Second wave, one by one: Tasty Peach Studios — the Etsy-era seller

FOUNDED 2007 · STOREFRONT AND WAREHOUSE, MISHAWAKA · OPERATING, NOVEMBER 2026

A different decade's winner: If Better World Books is the web-1.0 winner that arrived after the crash, Tasty Peach Studios is Mishawaka's platform-era seller — a firm the social web and the maker marketplaces made, seated on Mishawaka ground. The brand — Japan-inspired "kawaii" character goods: plush, apparel and accessories built around artist Ryan "Riss" Zanfei's characters, the Meowchi mochi kittens and Nomwhals among them — was founded in 2007, launched as an Etsy shop that year selling handmade clay charms, and incorporated as a company in 2010, on the accounts the licensing trade and the founder's interviews give. The archive's first capture of tastypeachstudios.com is dated 9 November 2006 — before the founding year the trade record gives, a small conflict printed whole at the first-presences article's strength: domain registrations and first captures routinely precede the launches later accounts celebrate, and neither date is adjusted here to flatter the other. From the handmade start the course is documented in the founder's own telling: years of convention artist-alley selling, products at first entirely handmade — charms sculpted, baked and hand-painted, a toaster oven carried to conventions — then small manufacturing, then manufacturing at scale as demand outgrew the kitchen-table model, funded in part through the era's crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Patreon among them.

The scale the record proves: The brand's reach is a licensing record: products launched at retail in Hot Topic, Piq and independent comic and anime stores nationwide; licensees and partners named in the trade press including Aurora, Funko, Goodie Two Sleeves, Bare Tree Media, Atomic Toybox Entertainment, A&A Global and Great Eastern Entertainment; European, Middle East and Africa licensing representation placed with Bits + Pixels. Trade accounts describe millions of dollars in annual sales; no audited figure is in the record reached, and none is printed. The Mishawaka seat is the founder's own: in interview she places the company's storefront — "we have a full Anime store there" — in Mishawaka, living near it, with the company warehouse also seated in Mishawaka on directory accounts. Treavor Hodgson serves as the company's president in the trade record. As of November 2026 the company trades online at its own site and through its Mishawaka storefront. Printed at this size, Tasty Peach is the second wave at its most Mishawakan: not software, not infrastructure — a one-artist brand that the platforms let sell to the world from a warehouse in a city most of its customers could not find on a map.

Sources:

1. Licensing.biz, Tasty Peach Studios licensing reports (2021) — founded 2007; growth through grassroots marketing across social media, maker platforms and fan conventions; retail launch in Hot Topic, Piq and independent stores; the licensee roster; Bits + Pixels appointed for EMEA; Treavor Hodgson, president.
2. Honey's Anime, interview with Ryan Zanfei (Matsuricon, 2018) — the handmade start (clay charms c. 2009 artist-alley accounts; the toaster oven); the move from handmade to small to large manufacturing; crowdfunding through Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Patreon.
3. Nerd Alert News, interview with Riss Zanfei — the brand in Hot Topic and Claire's; the storefront in Mishawaka, Indiana; the founder living near it.
4. Business-profile accounts of Tasty Peach Studios — Etsy shop launch 2007; incorporation 2010; Mishawaka base and warehouse; annual sales described in the millions (trade description, printed at that strength).
5. Internet Archive, Wayback Machine CDX index — first capture of tastypeachstudios.com dated 9 November 2006 (see the first-presences article for the conflict as printed).