About Us

protomillennial.com is the exclusive online retailer and distributor for a group of small, scrappy, Artist-owned brands from our beautiful homeland of Western New York State. We want to help these independent art and apparel brands thrive, by handling some of the boring behind-the-scenes stuff for them, like manufacturing, marketing, and online retail fulfillment. Our services allow the Artists more time to focus on making their art, and the Designers more time to focus on their designing, so that the people who are buying the end product can easily get the best quality, coolest shit possible. Another key goal with this project, besides just being an online retail platform, is to open up a new channel for sharing discussion, building community, and just encouraging general creativity, in our area and beyond.

The word “Protomillennial” refers to the subset of the population that was born during the years of about 1977-1983, right on the cusp between the group we call Generation X, and the generation we now call Millennials. In the "developed world" these Protomillennials were the last group of children to grow up and learn how to live in a mostly analog, pre-internet world, which also put them among the first wave of students in public schools to be able to use and understand the internet when it was still brand new. Due to a very specific set of circumstances of time, technology, economics, and existence, the Protomillennials were given a unique opportunity to become the early adopters of modern global digital culture, whether they liked it or not. They were also, in many cases, the last generation to witness or learn certain "old world" skills related to traditional ways of procuring and producing things like food, clothing, and the necessities of life, which were handed down from elder family members through the generations.