Catch-Up Round 1

Wow… I’m starting to think that I’m not very good at writing a blog!
So, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. I haven’t updated the 100K Project in some time. And we left in a pretty exciting place: Our adventure continued to buying and receiving a new piece of equipment that would hopefully allow us to create new and wonderful products! And then I went silent for weeks (ok… months), which probably meant that the machine didn’t work, or that we decided we didn’t have the time for this anymore, or that we’d just given up on making anything work and decided to be content with our current life and work and put this episode behind us…

But, fortunately for us, and you, and the rest of this entry, that’s NOT what we did! In fact, we’ve done quite a bit since then, and while the results aren’t enormous yet, we are starting to see a little bit of momentum! But, a LOT has happed, and I don’t want to skip the fun details… So I’ve decided to write a series of 3-4 posts this week, a “catch-up” mini-series, so we can explore the fun stuff in greater detail… So you’ll just have to come back tomorrow and read more!

Last time you were here, we had just opened our new machine… a second-hand laser engraver that I purchased on ebay with money we’d made from building tables and flipping auction finds. We got the laser at a great deal (shipped to our house for about $1100 total), and hopes were high that with this we could create new products and launch a new small business that could really grow into something. I was thinking about wedding products, as the market is huge and there’s always a price premium on everything, and a personalized small-batch touch is appreciated. That was the middle of February, and our dreams were running at full speed.
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So, what’s happened over the last 3 months? A LOT. Here are the highlights:

• We converted a corner of our garage to a shop: This was a lot more work than expected (of course). We cleaned out a lot of our junk which wasn’t too bad, but then I had to run two new electrical circuits (there was ONE outlet in the garage… who does that?), build a big work bench to hold the laser and accessories, etc.
• Got the laser up-and-running, lots of trial and error: This machine is awesome. We needed to hook up an exhaust system, water cooling system, compressed air, etc, and then countless trial runs to figure out optimal settings.
• Learn “Inkscape”: Inkscape is a free graphic design software, and it works in vector paths instead of bitmaps (go read about that on wiki, pretty neat stuff), which is awesome and helpful for the laser engraving, and NOT intuitive (at first), so that took a while
• Developed a business concept, rough business plan, and product and development strategy. Pam was awesome at this, and it’s exciting to see the plan all laid out for growth and success! More on this to come!
• Developed an initial product line: I’ll get more detailed into this a little bit, but we decided on a first couple of products, drew the art, sourced the raw materials, built fixture tools (woah), developed laser settings, and created prototypes. I can detail some of this later this week!
• Decided to dip our toe in with an Etsy shop, took lots of product pictures, wrote some product descriptions, and listed our first products…
• Made our first sale!
• Had our first big week, followed by TOTAL CATASTROPHE. I mean, you-couldn’t-write-this-better catastrophe. I’ll tell the story later this week…

 
So, needless to say, we’ve been busy. Really busy. But we’re making progress and starting to see some little success. Stay Tuned, this week is going to be a LOT of catch up, and hopefully a fun read (I know it was a fun ride!). I will try to continue to update the Project, but of course time is a valuable commodity, so I will do my best!
 
Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes open for the next update in the “catch up” series!