Help The Spooky Haus Rebuild and Thrive

Hello, we are The Spooky Haus, a queer artist collective representing transgender and gender non-conforming artists. We sell art at craft markets, street fairs, pride celebrations, small festivals, and other events around the Bay Area. Much of our work prominently features and celebrates queer identities. We work to bring joy and affirmation to the community. People come up to us at every event and tell us that they feel seen and validated by the art in our booth.

Everything we sell is made by a member of our collective; our art is small-batch and hand-crafted in a home studio. All of our artists are transgender or gender-nonconforming. Our collective allows trans artists within the early stages of their art career to learn how to sell their work and become financially independent. Profits get split 50/50 between our small business and the member artists of our collective. Several of our artists make more than half of their income from selling art with our collective, and two of our artists are fully reliant on income from our operations as a small business.

On April 10th, we woke up to find our van had been broken into and the majority of our inventory was stolen. Overnight, we lost nearly everything. Hundreds of labor hours and thousands of dollars of materials just disappeared. This comes right as craft market season is starting to pick up and we are just starting to make income again after the start of the year slump. We have been gearing up for a busy busy summer featuring some of our biggest events yet, and we now have to start over from scratch. We have been set back months in terms of preparing for our busiest and most profitable time of the year. We have been making bespoke pieces and launching new product lines, and it’s all gone.

In addition to the lost income for our artists, as a small business, we are not able to pay vending fees for future events or to cover any other expenses. Again, this happened right as we were coming out of the slowest time of the year, and we have been barely treading water for the past few months.

On top of the handcrafted, one-of-a-kind precious artwork that was stolen, we also lost our tools and supplies that we bring to events. Many of our display pieces were also taken. We lost packaging materials, signage, business cards, and so much more. And on top of that, our van is currently unusable. Three windows of the van were smashed, and the keyhole was broken. We rely on the van as our primary transport to and from events, and we are unable to use the van until we repair the damage.

We are seeking funds for the following purposes:

This does not include the lost revenue for artists or the business, which totals nearly an additional $90,000. We know that this is a lot. We are hopeful that insurance will help us to recoup some of our losses and that we will be able to reimburse our artists, but theft is not covered by our policy. We are turning to the community for whatever support y’all are able to give us during this time to help us rebuild and recover from this. Anything helps, and we are deeply grateful to anyone who donates or shares. Thank you!!