MINIMALIST WALLET

Frustrated by bulky wallets that need replacing over the years. I set out to build a durable, beautiful, minimalist wallet that would last your entire life.

OUR JOURNEY

IDEATION

The idea of a minimalist wallet arose from my frustration with bulky wallets that fell apart over the years. After discussing my frustration with my friend, industrial designer Mark Sullivan, we sat down and started sketching out ideas. The above picture shows some of my early idea sketches.

We then got a business license for our venture, Know Minimal LLC.

PROTOTYPING

With a handful of ideas we set about to build prototypes of some of our favorites. I was working in a fabrication shop at the time so I drew up CAD designs in my spare time and made some early prototypes. This allowed us to quickly find out which ideas were rubbish and which held promise.

USER TESTING

To get some quick feedback on our idea we handed out some early prototypes to friends and acquaintances. We checked in regularly to get their thoughts. Most of the feedback we received was promising, but there were plenty of areas for improvement.

Some of the feedback we received included:

"It's so small and light I forget it's there."

"The steel isn't very flexible so it doesn't always work when I add or get rid of cards."

"I'm worried about this scratching my cards"

"This is great, but is it RFID blocking?"

PROTOTYPING ROUND 2

With that feedback we set out for our next round of prototyping. We needed to make the wallet more elastic for easier access and to accomodate varying amounts of cards.

We decided to try carbon fiber. I bought some fiber and resin online and we printed out molds using a 3D printer. The results were promising.

DEMAND AND PRICE TESTING

We had received a lot of good feedback and offers to purchase our product, but we wanted to see if there was more demand out there. We set up a landing page to test initial demand with renderings of our product. With this landing page we were also able to test different prices as well. The results were promising, within a couple of days we had received hundreds of organic purchase requests.

LICENSING

My business partner, Mark, and I wanted to launch our product but between both of us changing jobs and Mark moving to a different state we were open to different options. We were approached by Ravean to license our product. They typically sold cold weather products and wanted something to round out their sales cycle, our wallet was a good fit. At this point we agreed on a contract to give exclusive distribution rights to Ravean.

THE LAUNCH

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

The wallet launched on September 29, 2016 with great succes, the funding goal was met by October 4th. By October 11th the wallet had $100k pledged and by November 5th it had reached $228,149 of funding with 3,891 backers.

Since then the wallet has sold thousands of units through other outlets, including on Amazon.com.

FEEDBACK

"This wallet is simple, light and durable. In fact, it’s so light that you won’t even realize it’s there. "

thegadgetflow.com

"One thing that you’re not short of when it comes to wallets is choice so it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd but that’s exactly what this Ravean Wallet, funding on Kickstarter right now, has done and it’s left us pretty impressed here at Coolector HQ."

thecoolector.com

"Thinner and lighter - Steve Jobs would be proud."

James B. - Proud customer

"It's so unique I love this thing. It's so light I sometimes forget that I have it on me, it's had a few Falls but it's holding up just fine."

Jose - Amazon Customer