Artists in Colorado will soon have the opportunity to own and fundamentally control their companies thanks to a recently passed state law.

The Artist Company Act creates Artist Corporations, or A-Corps, a designation that will function similar to other business structures like C-Corps or S-Corps. A-Corps are artist-owned and majority-controlled businesses that are guided by an artistic mission—which can even take priority over revenue growth. The law has a broad definition of what an artist is: “an individual who creates any work of authorship or artistic expression” in “any medium,” including “digital content.” And through A-Corps, artists can separate their ownership and control over the company from its economic structure and have a tighter grip on their intellectual property, too.

Yancey Strickler, one of the leading advocates for A-Corps, told Morning Brew that the structure is about giving artists more legal and corporate power. As the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, he said he saw firsthand how new legal forms for companies (like public benefit corporations—Kickstarter was among the first to adopt the designation) allowed for new types of ownership and behaviors.

“Rather than a bunch of [artists] being rounding numbers in a larger system where everyone’s doing something bespoke, if we’re all using the same form, then that allows for things like shared benefits,” Strickler said. “[It] allows for us to be recognized by the state and be given tax incentives and things like that in the future. It allows for us to go to health insurance companies and say, ‘A-Corps should have a group plan.’”

Read more about Colorado’s new A-Corp structure.—TC

While some retail founders have opted for venture-backed growth, Ingrid & Isabel Founder and CEO Ingrid Carney believes there’s still room for a slower path.

The maternity clothing brand—which Carney launched in 2003 after inventing the Bellaband, the brand’s best-selling pregnancy accessory—has grown into the largest maternity label by retail sales in the US without taking venture-capital or private-equity funding, according to the company.

Per Carney, she never entered the business with a hard rule against raising outside capital. “I didn’t go into this saying, ‘I’m not going to raise money,’” she told Retail Brew. “I went into this saying, ‘Should I raise money or can I do it on my own?’”

After working at multiple startups, including VC-backed businesses, Carney ultimately decided she wanted greater control over the company’s direction. “I saw the pros and cons of that,” she said. “So for this company…I wanted to determine the path rather than have a board determine it for me.”

That decision shaped not only the company’s ownership structure, but also how it approached growth. While many consumer startups chased aggressive expansion over the past two decades, Ingrid & Isabel focused on profitability and operating “within its means,” Carney said.

“I learned very early on what cash flow and profitability are, and that they’re not the same thing, and that in order to continue funding this myself, I have to be profitable now,” she explained. “If that means I can’t open 10 stores, then I don’t open 10 stores. If it means that in this year I can only make three leggings and not 10, then I only make three leggings.”

Read more about Ingrid Carney’s approach to bootstrapping.—JS

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