The story of GungeGirls.com PT.1

I have been meaning to do this for some time. GungeGirls.com is now entering it’s 6th year of operation and there is a story to be told, and stories within the story, some personal anecdotes related to the site, some questions i am often asked answered and hopefully an insight into what goes on behind the scenes.

So, where do we begin?

At the beginning!

Conception!

Back in 2003 i was dating a young model and hadn’t even considered what the future would bring.  I was working in an independent store with no career path in store apart from a band i was in and playing the drums for… and that’s rarely a career although at the time we were doing very well.

I had just obtained a computer and was geeking out in quit a big way, i understood communication was moving on in a big way… although my understanding was really through music, i knew a whole world was opening up and independence for artist was on the horizon once more… and the monolithic record companies would start to lose their grip on the good hard working bands and have to pimp out the Brittney Spears types harder and harder to make money from people that didn’t really pay attention t god music and just bought what was spoon fed.

Did i mention i have a Punk Rock DIY ethic running through me?  😉

So anyway, i didn’t equate this quite to all media although i understood the tools for many different outlets were going to become available to us, the masses.

So Emma wanted a site for her model portfolio and i wanted to learn how to build a website… i knew it was going to be a skill useful in the future.  She was also doing a lot of fetish modeling at the time and i was accompanying her to shoots with photographers she hadn’t worked with before.  Being the inquisitive soul i am i asked a lot of questions about what they were doing and how the photography side worked… photography had always been something i had been interested in and well, always thought it was well above my learning… but i learnt.

So came the discussion that gave birth to GungeGirls.com we figured we could do this, we just needed a fetish as yet unexplored on the net.  Messy was being done, but not the english way and coming across a copy of “Splosh” magazine in Soho, London one evening while researching gave us the lightbulb above our heads… thus GungeGirls.com was born.

The first set we shot went up on UMD.net before the site was released and gave us a lot of interest… then we set up our business and credit card system and launched the members area.  It went very well up until Emma and i split up a few months later, and at the same time, our first cheque arrived.

I sat and debated what to do.  Wisely i had not made Emma a partner in the business, our split was fueled by… let’s just say it wasn’t a happy one but i didn’t want to be anything but reasonable, so we split the cheque and parted company.

This left me sat with a healthy cheque i could either:

• Go and spend on having some fun.
• Hire a model and studio and have a crack at making a fun business to run.