{"id":321107,"date":"2026-05-18T11:47:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/321107\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:47:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:47:22","slug":"the-booming-business-of-anti-california-merch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/321107\/","title":{"rendered":"The booming business of anti-California merch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Cotting loves going on bike rides around his suburban Salt Lake City neighborhood. In the past decade, though, he\u2019d noticed something new: more and more\u00a0California<\/a> license plates on cars he passed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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He\u2019d heard rumors that more Californians were moving to Utah, so he checked the U.S. Census to see if what he felt was happening was true. Sure enough, the number of people moving to Utah from California each year was increasing, a number that would eventually peak in 2021. That made\u00a0Cotting nervous, so he decided to create some stickers that said \u201cDon\u2019t California my Utah\u201d \u2014 a sentiment that doesn\u2019t actually originate with him but made his point perfectly \u2014 to express his concern. He distributed them to friends, who told them he should sell them, which led\u00a0Cotting to build out a website and eventually create an\u00a0Etsy shop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cotting is one of several Etsy businesses selling anti-California merchandise and is a small part of a much larger ecosystem of sellers who market these products on individual websites or other online marketplaces, such as eBay, Redbubble and Zazzle. For some, like\u00a0Cotting, the products are a way to share their frustration at the Californians moving out of state. For others, they\u2019re just a way to boost sales by leveraging a trending topic. No matter the reason, they\u2019re all capitalizing on the way the word \u201cCalifornia\u201d has grown to\u00a0mean much more<\/a> than just the place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A sign reads, \u201cLeaving California.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

MCCAIG\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

\u2018Being anti-California\u2019<\/p>\n

Cotting describes himself as conservative, and while he\u2019s quick to point out he\u2019s not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he moved to Utah in 2009 because he liked its values and, ultimately, thought it would be a good place to raise kids. Of the influx of residents from the Golden State, he said, \u201cI\u2019m not a big fan of the politics of California, and my concern was that as more people moved from California, they would bring their political ideas and votes with them and in the process change Utah in a way that I don\u2019t want it to become.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After his stickers started to sell, he decided to check the Census again, to see where else Californians were relocating. He made stickers for those states, too, and today, his top-selling stickers are for Tennessee and Montana, respectively. \u201cI know I\u2019m not gonna stop people from moving here, that\u2019s not my intent. I\u2019m basically just expressing my opinion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Sticker sales aren\u2019t enough to make running the business his main job, though; he said he views it more as a hobby.\u00a0Etsy takes a big portion of his profits, and as shipping costs have risen every year, it\u2019s been difficult to make enough money even to justify operating the shop. He tried advertising on social media, but it wasn\u2019t worth the cost, he said, especially when most people only bought one sticker at a time. When he tried to get local stores to sell his stickers, most of them told him they were afraid of offending customers, he told SFGATE.<\/p>\n

Cotting said he had a small spike in sales leading up to the 2024 election, and also once when a political talk show mentioned the \u201cDon\u2019t California my [insert state]\u201d saying. He thinks the phrase resonates with a lot of people in more conservative areas, especially those that value personal freedoms like himself. He cited California\u2019s recent legislation that outlawed the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 as an example of overstepping those bounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI never thought about being anti-California until, I don\u2019t know, in the last 10 years, at some point,\u201d Cotting said.<\/p>\n

Capitalizing on conflict<\/p>\n

The sentiment may feel new, but it\u2019s been around for decades. Bumper stickers bemoaning Californians moving in have been around since at least the 1980s<\/a>, as soon as even a flicker of a state exodus<\/a> came on the media\u2019s radar. The heightened polarization of the country and the political rhetoric could be partly to blame for the revitalization of California animosity, demographer Hans Johnson previously told SFGATE, but it\u2019s also easier than ever to create anything online in seconds. For many creators, that means mocking up designs and setting them up to print on demand, capitalizing on any given moment, no matter how flash in the pan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fashion Open Studio, an online store that sells everything from T-shirts to yard signs to pickleball kits, includes various California merchandise, both celebrating and hating on the state. A white mug with the slogan \u201cI Love Waking Up And Remembering I Don\u2019t Live In California,\u201d written above the shape of the state of Idaho (or Georgia, or Texas, etc)., for example, \u201cperformed relatively well in the past, although demand has cooled somewhat recently,\u201d Jacob Owen, a customer service consultant at the company, told SFGATE via email.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A screenshot of a page on Etsy.com. The sticker reads, \u201cDon\u2019t California My Montana.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screenshot via Etsy<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically try to spot interesting, entertaining, or trending ideas and translate them into product concepts. We do not take a political position or aim to support or oppose any particular viewpoint,\u201d Owen wrote.<\/p>\n

The site is constantly updating its product catalog, meaning any viral sound bite can become a product almost instantaneously, and \u201csales can shift alongside news cycles, elections, internet trends, tech backlash, and other cultural moments,\u201d Owen continued.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of sites that operate like this, in addition to marketplaces like Etsy. TeePublic, an online marketplace where independent artists can sell their designs, wouldn\u2019t directly respond to SFGATE\u2019s request for more information about how anti-California merchandise performs on its site, but the company\u2019s automated support assistant (read: artificial intelligence chatbot) said, \u201cWe welcome a wide range of designs from independent artists, including those that playfully reference state rivalries. However, any design that crosses the line into hate speech or is intended to harm or incite violence against a group of people isn’t allowed on TeePublic.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018I do not hate our state\u2019<\/p>\n

Merchandise celebrating the place you live or poking fun at state rivalries is nothing new. But the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat ushered in an era of merchandise focused on proclaiming political allegiance, launching a whole new way to capitalize<\/a> on a rapidly polarizing country. The Trump family sells everything from candles to coins to teddy bears. While Owen called the anti-California products \u201cnot yet a major category\u201d for Fashion Open Studio, the Trump campaign made $80,000 per day in 2016 from \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat sales, according to a memoir by Jared\u00a0Kushner. The hats are, ironically, stitched together in Southern California<\/a> by largely immigrant Latino workers \u2014 the same community that President Donald Trump\u2019s Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiatives threaten in the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Attendees are seen during Politicon 2018 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on Oct. 21, 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chelsea Guglielmino\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Trump organization seeming wants all that money for itself and has gone so far as to\u00a0sue small sellers<\/a> making dupes of its merchandise.<\/p>\n

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Frank Ryan, the owner of\u00a0Beachin, an apparel store in Orange County\u2019s Seal Beach, sells lots of pro-Trump merchandise, in addition to other conservative, Republican-leaning goods. He\u2019s been selling anti-Gavin Newsom merchandise since 2022 \u2014 shirts that say \u201cFK Newsom\u201d or hats that say \u201cNewsom sucks,\u201d for example \u2014 and they can sell out pretty quickly, depending on what\u2019s going on with state politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He told SFGATE he\u2019s \u201cpro California\u201d but \u201canti-California policies\u201d and that when he drives out of state, he usually says he\u2019s from Orange County instead of saying California, \u201cso they know I\u2019m normal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s annoying,\u201d he said, that everyone associates California with liberal policies, especially when he believes most people in the state don\u2019t actually vote for the liberal policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI hate what has happened to our state. I do not hate our state,\u201d Ryan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Cotting, the sticker seller, said he doesn\u2019t hate California either \u2014 he just doesn\u2019t want Utah to change. He writes a note to each purchaser to send with every order, thanking his customers for caring about their state. He knows how they feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone is going to move here from California, I\u2019d rather them be here as a refugee, not an evangelist,\u201d Cotting said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Cotting loves going on bike rides around his suburban Salt Lake City neighborhood. In the past decade,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,3099],"class_list":["post-321107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-sfgcalifornia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}