Kickstarter

So, we're somewhat perfectionists as I'm sure some of you have gotten by now (which can, of course, be a good and bad thing).

We measured our specs for the dies we had built to cut the vinyl in centimeters because in all honesty, inches and the entire US system is quite useless (sorry to you die hard customary units fans). The best die maker here in Minneapolis (who was recommended to us by many) is, well, a little old school. As we went to cut vinyl at the end of last week, we realized things were a little off. Somehow in the conversion from the metric system a few millimeters got clipped in some cases which does change things. So, no big deal, they're being remade (the turn around is quite fast). But a small setback and as we've mentioned we're super transparent and want to keep you guys updated!

When you aren't hearing from us, it means that we're working around the clock and everything is going smoothly. (aside from the length of our sleeping hours). :)

On another note, we love sustainability and think that eco-snobbery and green washing suck. We recently took a few minutes to enter a video into the 2013 Sustainable Brands Innovation Open as a way to express that. If you guys could give the video that says 'EPICSTOKE' with a terrible screen shot of Joe a thumbs up, that would be fantastic.  

(You just have to scroll to the bottom of the page, click the thumb button and you're done. Oh, and the page isn't the best with usability so if you click on the video, you have to scroll to the top of the page again to watch it on a window that pops up if you'd like to watch Joe blab about our thoughts behind EPICSTOKE).

Thanks guys!

Joe & Nick

So it has been approximately one week since the funds dropped in our account to start taking action. Life's crazy and it's always a challenge to live up to your backer's expectations, your own (very high) expectations, while still maintaining a healthy and balanced life among all the crap, chaos, and beauty that gets thrown at us and is also a necessity to live inside the capitalist box we currently do! You guys know what we're talking about.

Needless to say, we've been working hard and progress is being made. Here's our checklist-

- Custom dies have been made and are now in our possession. (This is very exciting for us and means that next week (week 2) the vinyl will get cut and in the hands of our sewers.
- Packaging has been designed and samples are on the way
- Order for the luggage tags has been put in with a previous manufacturer (note some of you requested luggage tag colors- these babies add a lot to our costs and took a nice chunk out of our funds so we cannot do custom logos or colors).
- Our YKK rep has been crazy busy (we've been hassling him all week) - Just got off the phone with him and he said Monday he'll for sure put our zipper order in.

And that's that.  Also, in relation to RFID blocking- almost everyone wanted it so it doesn't make too much sense for us to make wallets without it. So we're going to put it in all of the I.D.'s, Ole's, and Gentleman. If you still really, really, really don't want it, send us a private message please.

Also, some of you who got Roo's, requested them with RFID blocking. As mentioned on the page, the Roo doesn't have RFID blocking for too many reasons to note.

We're still waiting on some surveys so it'd be great if those got in! They help us accurately gauge how many of each wallet/color we need to have made which helps us a bunch.

Those of you who have completed them- thanks! They're perfect.

Lastly, while waiting to do a count on the surveys and in a brief moment of downtime, we started interacting with a manufacturer for a new product that we've had in our design pipeline for over a year now. It's pretty awesome and has nothing to do with vinyl. Once the orders are fulfilled, we're going to start working on making this happen and updates will go to all of you who are on our mailing list as well as the first opportunities to get one!

Thank you all again! I know we're talking a lot less than we did over the past month, but we still love you guys and are excited for the sewing to start!

Joe & Nick

p.s. We've had some questions about billboard vinyl and just thought you guys might be interested to know: sourcing and sewing recycled billboard material is more expensive than buying new stuff. Billboard vinyl is, well, very expensive to ship and needs an extensive cleaning process. Depending on where they are from in the US, some billboards are a lot dirtier than others, of course. On top of that, it's quite a bit (and by that we mean a lot) tougher than vinyls that are usually used for things like wallets. These are built to withstand the elements. Remember every bad storm you've had and how the next day they're usually standing there looking unscathed (99% of the time). ;p What that means is that we need to use a thicker, more expensive, thread. We also have to use more skilled, expensive sewers. While creating these we went through several iterations until we found sewers that were good enough to properly sew the material. So long story short- these really are a premium, one-of-a-kind upcycled product ! :)