limited production :: hand crafted :: high performance :: rechargeable :: premium flashlights

This is my blog about creating a startup LED flashlight business. I'm a designer, fabricator, and strategist and I'm passionate about making ideas real. I believe that products are about people, that they should be built to last, deliver real value, and that we need to do a better job than we have in the recent past.

Most of my career has been contract or freelance work and I've crafted products and strategies for both big international companies and startups. I also used to work in the "industry" fabricating special effects for film and TV, along with the occasional hot rod. Bottom line, I love making things.

I'm starting this blog so you can follow along, from day one, and see what it's like to start a business, or fail in the process. Only time will tell, but I hope you find this interesting enough to stay tuned, comment, link, like, tweet, and (most importantly) participate in turning this idea into something tangible and valuable.

For a good place to get started with general info about who, what, why, etc., check out the "Stickies" on the left side of the page. Thanks for stopping by and please don't hesitate to ask questions and get involved!

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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

It all started when...

I'm having a hard time deciding how much history to go into. I think the foundation for this project was laid when I was ten or so years old. That might be a little too far. Let's try August of 2010. I had just finished school and the lease on my industrial space was up. The decision was:
  1. Pack up and sell off/store all of my shop equipment...then get a real job, you know, with a desk
  2. Move into a smaller space and find some way for the shop to pay for more than just the rent
In any case, I packed up all my stuff and moved house. Here is all my junk on the back of a truck. Probably only about 10,000 lbs. worth. 


I was horrified to find my shop almost takes up an entire semi truck. 



It wasn't a very hard decision but I had no idea what I was going to do. For the last couple years I've been doing custom fabrication work and that is fun, but very irregular. Business wasn't exactly booming. I had a couple of personal projects (design related) that went into negotiations with various companies but nothing panned out. 

Then I dragged up and old project I had been meaning to get around to and that I thought would have some significant commercial potential. LED dive lights for scuba. Long story short, I started showing people my prototypes and practically everyone got excited about them. Normally I work on really obscure/niche stuff like fly fishing and I can see little question marks floating around people's heads when I talk about it. In any case, I decided to go where the interest was. If you want more details, check out the "Why flashlights" sticky. 


Posted by Jason at 12:15 AM

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