Physical Products
When I was a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I used to make extra cash by going to thrift stores and estate sales and finding undervalued designer clothing, home goods, etc and reselling them for a profit on eBay. Eventually I figured I could make the business more scalable by buying bigger liquidation lots and directly from manufacturers, and thus Nesse Distribution, my first successful business, was born.
After a few years, though, I missed the creativity of my former career path, and also began to tire of the steep competition, and razor thin profit margins, of selling products that are identical to what a dozen other competitors were carry.
I’d always wanted to branch out into designing my own products from scratch, and though I felt it made good business sense long term, I also realized that it would be much more capital intensive and the risks per product would be far greater. Still, I decided to take the risk. A number of successful products later, I know I made the right call!
Here are some of my more interesting physical product designs.
Photography Idea Cards
My mom and I are both life long photography enthusiasts. The idea behind Photography Idea Cards is to push photographers to keep trying new things. Each of the 72 cards in the deck has a challenge or theme on it. You draw one at random each day (or however often you have time) and then have to come up with a photo based on that card.
This was an especially fun one to design because, as far as I know, nobody else was previously doing anything like them. They’ve been a big hit!
Photography Idea Cards on Amazon
American Buffalo Shirt
Though I briefly worked as a consultant to Seaplane Shirts, the American Buffalo shirt was my first foray into designing them myself. I knew I wanted to do a vintage style burnout wash shirt, something gritty and textural, and as an avid outdoorsman, I decided to go with a national park theme.
The layout is actually adapted from a badge by the Argentinian designer Gabriel Oviedo, which I licensed rights to and adapted into a shirt.
It currently comes in blue and charcoal.
American Buffalo Shirt on Amazon
The SleekSquare
I was a big time Lego enthusiast as a kid. I was also lucky enough to have a carpenter for a dad, and he made me an awesome Lego table that all my friends were jealous of.
The idea of the SleekSquare was to developing a building play table that would be compatible with all the big brands (Lego, Mega Blok, Kre-O, etc), that could be produced cheaply and that would be nice enough looking that parents wouldn’t mind having it in the house.
This deceptively simple design actually took a long time to really get right. My dad and I experimented with a wide variety of materials, adhesives, sizes and styles before settling on the design that I eventually named “the SleekSquare.”
At some point I’d love to design an even more premium option with a larger play area and some additional features, like storage, but my goal with this model was something affordable, accessible and hardy, and the SleekSquare is all of those things.
Available in quite a lot of different colors, depending on what’s in stock. (We even have one with a road on it!)
Leaders of History Posters
Last year I discovered a Spanish illustrator who had created a wonderful series of little cartoon caricatures of different historical figures. I licensed rights to them and designed this poster using his artwork. It’s been a hit!
Leaders of History Poster on Amazon
Wiccan Supplies
Truth be told, I got some blank stares when I first told people I was going to try designing Wiccan supplies. Wicca may well be one of the most misunderstood religions in the world, because when people hear the word “witch,” they think Harry Potter, or scary, wart covered old ladies.
I don’t consider myself a Wiccan, but I had some friends in college who were into it, and spending time with them I gained a respect for their connection to nature and their consciousness towards casting positive energy. As a designer, I loved the Celtic and fantasy inspired art work, and as a business man, I realized it was an under served market, as few people were really designing good quality stuff for Wiccans.
And so, Pine Pentagram was born. The biggest hit has been my Wiccan Starter Box (pictured above), which at one time was actually in the top 100K best selling home goods on Amazon. I also created a Wiccan Purse and, more recently, a Wiccan Altar Cloth, available in two colors.
Ara’s Food Boxes
Ara’s is a brand I originally created with my dad (his face is on the logo) to produce food based gift boxes. The originals were mostly Asian and other exotic foods, though we later branched out into some more domestic areas as well.
One of the challenges of a food box business is every one of your products is dependent on a large number of different suppliers and if one of those suppliers goes under, or discontinues the product you use, or raises their prices too much, then your whole food box goes off the market.
For that reason, even though we’ve had a number of hit boxes, the only one currently still on the market is the Coffee Lovers Box.
Copper Drinking Straws
Plastic drinking straws are one of the big, and kind of silly, environmental threats are planet currently faces, and as more and more places ban them, there’s also more and more of a business incentive to come up with a good alternative.
Copper is considered to have some health benefits, so my mom challenged me to come up with a simple, affordable copper drinking straw that people could reuse.
I now offer three base sizes: an 8 inch version which is comparable to what you get from most fast food restaurants, a 5.5 inch for use with cocktails, like the iconic Moscow Mule, and a 10 inch version for use with big cups and water bottles. (I offer a few other micro variations as well.)
Copper Drinking Straws on Amazon
Liberal Closet & Honorable Conservative
During the 2016 US presidential election I helped my dad create a line of political bumper stickers. He had a lot of slogans he wanted to put on stickers, so I did the layout, and organized production and distribution. Admittedly some of them were kind of dramatic.
We never made that much money off them, but it was certainly a memorable experience. So far this is the only product line that’s resulted in me getting email threats from strangers! Both sites got above average attention from hackers (many of them with Russian IP addresses..) and the Liberal Closet site was eventually knocked offline.
We continued to sell the bumper stickers for a few years after the election, but have since retired them. I don’t think they’re currently available anywhere, but it was interesting while it lasted!
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