The Short(ish) Story Behind the Giddy Duck

February 06, 2014 2 Comments

Various people have asked: "What's With the Duck?" Since Giddy isn't in the business of printing just any design on any shirt - we wanted people to know a little more about how we got started and what we're about:

The Short(ish) Story Behind the Giddy Duck

When I started my first job out of college, I felt like a newborn baby. I was uncomfortably overwhelmed as I took in a whole new world. In my situation, this “new world” was within the walls of a massive corporation.  There were so many employees that I didn't have a name, but a number. I didn’t have an opinion – just a list of duties to fulfill. In situations where the expectation is mass conformity, a nonconformist sticks out like a sore thumb.  Unfortunately for me, I was that sore thumb. 

However, in this albeit brief stage of discomfort in my life – the duck was born out of an act of kindness from a fellow employee. At the time, everyone in the firm received a rubber duck from management for one reason or another and I was given a duck dressed in a full business suit. Knowing it didn't fit my current situation, my coworker Melissa bought a different duck she found at a thrift store and quietly replaced it one morning before I got to work. Attached to my new duck was a note that said (inexactly), “Don’t listen to them – you don’t have to grow up if you don’t want to.”

It was love at first sight.  The duck was so happy, so Giddy, in its individuality and self-expression that it became my only flicker of hope for that same feeling. I looked at the duck everyday and everyday the duck grew more in meaning. Rubber ducks don’t have to sit in cubicles wearing business suits and neither do humans. The Giddy duck, to me, came to represent that inner happiness that comes with self-expression and non-conformity. 

I quit my job about two weeks later, packed up everything I owned, and moved to North Carolina. I already had Giddy up and running (on a much smaller scale than it is now) and my plan was always to use my business as a vehicle to bring happiness to the world around me. Given how much joy that small duck had brought to my life – it didn’t take us long to print the duck on a sweater and gift the Giddy duck back to the world that brought it to me.

Given what Giddy is – an all-natural skin care company that also made eco-friendly clothing – we don’t really fit “in the box.” A fun, defiantly lively rubber bath duck ended up being a perfect fit for our brand and I’m Giddy inside every time I see someone wearing it. I still have the original rubber duck; it sits on my desk and continues to bring joy to me on a daily basis. He’s become a metaphor to a life where I can have fun while working and don’t have to wear a suit if I don’t want to.

-Tyler

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