For the Feathered Underdog Club’s NFT Collection, we’re all just birds, man.
A set of images based on a cartoonified chicken profile pic, Feathered Underdog Club (aka FUC) is an art project that has an entire community built in. That community is firmly based in the weed scene, from California to the rest of the country and beyond.
Weed marketing master Ben Pechetti, aka Sticker Farmer, has developed a solid reputation in the weed community of California since he began printing packaging for up-and-coming brands back in 2015. While he’s known for helping to create and promote weed brands, Sticker Farmer is now becoming a major player in the cannabis NFT space with the launch of Feathered Underdog Club.
Weed moguls like Berner and Yung LB are part of FUC, as are hundreds of savvy marketers and scrappy indie businessmen who have bought into the project by buying a bird. Other familiar people from the weed community can be spotted in the club, including Stinje, GotBars510, Squintz, Zackwoods, Kush Rush, USSR Gashouse and GasHouse Felix, plus folks from sports like Stevie Williams and Bud Dupree. They’re collectively helping to push the project forward, aiming for a future expansion that could pay off big for everyone in the club.
The Feathered Underdog Club can be thought of as an NFT brand, with each image being a unique version of the archetypal bird character that the brand has developed. Generation 0 had 222 birds, and Generation 1 will have the same, making a total of 444 birds. That will complete phase one of the project, to be wrapped up by April.
Sticker Farmer says this is just the start of something even bigger, something that will eventually go beyond him and his Sticker Farmer company. For any big NFT project like this one, there’s a lot of grunt work in building up a brand into something valuable.
“Like any project, any foundation, someone’s gotta dig the dirt out,” Sticker Farmer said. “Someone’s gotta do the dirty work.” That’s the phase he and his team have been at for a few months now.
Building a Flock
As for the community effort of building the brand, Sticker Farmer says that he’s effectively building a movement.
Members of the community, Sticker Farmer said, are “buying and selling, but also marketing and hyping. Spreading the word, getting interest, and creating a movement.”
Slowly building up a community around their collection of birds is the recipe for how they’re going to go from a couple hundred handmade works of art selling for hundreds of dollars each to four or five thousand works of art selling for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
In the meantime, FUC members are the most enthusiastic buyers when new birds are released, which they are multiple times per week. After buying them, FUC members either hold on to them, sell them, or trade them.
The point of FUC is to create ways for club members to figure out how to make money from NFT art. That means that Sticker Farmer prices the birds out of the gate in a way that lets them quickly accrue value.
“We still try to make it so our people make money,” Sticker Farmer said. “If I just take all the money that’s no fun.”
That being said, Sticker Farmer makes a small percentage whenever the bird is bought and sold on the market.
So far, the numbers are impressive.
“My project’s traded 35 eth already. On a day like today that’s like $75-80k that my birds have moved around,” Sticker Farmer said.
While Sticker Farmer is clear that trading in FUC birds is not the fastest way to wealth, he posits that the project gives club members a comfortable space to play around with the NFT market.
In the club’s manifesto, Sticker Farmer writes “FACTS: my NFTs are not the best way to flip something and make money.” It goes on to say, “but if you bought one, it might inspire you to learn about how people do make money off of buying and selling NFTs.”
If people are looking to do a quick flip, there’s a way to do that. But to really hang in there and be part of the community is really where it’s at.
Sticker Farmer
Members are, however, making money on the birds.
“The guys that are tuned into my project, they buy the birds low, they wait til the time is right, they sell them high,” Sticker Farmer said. “They’re 4x and 5x if they’re doing it right,” he said.
Ultimately, Sticker Farmer said, it’s about the community of people who are part of the club that makes keeping your bird worth it.
“If people are looking to do a quick flip, there’s a way to do that. But to really hang in there and be part of the community is really where it’s at,” Sticker Farmer said.
Feathered Underdogs Unite
When you buy a bird, you get access to the Club. Technically the club is everyone who owns a bird, but the digital meeting place for FUCrs, as they call themselves, is on Discord. At any time of day or night, members can be found on the club’s Discord discussing birds, weed, and NFTs. It’s a social aspect that most NFT brands are lacking.
“We call it the campfire,” Sticker Farmer said. He and his team have worked hard to keep it an active, social space to build enthusiasm and momentum.
“When people show up to Discord, if there’s people partying, they’re going to come in, they’re going to join the community, and they’re going to quickly realize the benefits of being part of that community,” Sticker Farmer said.
Many of the members have at least one thing in common: they’ve worked with Sticker Farmer in the past.
“The Sticker Farmer family goes way beyond my family here at the house” says Sticker Farmer, who runs the company with his team at locations throughout California. “It stems all the way to the East coast with these dudes I’ve built brands with for the last five or six years,” Sticker Farmer said.
“So there’s a good amount of people that I’m already connected with, that I already do a ton of business with. I’ve built this community for them,” Sticker Farmer said.
I feel like NFT fever is real, so it’s never going to be hotter than it is now. And it’s our time to fuckin make our name in the space.
Sticker Farmer
That fact that his community includes people like Berner of Cookies and Yung LB of Runtz is part of why the project has gotten momentum. Any high-profile person in the weed community who buys a bird helps to push the movement forward.
“Berner having a presence on Discord is helping my community. Berner taking a position in the NFT space and creating a wallet and getting other NFTs, it’s helpful,” Sticker Farmer said. Sticker Farmer has personally helped Berner navigate the confusing world of crypto transactions.
“I’m excited to have him onboard in the Feathered Underdog Club. It means the world to us,” Sticker Farmer said.
Sticker Farmer was motivated to help others learn about NFTs since he had to quickly figure it out for himself.
“I really believe that this is all going to be a big part of the future. So the sooner you accept it, the sooner you learn about it, the sooner you’re going to benefit from it,” Sticker Farmer said.
“I feel like NFT fever is real, so it’s never going to be hotter than it is now. And it’s our time to fuckin make our name in the space,” Sticker Farmer said.
Birds of a Feather Flock Together
Participants in the club are mostly first-timers to the NFT space. In fact, one of the most prolific participants in the club, a man in his 30s from New England named Piff, got into collecting and selling precisely because of who backed the project.
“It’s backed up by Sticker Farmer, and if you follow him you know the powerhouse he is and what impact he has on the cannabis community,” Piff said.
“There’s wasn’t a doubt in my mind this project wasn’t gonna boom,” Piff said.
Piff has exemplified the social and networking element of the project, especially by his daily participation in the Discord chat. Piff says he can’t keep himself away.
“It’s all such an organic vibe that it almost feels impossible to walk away from,” Piff said. “The whole team’s lit. Each member has something amazing about them. We all just clicked, and it was to the moon after that,” he said.
For Sticker Farmer employee Jack Friedman, the extra work that he’s put into the project has been worth it.
“This project is very exciting. We’re working 14 hours days,” Friedman said. “I feel like we’re creating something new that not many people like us have done before,” he said.
It’s something new for us. We are the underdogs, we’re not people with investors and technology backing them up. We’re creatives and artists and we’re trying to put something together for us, and our people, and our community.
Jack Friedman, Sticker Farmer
Friedman, who is described as the “architect” of the art and design of the birds themselves, says the NFT world is still something he’s learning. Being transparent about the fact that he’s still figuring it all out as he goes is core to the philosophy of the Feathered Underdogs.
“It’s something new for us. We are the underdogs, we’re not people with investors and technology backing them up,” Friedman said. “We’re creatives and artists and we’re trying to put something together for us, and our people, and our community,” he said.
Being one of the main monitors of the Discord chat rooms, Friedman has seen the rapid growth of the project.
“Every day I’m shocked at how much we grow, Friedman said. “Our community sticks together. It’s pretty amazing.”
