Dickie Bird

Me with my son

Me with my daughter

Regardless, thank you to every creator that trusted me with your brand, I do feel like I’ve let you down which is why this decision is fairly serious to me. Thank you to every customer who trusted me with your dollars during a cost of living crisis.

I hope it all makes a bit more sense now.

Nothing will be deleted, and maybe when AI can help me do a lot of the tedious work I’ll give it another go. Or maybe something else. For the unforeseeable future though, this sadly needs to come to an end.

Quite literally as I write this I don’t want to close the doors. There is always a part of me that refuses to let go.

Which is why everything will still exist in the background.

Of course I had some disagreements with creators, and even some customers did some dumb things, but the overwhelming majority of interactions I had with people were positive. This ended up being a surprise.

With all that being said, I’m incredibly proud of what I built and the service I provided for small wrestling creators. The work I did on @socialsuplex.bsky.social was probably my favourite, as I got to be a designer again. None of this ever had anything to do with sales or profits.

Over the past year, our suppliers have changed prices and shipping costs to the point where I’m likely losing money on every purchase. So either I fix everything up, or shut down. Sadly the latter seems far more appealing, especially if policies continue to change and it keeps me away from my kids.

Unfortunately, the change to the economy wasn’t the problem, it was the volatility. With every shift in policy, it created more and more backlog for me. By the time we get to today, as much as I’d love to say fuck it let’s stay open, there is a list that paralyses me to even think about right now.

Now you might say, “I thought this was about tariffs?”, and actually it was. Chopped Tees was designed to be semi autonomous. I’ve basically not been doing anything for the past 8-9 months, but every order has been processed and every creator royalty has been paid

My daughter was born this past April and I took some time away from the store, but unexpectedly, I never felt like wanting to return.

I just can’t take myself away from them.

I didn’t lose my passion for Chopped Tees, it was just dwarfed by something else.

I immediately felt a greater responsibility to raise my children with love, respect and inclusion - something that seems rare now

With my kids both being under 3, the job at this point is just to be there for them. To gain their trust. Chopped Tees was taking me away from that

But something happened just over 12 months ago, which to some will sound hyperbolic

The majority of American adults voted for Donald Trump as their next president

This didn’t just affect my business, it also affected my other job as a parent

All of a sudden, the world wasn’t what I thought it was

I recently completed the tax returns for the company and everything was on track as written in my business plan. Chopped Tees was set to have a break even year next year - so yeah, I’m shutting down prior to having any realised profits, which is pretty dumb of me

I had a lot of plans for the future

As we approach the final day of Chopped Tees, I wanted an opportunity to say my piece.

This will be a long thread, but it’s dedicated to people who seek truthful information. Apologies in advance.

While I constantly feel as if I’ve given up, and have failed, there is a lot more to it 1/

🫶

After nearly a year of assessing the future of Chopped Tees, I’ve made the difficult decision to officially close the brand.

The business became harder to operate as global trade policy turned into a moving target—tariffs announced, delayed, walked back, then threatened again.

A picture of Kevin Nash with the caption “Shut the fuck up cracker”

Presented without comment

Nintendo switch 2

You’re not obligated to chase a ghost who never turned around to see if you were following

My therapists name is Dr. Chat GPT

a man in a black shirt and suspenders is smiling in a room . Alt: Scene from interstellar

Now that I have a son and a daughter, some movies just hit different

Yet still no apology to the person you accused of very horrible things

Hey @allmykidshavepaws.bsky.social while I appreciate trying to call out people when they do wrong, you give social justice warriors the bad name they have because of your lack of effort verifying. You should be ashamed of yourself and realise you are part of the problem the world is experiencing

Me cleaning up shit this wrestlemania weekend, seems like I have something in common with WWE PR

So the Wrestlemania weekend build has been “WWE Superstars ❤️ Trump” eh?

I’m spending this time with my 1 week old and 2 year old, aka the next generation of this earth, because the current generation is so cooked

Dickie, holding his baby, looking at a horse

My life summed up in one image

The Australian dollar dropping under 60 us cents

The Australian Dollar continues to get crushed against every currency. I’d say we’ve got until midnight eastern before Chopped Tees is cooked

(Bloomberg) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it now expects the US economy to fall into recession this year after accounting for the likely impact of tariffs announced this week by the Trump administration.

$JPM

As a truly global company, Chopped Tees can’t operate in a global recession. We are knocking on the door of this reality.

🤔

We have reached max pain for both equities and Bitcoin. A good time to move your increasingly worthless fiat currency into something that will hedge against shitty inflation

If you’ve had your local currency in a bank account, it’s lost 50% of its value over the past 3 years