec -- like a speculative art design competition for his book cover in a really kind of like trashy sort of way.

Like you want good work, you pay for it, you don't be like, okay, everybody submit, you know, this is a contest, you can design my book cover.

And everybody is like, Dude, just pay an artist.

Like, get quotes.

I think the big thing is we were frustrated with the process of, like, submitting to these web sites and getting approvals or getting -- not even getting rejections, having to buy your own t-shirt.

There's a bunch of things that were kind of like pooling in those communities, like artists were frustrated and fed up with the way they were being treated.

Mike and I were like, we could do this.

>> We started, we outsourced our shirts through a printing company.

I would drive to Chesterton, Indiana, which is right across the border, pick up the shirts, drive back to my house, and this is after my 9:00 to 5:00 job.

So I get home, it'd probably be 10:00, fold the shirts in my basement, and then kind of load -- keep everything in the garage and drop it off at the post office every day.

>> The countdown timer on the website, I had to go in and manually code to restart the timer because I didn't know enough about coding.

>> And then as it kind of ramped up, I got like a 500-square foot basement in downtown Aurora.

I don't know if this was even, like, a legal situation, because it was just in the basement of an apartment building, it was just a big empty room, that's when I quit my job and was able to do it, like, as a job.

>> PAYTON: As the company grew and moved into what I'm told was a very warm, unventilated warehouse, they dipped their toes into other territory.

>> We realized that the way we were going to grow is if we started working with bigger companies and licensed stuff.

So I think one of the first ones was Octodad.

So it was just us kind of contacting directly the people that made the game.

Because in licensing, there's a whole, like, world of memos and notes and, you know, equations floating through the air, and that's just too much for my brain to handle.

We always try to grow, but like within our means, which I know is a little frustrating sometimes for employees.

We had our old building, and we were -- we were stuffed.

Too much stuff, too little space.

>> PAYTON: I hear very warm.

>> Yes, super hot.

We were able to move here, and it's been really great so far.

>> PAYTON: Though the building and the scope of the Yetee's work have changed, Mike and Glen say one constant is wanting to make sure artists are in a position to succeed.

>> There's a direct pathway to making money as an artist through Yetee and, like, that's the opportunity from the very beginning that we were looking for.

>> We have been the constant and the artists change, and we just get to meet so many cool people and do really awesome things, and I guess that's kind of what makes this job really awesome.

>> PAYTON: When we were here earlier this month, they were just getting into the post-Summer Games Done Quick Rush, one of their biggest weeks of the year.

But a few people were kind enough to take us into HQ and show us how the t-shirt sausage gets made.

>> I will say the only downside of this is that I don't think we would be allowed to have a shop cat because of this machine because I just assume it would -- I started in my basement and I was not good at it.

I did enough to get -- like, I could sell stuff and got my point across.

Working here was kind of like a crash course in how to do it right.

So my own stuff outside of work has gotten way better too.

>> PAYTON: The Yetee uses screen printing, a time-testing method of using super-thin screens to lay on ink one color at a time.

Sure, it has some limitations, but it lasts longer than newer methods.

>> You can basically do six solid colors, but you use half-tones and lots of artist techniques.

It can look like a photograph, if you want it to.

>> Screen printing is the thing that doesn't need to be update.

It just works.

>> A big one now is called direct to garment.

It's where they print all the colors at once.

It's almost like a computer printout on a t-shirt.

It basically will kind of crackle off after a few washings, whereas a screen-printed shirt will last you like 10, 15 years if you take care of it.

>> PAYTON: It starts in the dark room, where the screens have their stencil designs layered on.

Now we are in a room that looks like it was color-corrected by Michael Bey.

>> Yes, yes.

>> PAYTON: What are we doing here?

>> Okay.

This right here is where we take our blank screens, which has a photo emulsion on it, that's why the room is yellow, so that way if you take this out in daylight, it will expose it kind of like a picture.

So this right here is a machine that actually prints wax onto our screen for us.

When that's done, this is our exposure unit, which blasts a huge amount of light up and will cure that photo emulsion on there.

>> PAYTON: Then ink gets pulled and mixed to get just the right color.

>> These right here are the actual screens that we put in the machine.

This is for the GDQ that we're going to be running here soon.

Basically each layer has its own colors.

This is our ink wall, it's a lot bigger than most places.

We strive to have basically every color available.

Some of those cans up there have been there since we started.

It's like that yeast they make sourdough bread with.

>> PAYTON: Sourdough starter?

Yeah, just -- yeah, yeah, we got our ink starters instead of sourdough.

>> PAYTON: Pass it down to your children.

>> Yeah, yeah.

[ Laughter ] My kid's going to be horribly dissatisfied when he sees that's what I left him, so yeah.

>> PAYTON: Color by color, ink gets spread through the screen stencils and onto the shirts.

From there, the shirts are run through a dryer and lastly, a folding machine.

Believe it or not, this is the original press the Yetee has been using for most of its lifespan.

It hit 1 million shirts printed some time ago.

>> I meant to pay attention so I could have some sort of celebration, but I totally missed it.

It's amazing seeing like so many people all over the world, like, wearing our shirts.

I was at a train thing a couple of weeks ago, I saw probably four Yetee shirts, just on strangers, and yeah, part of me wants to go up and be like, hey, I printed that.

>> PAYTON: If tees aren't your thing, maybe you're a staunch button-up supporter -- I don't know -- people like Orion are back in the digital printing department to handle stickers, posters and other stuff that can't be done through screen printing.

>> Glen and Mike will come to me and they'll say, hey, you know, can we make this thing, and it's my job to figure out how to make that.

There's no, like, trade school, or college or anything you can go to really for this.

A lot of it is learned on the job.

Sticker designs are like the easiest thing to make, but also they bring so much joy to people, seeing people on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook be like, oh, this is amazing, this is really cool.

Really brightens my day.

>> PAYTON: This neck of the woods also handles the Yetee's most recent addition, acrylic standees.

>> It was one of those ideas, Glen came to me and said, hey, can we do this?

I said yeah, we can make this happen.

We tried to work with our artists that we have and make acrylic standees based on their artwork.

We are also trying to get into doing more video game-related ones.

I think it's just a really cool, fun way to have 3D art of characters you love.

>> PAYTON: Not content just to be seen, the Yetee also wants to be heard.

Yetee Records is overseen by Marc Junker up in Canada and presses collectible vinyl for game soundtracks and artist albums alike.

>> When I first started and first met Mike, it was at Magfest in 2014, like in January.

They had a test pressing in the mail for the Octodad 7-inch.

I think it was kind of like a combination of, yes, we love this format, this medium, but also the game dads were interested in it.

>> All I wanted to do when I was a kid was like I want to design record covers and I'm going to put out records, like punk rock.

So, yeah, that kind of dream goes away once you grow up and you are, like, I need to get a real job.

We met up with a guy Mega Ran, he had an album Black Materia, where he raps over Final Fantasy VII music.

And it was an anniversary of the album, and we kind of didn't know what we were doing.

>> So I was like doing compositions of all the samples and resampling them myself.

It was pretty -- looking back, it was totally wacky, and then like it was all very new, so it was like crash course in pretty much every single step of, like, the process of making a vinyl, including making the music, making it, like, something special, a collector's item is really important, so that always means like put our stamp on it, give it a real strong vision, and make it a nice collector's item that people will want to keep and cherish.

>> PAYTON: Marc's an artist and composer himself, so he keeps that experience in mind when working on Yetee Records.

>> More often than not, you put all your energy into creating an album and then you send it away and it's just a year, two years before it even comes out or there were decisions made that had nothing to do with you, and you aren't happy with them.

I think the artist perspective gave me the idea of, like, oh, that would suck for someone working with us and just how to try to avoid it as best as I can.

Obviously it's a challenge, but I just think having the artist first perspective is just like, oh, this is a way that we can keep artists like happy and I think overall, we worked with a lot of awesome people and no one seems to hate us, knock on wood.

>> PAYTON: T-shirts, stickers, vinyl, doesn't matter.

Once orders come in, or for SGDQ, lots and lots of orders, they all get sent out into the world from right here.

>> Brazil, Denmark.

There really isn't a place we haven't shipped something to.

Sometimes it takes a little longer to get there.

When SGDQ is happening, it's kind of like an all hands on deck situation.

Someone is printing, like, pretty much all the time in there.

There's printers who start at like 7:00 a.m. and they're working, like, their full shifts from until 4:30, 5:30 and then there's another printer that comes in later in the day, and he's working until 8:30, 10:00 at night sometimes.

But that's kind of the fun of working around here, every day is a little bit different.

>> PAYTON: Mary was kind enough to give me a tour of the SGDQ aftermath.

>> Probably to just someone that would come in here, it doesn't really look like it's organized at all, but it really is.

We kind of just decided on like a real basic system of boxes, and I can-- >> PAYTON: It's worked historically.

>> Once you have worked here for, like, a few weeks, months, you kind of just know where everything is.

Until we have to move everything, and then you're kind of up a creek.

Some days, we can have, like, a couple thousand orders going out the door every day.

That's a really good feeling when you see that amount of product, like, going out the door, you know that everybody worked really hard to make that happen.

>> PAYTON: Hectic weeks like this one aren't just good for the Yetee's bottom line.

They're one of the company's biggest weeks for giving back.

At this year's SGDQ, the company gave over $132,000 through shirt sales and direct donations.

And now the Yetee's become synonymous with the biannual speedrunning event.

>> In the beginning, I did not know what GDQ was.

It was small, but for us, a little company, it was like, whoa, this is pretty serious.

Over the years, it's just grown and grown, and we have kind of been a partner with them the whole time.

>> I think a few years ago, we surpassed the million dollar donation mark with t-shirts, like that's a pretty remarkable thing to have done, you know, there's no way you can say the gaming community doesn't care about things or, you know, didn't leave a mark somewhere.

>> It's great, because now we have relationships with people that prevent cancer and Doctors Without Borders, and on their annual report, we are on there and we're up there with sometimes like Best Buy and Microsoft.

I'm like, what?

How are we -- Microsoft eats companies like this for breakfast.

>> PAYTON: And last year, at the height of the COVID pandemic, the Yetee made shirts for local Aurora businesses to help them out during lockdown.

>> I have friends, and they own restaurants and bars and coffee shops downtown Aurora, and, you know, everything ground to a halt.

And I saw, you know, another opportunity where maybe we can make stuff to promote their business.

We sold a bunch of them, and then we were able to give them a check, and they used to it pay their employees while they weren't working.

I mean, it wasn't like life-changing amounts, but, you know, for a local community, it's great to see kind of people see a problem, step up, and help out.

>> We use a lot of local artists for it, so I'm like, oh, I know him, I know him!

>> PAYTON: That drive to give back permeates a lot of what the Yetee does and employees are happy to be a part of it.

>> A lot of times Drew or Misky will be like, yeah, let's do this shirt for this charity, I really care about this charity.

Even like Marc, our art director, will be like hey, I want to do this shirt and want it to go to this cat shelter in Vancouver.

We're like, cool, let's do it, you know.

There's always room to give.

>> PAYTON: Ten years in, the Yetee has seen a number of artists and designers come through its doors, but all the folks I talked to have been at the company for a while now.

>> I actually have been at the Yetee for like seven years.

>> Nine years or so.

>> Seven years.

>> This will be my -- either my 7th or 8th year here.

>> PAYTON: So what is it about this place that keeps people around?

>> Just knowing I get to do what I get to do.

My job is always a little bit different.

Even like the little curveballs that we get, that little bit of hustle and bustle that changed the environment really is what, like, draws me back to the job.

>> They just let you experiment on company time, and it's like no other place has been like that for me.

>> Being able to just, like, create something that people will take home and cherish and think about, just like an extremely satisfying thing to do.

>> Sometimes people lose the idea that, you know, it's a place run by actual humans.

We are still processing your orders by hand, packing them by hand, they're made by hand.

>> There's this certain layer of ego that is just not there.

They genuinely see talent and passion in other people.

And they want to amplify it.

And, yes, it will benefit them but it will also benefit the person furthering their career.

>> I feel like a lot of things in the -- not necessarily Aurora but in the Midwest in general can be kind of stagnant.

To have this -- the Yetee come in and be like we do video game shirts, we do online stuff.

We work with people around the world is just something you don't typically get to see in a Midwest city.

>> PAYTON: What's next for the Yetee?

In the next few weeks, they'll open Yetee Station, an all ages arcade in downtown Aurora that's been a couple of years in the making.

And just around the corner from that will be a new storefront and gallery called Super Jumbo.

>> We took an old pawn shop that hadn't seen a broom or a nail in 30 years, we gutted it, and we're building this really cool arcade.

So the spot our temporary arcade was a small little shop, I'm like why don't we keep this, put a little art gallery in back and do -- kind of do what we used to do.

>> PAYTON: From there?

Well, to put it vaguely, just keep growing.

>> There really is like a path forward that's like guided by our, like, ambitions, but also like just the awesome, like, community of game developers and companies that we work with and stuff like that who just see us as an option to work with.

I just feel like everyone who contacts us, like they know us, they're sort of familiar with our work, we are all really happy with what we are creating.

>> I've always organically pursued what I'm interested in and when opportunities present themselves, I kind of follow them.

So that, for me, has informed the choices that I've made in regards to the Yetee and I think Mike in the same regards.

Like, hey, it would be cool if we made a vinyl record and we made one, and we're like, hey, that's not so bad, let's make some more.

Now it's like 60 vinyls later, and it's like, hey, I guess we are a record label now too.

Cool.

I don't think that we ever planned to have a record label or ever planned to make acrylic standees or a Japanese body pillow or a pigeon gaming simulator, but it happens, you know.

>> We have so many talented people here.

I think what I would like to see is some of the people that have been getting things made, production, you know, getting things done, let them be the ones that are kind of guiding us, and then me and Glen can kind of sit back and just, like, support what these younger, more creative people are going to do.

That's kind of the goal, is keeping the people around here, you know, moving forward, and not be still.

>> PAYTON: That will do it for today's episode of "Flyover Culture."

If you liked this, be sure to like, subscribe, share, all those fun things, that really helps the channel grow, and it will help us do more stories like this one.

If you want more information about the Yetee, I will have a link down below.

Now, while it's unfortunate we didn't come face to blue face with this building's namesake, I believe he's still out there, in these hallowed halls, watching over us, and we will keep hunting.

Thanks for watching.