Kickstarter live case study. Step 4: How to actually make the thing

Almost a decade ago, my first Kickstarter was for a razor. It’s probably still the most complex product I’ve ever made as a part of a Kickstarter project.

People always ask me - how did you know how to make a razor?

Well the answer is that I didn’t. I thought my particular design of razor would be something that people would want, and then I figured out how to make it.

Or more accurately - how to have it made by somebody else. With any product, you rarely actually make it all yourself.

In that particular case I was never going to buy myself a zinc diecasting machine to set up in my garage. So I found manufacturing partners and suppliers who would do it for me.

Making is the easy bit

When you get past thinking that you have to do everything yourself, making something is actually the easy part.

If you look around you right now it’s mind-blowing how many objects have been designed and manufactured by myriad companies large and small. Everything is made somewhere, and if you’re coming up with a new product you just have to find a viable way to make it and a place that will do it for you.

For me in the first instance it usually literally starts with a Google search. There are countless businesses out there whose raison d’etre is to help people like you to make things.

Yes, quite often they won’t be able to help you, or the job will be too small for them, but I’ve been overwhelmingly delighted by how gracious potential suppliers are with their time and expertise.

Big shout out to Jones & Wilkinson in the UK, without whose early support for my first ever Kickstarter I may well not be writing this now.

Jones and Wilkinson back in 2009

Making tiny playing cards

In the case of my current Kickstarter project for the world’s smallest playing cards I have a head start because I’ve made playing cards before. But it’s still a very different challenge to make such small cards.

Regular playing cards are printed on big sheets and then cut by machine into individual cards. That wouldn’t work for cards that are only 5mm across, so I had to find another way.

So for these cards I’m getting them printed in a fairly standard way (albeit with a lighter card stock) but then I’ll receive them in uncut sheets and send them somewhere else to get them laser cut into individual micro cards.

The point is that I’ve found places who know how to print stuff and that know how to cut card with a laser. I can defer to their expertise in these areas and then work together with them to test techniques before making a final production run.

Kickstarter ending this week

My Kickstarter campaign for these tiny cards ends in four days.

Four days to go

I exceeded my financial target and the limited edition 100 decks were sold out in a couple of hours, but the campaign will continue to be live until the end of the 14 days that I specified at the start.

So although the funding won’t come through for another couple of weeks I can start to get ahead of schedule on the final design work that’ll get me ready to have the cards printed and cut.

I’ll go into more detail about that process next week, including my work on an imaginative packaging solution and designing a custom Q for the queens that’ll work better at the small size.

Custom tiny Q