We are a husband and wife duo, David (Gizmo) and Rebecca (Zahrah). We’re a furry couple, married 5 years as of 2019, and share a passion for creating tangible things and all things furry.
I, Gizmo, have spent my life fascinated by electronics, automation, and 3d modeling. In high school I spent countless hours learning how to model, even taking un-required CAD classes to learn new methods and best practices. When affordable 3d printing came to the market I couldn’t resist buying one to tinker with and learn. It turned out that my 3D modeling experience translated to 3d printing perfectly, allowing me to combine all three of my passions into a single hobby!
Zahrah has been an artist all her life and has spent more than a decade creating both art and fursuits for the furry fandom. She spends hours every single day in devotion to her craft, meticulously assembling fursuits for her customers.
Over time, Zahrah’s arthritic wrists grew worse to the point where it was too painful to continue carving the head bases she needed to make her suits. There were blanks on the market to be purchased, but none that fit her unique style, leaving her with the option to settle for what was available or stop making fursuits and abandon her passion altogether, an unimaginable scenario.
Then one day she decided to try her hand at 3D sculpting with no set goals in mind, just something to try. To the amazement of both of us, she took to modeling like she’d been doing it for years. What started as a curiosity became a workaround for the limitations of her arthritic wrists.
Then one day it hit us! If we combined Zahrah’s talents as an artist and her newfound passion for sculpting with my CAD modeling and 3d printing, we might be able to 3d print head bases in Zahrah’s own style! That very night we set about ordering the parts and equipment we would need to make such a thing a reality.
Within two weeks we had our first workable prototype, in a couple more we had refined our concepts and workflow to the point where she could get any shape she desired in as little as a day. To our indescribable relief, this meant we could both merge our passions into a single cause and she could continue to make suits! We couldn’t wait to share this with the world!
It wasn’t long after that we started creating a website, promoting our discord, and leveraging our combined hobbies to create unique bases for the furry community at large. We’ve now been making bases for over a year and are so thankful for this amazing opportunity every single day. Our passion for fursuits, fursuit creators, and the amazing people who commission them are why we don’t charge for customization of head bases. We want to bring a little piece of what enabled us to continue doing what we love and to share that with each of our customers. To take the image that’s in their head and put it in their hand.
If this Kickstarter is funded we want to use the money to hire the help and equipment we need to move all our equipment and materials from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, to bring additional printers online, and to buy materials to start our silicone offerings. At present we have 5 printers which print nearly nonstop, day and night, to fill orders for our incredible customers. Despite their best efforts, we’re only just barely able to keep up with the growing demand. We’re utilizing every square foot of our space, most work surfaces are dual-use, and we need additional electrical service to run printers. The lease on our current space expires in February, at which point we’re hoping to avoid staying in the same or similar sized space, and instead transitioning into one with the room we need to grow.
Space is much cheaper to lease in Pennsylvania, which will allow us to keep our prices low. Pennsylvania is also home to AnthroCon, meaning we’ll be able to host in the dealer’s den (and hopefully hold meet and greets!). Finally, as we continue to grow as a company we recognize that we’ll need to hire on employees. What better place to find people who understand our drive and vision than the home of one of the largest conventions in the world?
To those of you looking for a reliable supplier of custom headbases, more printers means we’re better equipped to handle order volume. This means shorter wait times overall.
As mentioned above, we want to bring a full line of silicone, foam, rubber, and resin fursuit accessories to our website. While we’ve already been slowly working towards this, having space available to dedicate to these ventures will mean we can get the professional equipment we need to get the job done and have room to store materials and the many molds required to realize the wide variety of offerings we want to share with the world.
With regard to resins and silicones we’ve done our homework and developed our basic proofs-of-concept in house. We already sell resin claws and foam paws on the site, with basic silicones coming soon (as of the time of writing). We know what we can do and we know what we need to do it. What we need is the space to set up and scale the whole operation. In terms of fulfillment of the stickers, we’ve already got the artwork and a supplier set up to meet the demand, and proofs in hand. The silicone hearts are well within our abilities to produce, and with the added space it’ll be a nonissue to scale up. The only risk here is demand outpacing our estimates, to which we will respond by making additional molds.