Hi, I'm Emily angle Suzuki, a design focused writer, editor and content strategist living in Brooklyn, New York. And I'm Trent still a designer fabricator and self described nerd for all things made. I'm an okie based out of San Francisco, California. Welcome to the new possible a podcast that sheds light on the future of making things in a relatable and authentic way. Each episode we chat with experts who represent how things are made and influence the future of the design, engineering and manufacturing industries. And we dive into companies that leverage technology in a way that drives their success. We're guests, their design experts, manufacturing wizards and founders who have one thing in common. They're you, our listeners, people who work tirelessly to identify problems, design solutions, and run businesses that support their employees and customers. Sometimes we'll talk about sales margins and revenue streams. Other days, we'll take deep dives into future technology that may be a bit unattainable right now. All in all, our goal is to give you an opportunity to hear from your colleagues about how they leverage technology in a way that makes them better. The new possible is brought to you by Autodesk fusion 360, a CAD CAM cae and electronics tool that enables you to make the new possible. Here at Autodesk. We like to say that our software helps our community design and make anything. One brand that really pushes that concept to its limits is the Brooklyn New York based design studio, cw and T founded by segway Wang and Taylor levy pens box cutters watches jump ropes, sketchbooks, lighting, you name it, they've designed it, made it and put their own playful twist on it. Stay away is even part of the MIT space exploration initiative, which you can hear him speak about in Episode Four. CWT started in 2011 with an idea to design a more durable home for the ink cartridges in their favorite pen, the high tech See, the result was pen type and a solid stainless steel pen housed in a handy robot. instead of assuming a need for the specialty pens say weigh in Taylor put the concept on Kickstarter to assess interest. To their surprise, the pin type a campaign received over $280,000 in funding from over 4000 backers. Since then, CWT has continued to use Kickstarter to fund their ideas, and now has 12 of 12 successful products and campaigns and under their belts. CWT designs their products in fusion 360 10 prototypes in the new workshop and then shipped out the contract manufacturers. In this episode, Wang and levy walk us through their story design process workshops, get ready to be inspired. Give listeners a little bit of an idea of what the origin story of CWT is, say when I met each other in grad school at ITP, which is interactive telecommunications program at NYU. And shortly after graduating, we decided we didn't want to take full time jobs. And instead, we just essentially said yes to every possible project that came our way, which at the time was a lot of software writing. So we did a bunch of consulting work like that. But on our free time, we would make stuff that we kind of just wanted for ourselves. And I think this was back in Yes, back in 2009 2010. Things just started going from there. Sure. Well, we have some major turning points in our studio. That's true. Because we originally Yeah, we were originally writing lots of software, which is not has almost nothing to do with product design. And that's how we were feeding ourselves. And then it wasn't until 2011 after tinkering with product design on the side for ourselves, not for profit. Our friends were like, Hey, you should put some of that stuff on Kickstarter, because it's, you know, you already have the prototypes laying around, there's nothing to lose. We essentially we had like a bike stem that we made. And we had a pin that we made. And our friends were like just launch anything, put it on Kickstarter, because at the time, there was pretty much no product design category, there was a product design category on Kickstarter. And there was I guess, like under 10 product design projects that had been launched maybe under five. It was very slim back then. And yeah, so we decided to just launch this pen that we designed on Kickstarter, hoping to sell 50 of them to kind of like our friends and family and things really took off after that point. We ended and like that's that's pen type and yeah, and wow, cuz that was a massive success, right? But we were I mean was totally luck. You know, like we were there early. I think, you know, we talked about this a lot like, I think if we launched that product now, it would be crickets like nobody would care. Because it's so you know, there's so much on there that we would we wouldn't be able to hold anyone's attention with that. So I think we were at the right time, right place. You also happen to be going on a residency circuit at the time, like we already had planned to basically shut down our studio because we work really hard, save up a bunch of money. And then we're like, oh, let's go on a bunch of art residencies. So we launched a Kickstarter campaign, I think, like a week or a week before leaving the US to go on these residences. It's like it while we're doing these presidencies, this campaign is blowing up. And we're just like, Oh, I think I think this could work. Like I think when we go back, we don't have to write software for clients. No. Then I thought that that early, I didn't, I was like, paying myself and like not being able to sleep and being like, this is so stressful. How are we going to make 6000 pounds? There's no way that we know, but it was such a big campaign, like at the time was also, you know, we did, I think we raised like 280,000, something like that, which at the time was a lot of money on Kickstarter is nothing now. Yeah, compared to other campaigns, but like, we were in the top 10 largest campaigns at the time. So as a brand you become known for in a really good way, being all over the place with the different products that you design. So from pens, to posters to wheelbarrow TVs, what is it been like to build a company on doing really what you want when you want it? So when CWT started, we kind of just always, we have it kind of like I like to think of CWT as a container for just the things that we want to make that sort of that becomes inclusive of whatever it is we want to make, whether it's art projects, design objects, aren't projects disguised as design objects, like it's this container that's really much, very much representative of just us. We never really put that much thought into, I don't know, is this thing going to be a good product? Is it going to sell it really is just like the stuff that we feel like doing? And hopefully a few of those things will become more commercially viable. But some of them aren't at all. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, it's still part of the conversation. We're never like, you know, we're not making tons of stuff, not knowing. Like we always at the end, we're like, I always hesitate, because I'm like, I don't think people will buy this thing. And I'm like, No, I think people will buy this thing. Really? No, I feel like we've never had that conversation, like we do. We've had the opposite conversation. I think you always start with that conversation in the beginning being like, I think we flipped like I'm always like, we'll always find people to, you know, find a market for this, regardless of how weird and strange it is. And then by the end, I think what you're describing here is like every founder ever having any product launch, like there's it's a roller coaster of emotions. But I do think that you hit on, you hit on something for me that that's very clear in that CWT takes a very untraditional approach to product design and product launches. And you can see that one by like the breadth that your studio has in regards to products. I mean, the fact that you have like, you know, time since launch, which was new last year, I think you launched it in 2020, or 2019. So it's a single event timer, which is like super meta, super interesting, great as an art object, but also wonderful as a design object. But then you have like the wheelbarrow TV, which I absolutely love, which is I think more like an art project. In a way I've known you to even make like, you know, 3d printing handheld guns, right like something that you basically like us to create organically 3d prints and tailor the same with your kind of like gated circuitry that you've done. So you have this wide range of products. But in the end, you've also kind of emerged in showing that crowdfunding is a viable opportunity for businesses to pursue, and there's a much larger market adoption now than there ever has been. I thought it was interesting when you talk about we were first product design, but you go there now almost exclusively for product design. And I think for me, some of those examples are not only CWT success to that, but like peak designs and their photographic kit work. They exclusively launch new products on crowdfunded platforms now and they are raising millions and millions of dollars without crowd funding, do you think you would have been able to really explore explored design in a way that you have done it? No, definitely not. Yeah, like, we're just, I can't, we're just lucky. Yeah, if we didn't launch at the time we did, I don't think the products we make are that remarkable. Like, I think we're still riding on the success of the first campaign, like our audience that we get to, to communicate with pretty much all come from that first campaign. So every time we launch a campaign, now, we're still riding on that wave. And so, you know, I think if you take any of the products that we've launched on Kickstarter, without the success of that first campaign, which was I think, pure luck, we wouldn't have the ability to launch these other campaigns, you know, to the scale that we do. And so, yeah, I think it's not just that Kickstarter has changed the way our business runs, but Kickstarter, plus being lucky and being early. Like, it's like, it's like a perfect storm, I think without all those pieces, you know, we I'd still be, you know, I think I'd still make products because that's, I just love it so much. But we wouldn't have the audience that we like, and so we can go make as much, you know, wouldn't have the ability to make all the things that we make, I think, I think your answer to that, like doesn't give, I don't know, like, what you're saying now is that, like, it's impossible for anybody else right now to do what we do, which I don't think it's truly hard. It's really hard, and it's different. But what I will say it is the only pathway that enables, like two people, just like there's two of us to be able to put things into the world, like, we can focus on the making side, and we don't have to focus on like going out and figuring out how to get a bunch of money from strangers, who essentially own us and own our business to convince them to make a bunch of stuff. And take that risk, that we're gonna sell these things like you're talking about venture, yeah, you're talking about venture capital, right? Yeah. Or like how people used to make products, right? Or a lot of big companies still make products, like, we don't have to be a big company. And we could just focus on the making. And then that other stuff, there's like, their software in place and the Internet to kind of help cushion the rest of it. The Internet solves all problems, creates one too. But no, I, you know, I will say that, I think that, for me, both of your points have, you know, merit and from my perspective, like slightly skewed in a sense, because product design is a really tricky business, and that a lot of the times you have to look at your total addressable market, you have to look at, like, what your product penetration is going to be, you have to come up with a business plan to launch that. And I think that's why we see companies, you know, historically in design, really do kind of say back to your point bank on that one design, like you look at any big design house, they had their first lucky win. And then they just kind of expanded from there. I mean, you could go to the teams and talk about, you know, basically their splint for the military being there one lucky break that allowed them to do all these things. You can do the same with peak. I think what's interesting about your business model, though, is crowdfunding design or hive collective, like design approval, we'll call it is pretty much no different than what it was in the 60s, they just had a lot different of a market research, you know, process. But I also think like to Taylor's point, you know, there is this ability to reach a larger audience or a different audience, like one of the projects I remember you doing was essentially a poster based on, you know, measurements that are directly attributed to your body links, right. So the length of my index finger is unique to me, which I instantly thought of corbeau. ca in architecture, and his corbie. You know, one corbie unit is the link of the ground to the center of his belly button. And then with his hand on top of his head, essentially. But I do feel like that is the way you launched, it was a fun, emotionally based product that was unique, almost to the point of being an art object, right. And I just, I think that Kickstarter for me, and the ability to kind of democratize, who sees who engages, who can invest in your work is really powerful. And that it it's also allowed you to be a lot more tactical or diverse in the things you've pursued based on just personal interests, which I think let's be real at the end of the day. Every product designer actually just wants to make what they want to make and people buy it. And, you know, so we're super lucky that we get to do that. And I think Yeah, Kickstarter, for sure enables that. Yeah. So I wanted to learn more about like how your business model works, because you have Kickstarter, then you also sell product on your website. And then you also create big Instagram following too and social media. So can you just talk about like for people who don't know how those three channels connect with each other? And how were you choose to promote product? Yeah, we so we any. So we have, I guess, like two ways of launching products. In general, if we think it's worth the effort, essentially, we'll put it on Kickstarter. Because even though it's a pretty light lift compared to launching a product without Kickstarter, it still requires some effort, like shooting a video and putting that whole page together. For any product that we're like, I think it's worth putting this effort in, you know, so that we could reach a huge audience, we'll put it on Kickstarter. But we also have smaller products, where we just launched them, they're almost like experimental projects where we don't, we're really unsure whether people will enjoy it or not. And maybe we also don't really care. We're just like, we just want to get it out there as soon as possible. And so we'll just launch those relatively quietly, just on our website, and maybe we'll post something on Instagram. And I think, yeah, these days, Instagram is the only platform that we use for advertising. So it will promote some of the products that we sell on our website. And if we launch a Kickstarter campaign, we'll try to find, you know, spread our audience or gain a larger audience through Instagram to carry them over to Kickstarter. We're not like, we're not really tactical with Instagram. But we've found that, I mean, we've learned that our most valuable asset was the one we had at the beginning, when we got a huge following. Because of that first Kickstarter campaign, we launched, I think we had automatically a mailing list of 6000 people, which it literally is our most valuable thing. And so for Instagram, we kind of we're not good at marketing, and we don't really get it, but it lets us be able to, whenever we run ads will just like throw, like $5 a day at just like promoting a single post, like, we'll go into our archive. And we're not trying to get people to buy stuff. We're just trying to get more followers, essentially, like, we just want to have people look at our stuff on a casual, ongoing, lightweight basis. And that's really how we use we use Instagram. So like brand awareness. Yeah, purposes. Yeah, but there's definitely room for us to do more. We're just like, haven't done around to it. When we will, it's a lot to maintain social media gets pretty intense. So yeah, yeah, I missed the early days. Like it reminds me of, like, what Kickstarter originally was meant to be like, nobody was running ads for Kickstarter, you know, 10 years ago. And it's, you know, and it's become a totally different place, like, back then I think we wouldn't have ever questioned whether we would launch something on Kickstarter or not, because it felt so casual to put something up there. And it felt like a place where it is, it is the place to kind of test out an idea to see if there's an audience, you know, and so if a campaign doesn't isn't successful, that's okay. It just, you know, it's a good thing to find out before you put a ton of energy into it. And then, you know, you don't want to find out, you know, 10 years down the line, you don't have an audience. But I feel like that has changed now. Like now, it's, it seems like it would be devastating if your campaign isn't successful on Kickstarter. And so the way the amount of energy people put into it, and the way people view Kickstarter campaigns has changed, which I don't totally, you know, I wish it wasn't that way. I wish it was more casual. Like, I'd love to be able to put up crazy ideas that are half baked, you know, to see if there's an audience for this weird idea that we haven't totally prototyped Yeah. You know, it's really interesting, though, is what you just described was the startup culture. Like, you go in front of an audience, you pitch a half baked idea, you get funding to do what you want. And then you go out and you see if Israel I mean, that's how every tech stack that's like, super popular right now was started and even some products. And so I think what's interesting about the crowdsource crowdfunded models, is that it's the democratization of venture capital, you're just taking venture capital or pre VI's from a number of folks. And it's the same with like Indiegogo and all of these other sites, right, like you're just enlisting people to your costs. But I think that we're Your story differs is that you've turned it into a successful business that has a good revenue stream that actually sells. I mean, it's not like your manufacturing runs are small. You know, and I and knowing a little bit about your process ahead of time, you've also done something that a lot of big manufacturers would never really consider doing, which is essentially on shoring your process, you own most of your own process in house and what you don't do in house, you have relatively local folks helping you manufacturers. And I think that that's a really powerful story. Because this age old idea that product design has to be, you know, in a room with like 40 drafts people, like in white shirts, like hashing everything out, just like Braun did for 40 years is so wrong. I mean, some of the greatest products designed in the last like 15 years are very much done the way you've done it. And they've grown. And I think that Kickstarter, which is interesting is that and the way that you market and your intention around it, you're not alone, most business owners, most small business owners, small manufacturing owners, would say the same thing you say, I don't really understand how all this works. I'm just like trying to be authentic to our brand. And make sure that we're not jamming stuff down people's throats, I think it's super powerful for for hardware startups or founders, or even if you're a tech stack startup, to keep that, because consumers are far more savvy today than they've ever been. I personally feel like someone's throwing stuff at me. I purposely just like, turn it off, right? I'm like, I'm not gonna invest in you. Because you're not letting me be me. So, but I do want to, I kind of want to like, I want to change focus a little bit and talk about your manufacturing process, because I think it really does show that there's such a why like, manufacturing is such a big word, I would love for you to kind of give us a walkthrough of how you take a product to market and from what I understand it's a lot of prototyping in house, you know, literally, in your house, in your, in your facility in a basement with CNC machines, you've even built your own CNC machines. But I know you've also partnered with some manufacturers in the northeast, like in Vermont, or upstate New York and things like that. Taylor, can you tell us Can you walk us through? Like, when you come up with a hardware product? What's your process? How do you start? Where do you end? So what's our process? Like? We start off with a lot of sketching. And very quickly, whenever we come up with an idea, I think it's always like this mad rush of energy. And that first day we're like, sideways, like automatically on his computer, and then like 3d printing stuff. And it happens like really, really fast. And I think the first Yeah, the first cycle to kind of go from idea like, this is a great idea to have a thing that like let's try making it to like actually having something in our hands is like, at that time, we'll have that thing in our hands, which is like, a beautiful thing to be able to do. And then we spend a lot of time like living with the thing. iterating reprinting it or we do have a couple of CNC Mills that will work and like, depending on what the thing is, we might want to machine some parts. Our process goes, it's a little bit staggered, I will say like, we'll do a lot of work like at the beginning. And then like we kind of take a pause and we live with it, we sit with it for a bit. Sometimes we'll launch things, we always go through this period of time where we try to figure out and work out how we could make the thing in house. And that's like a very early conversation that we have. And sometimes we do do like a tiny pre release, where we will test making the thing completely in house. And it's not always exactly the same materials that it would be made in down the line. It's kind of a bummer, because we've always wanted to make 100% of a product in house. But we've never gotten to the point where we've actually been able to do it for like, have we done it for a bunch of products we make fully in house. Not like mass manufacturers, not as large quantities not in large quantities. So anything above the like hundreds we don't make in house. And then like pretty shortly after we'll start reaching out to manufacturers either in Vermont, or overseas and we'll get like, a lot of the time like we'll reach out to different spots to have like one piece of something made here another piece of something made here. We have them shipped and we assemble and yeah put everything together in house. One thing that I've noticed you all do is you pull as much into your day to day as you can what I mean by that is, you know, you mentioned it with additive with 3d printing, but also ecad, you know, a number of your products I've seen through your, you know, marketing, aka Instagram, you know, you're printing a lot of PCB boards, and you're integrating them into your additive or your 3d printing workflows, or you're machining, we're also using, you know, resins or whatever, like your watch, for instance, right? It's like, 3d printed housing, circuitry. And then it looks like a physical resin pour, or, you know, I'm sure you've automated it somehow. But then when you look at the pin, you know, for our viewers, the pen, they have three pens, and they're all like an experience from a mechanical, awesome vibe. Like, so your pen tie Bay essentially has like an air bearing that lets it close itself automatically. And then there's just this wonderful tactile, like closing of it. So when you talk about process and taking it in, like, you're kind of doing it all, like, you're doing service modeling, you're doing additive, you're doing ecad, you're programming g code, you're running them on your CNC machines, you're literally doing as much as you physically can. And then when you get to a point where you can't you partner with some US based or you know, overseas, I'm assuming your PCBs probably come from overseas, but correct me if I'm wrong, but you're no, they come local. Yeah, it's weird. We have stuff all over the place, like thick. Yeah, I mean, we have us PCB houses in China. But we also have a PCB house where most like we have boarded 1000s of boards from this place in Massachusetts. Nice. Nice. And it's weird how that's comparable. Sometimes the price Yeah, well, I think that that's the great thing, because if you do it at scale in which like big M capital M manufacturing, like let's say Ford, for instance, they would not partner, they would not onshore their PCB fabrication for any of their electronics in their latest vehicle, right. But what's cool is that you've because you've kind of adopted this workflow, and also this kind of work ethic to learn the parts to enable you to do more with your business, I think it's also opened you up to own more of your process. And in part that hyper focus on doing it yourself, I think, is actually what makes your products most successful. Because each one is like an artifact. Like if I buy a pen from a high end pen manufacturer, or let's take a watch, for instance, if I went out and bought like some Patek Phillipe or Rolex or whatever, it's not going to have that artifact moment for me that it would if I bought from you knowing it was designed, fabricated and assembled or manufactured and shipped from some people in Brooklyn, right? There's like this heirloom quality to all the products you do. But I also i 100%, don't think that you would have that if you weren't so bullish on doing everything yourselves. I mean, in my off on that assumption, but I think that it kind of comes out of necessity, less, you know, that, like, that's not even, I don't think that even crosses our mind to do it any other way. Like one thing that I think we thrive on his momentum when we're designing things, you know, so if, if we get excited about an idea, we work really fast, and really hard to get it to a point where we can evaluate it as a thing. So we get it to a prototype level, usually in a day. It's all the all the skills and whatever we pick up, like, you know, programming or, or G code or whatever, you know, printing whatever catting, you know, like all of those, the things that we need to know, are there so that we can get the prototype in front of our hands as soon as possible. And that, you know, it's sort of like automatically leads into manufacturing, like you have to know how to get it manufactured, if you're going to do that. And so I think that that's our primary driving force is like, we're designing but we're always designing with the prototype in mind with the production level prototype in mind. And so that kind of Yeah, and then it kind of automatically leads into being like, oh, if I could make one, I wonder if I could make 100 and then if it can make 100 maybe you can make 1000 because I think my my dream is always still bringing everything in house, partly from like, like having control over the process. But also I think from a business perspective, like I feel, I see other businesses that are multi generational, that have been, you know, that have been around making products for a long time that they all have their production in house and I really feel like if we want this business to last beyond us like beyond us, as a generation Like pass it to our kids or passes to their kids like we have to bring manufacturing in house. There's no other way to keep it going. I totally disagree with that. Really? Yeah. Same why why ever passing our business on to our children? As I said at the beginning, our business I really feel is just a container for us. And it like, I don't want to grow bigger than ourselves. Like, we agree. No, I know we agree of but it not being bigger than ourselves. But extending it beyond our lives means bigger than ourselves to me. So I'm just thinking from a longevity perspective, like, we have products that will outlive us for sure, yeah. And if we're gonna have products that outlive us, I feel like the business should also continue living or else. Because like, we're doing this so we can, like be humans on there, and like, feed ourselves and be part of the world in our community. And like, we don't need to take up that space. Once we're no longer. You know, what Taylor, I'll add this though. Like that perspective is totally great to have, but in but the moment that you introduced a product to market, that people that resonated with people and that they be came a part of their lives, you've you're already much more than just your life, right? Like, like, you now have an heirloom artifact thing like that pan will last generations. And it signifies like knowledge in this thing. But I also want you to think about this, because one thing that you said, both of you have actually said, about invention and coming up with things. It's this idea of like Necessity is the mother of invention, or whatever Plato I think said that you have some kind of perspective on not wanting to have this lineage or this like you know, outside of yourselves, or that you want to take the process. And I just think it's really interesting, because I mean, that statement really holds true for CW T is like your necessity, the necessity to bring everything in house and to know and to do and to practice and to own, in essence has led to your success as product designers, and in the invention of these wide range of products. So I'll shut up. Now, Emily, I know you've got tons of questions, you want to ask this one main one, but also you have time since launch to the last forever and ever. Rest assured you'll be around for a long time. But I don't want to backtrack a lot. And just ask because I'm really curious what the story of antigay was, and why upenn for your first product that you decided to launch. Um, I guess at the time, we didn't have very many products to choose from, we had a bike stem, right. And I think we actually had that launched, like we launched it on our website, we were selling it before we were selling pen type A. But I think we thought like, it wasn't planned, it was literally just something that we had already made for ourselves. And we were carrying around and using it like the the origin story of pen type A is, it's based on around the whole thing is based around this ink cartridge that I really like. And kind of as a joker like, like, if I lost this little plastic pen, I get really bummed out about it. And I go back to wherever I was, like, make sure I had that pen. I was like, it'd be really cool. We're like, it'd be really cool to make this very durable housing for it like totally over engineered stainless steel casement for this like very precious ink cartridge. So that was the impetus for this project. And we we manufactured or we prototype them. We didn't have any machines at the time. But we had a couple of them made. They came back to us in Brooklyn. We had them manufactured. I think it was with a Taiwanese manufacturer. But in China, yeah, this man, he actually visited our studio. Yeah, we had this thing made it look fine. And the changes that we needed from it. He said like, Okay, this is easy. Like, let's go, you can just like launch your project. But there wasn't really that much thinking in terms of like, is this the right thing to launch at this moment? But it it all kind of like we got lucky, essentially. I mean, like a pen is such a universal object, and a universally intimate object, also a universally creative tools. So all those things resonate with us personally. But yeah, there was nothing. We were not planning for it to be big. Yeah, we're not being strategic. We're just like, oh, it'd be cool if 50 of our friends and family supported this project, and we get to make 50 of them. That was it that that's as far as we thought about it. That's not what happened. You know, where's your studio in Brooklyn? Yeah, we have like a little dream setup. Yeah, we own our building. Our basement is our fabrication workshop. We live on the first two floors. Our friends live on the third floor, another set of friends live on the fourth floor. And if you walk through our backyard, it leads to, we call it the annex, which is basically a garage space where our, you know, our assembly and shipping warehouses basically. So we do you know, we kind of have it all in house within, within a two to house radius. That's amazing. What tools do you have in your shop and I mentioned a few CNC. But what else we, our first machine that we ever bought? An assemble is a laser sore. So it's like a DIY home built laser cutter. We still have it, you know, over 10 years old and it's still running. We have other big machines we have is a tormach 770 CNC mill, that barely fit into our basement, because the only opening we have is the cellar door opening. And we have to break it apart into three pieces and engine, hoist it into the basement piece by piece and then reassemble it. We have a lathe. So yes, manual and CNC, we have a form three formlabs printer, which is amazing. We use that thing a ton of an Ultimaker two. Oh, yeah, we were Benson mill desktop, that the new Bentonville, Benton desktop CNC. And then we have some you know, just like general tools like a chop saw bandsaw a washing machine and a dryer machine. And it's awesome. So I think like the moral of the story here, it's amazing what a little bit of ingenuity and a little bit of like, called gusto, or Moxie, or whatever it is that you want to call it. But I guess I guess at the end, it's just this like desire to do more with less and to do more, while having a greater impact. I mean, I get in these conversations all the time about CNC manufacturing, or just manufacturing in general, honestly, but Well, we'll specifically talk about subtractive, which is, you know, machining, people are always like, okay, you know, gotta have X machine, because it can do you know, y&z it can pump out this much, or it can run this spindle at X amount of speed, or it has these tool changers, or you can add a pallet to or whatever. The truth is, is that there's so many adventures that you can choose, I mean, that, you know, it's it's like graduating from your first car to your first fast car to your first like, dually truck to haul your farm goods or whatever. Like, as you grow as a business, there are tools for your job. And what's really interesting is that you're if you're honest with yourself, you don't need to go out and buy a current, you don't need to go out and buy a mat Sir, you don't need to go out and buy all of these things. I mean, I know so many successful manufacturing businesses that run on the backbone of Haas Automation in their awesome, you know, platform of accessible, moderately affordable CNC machines both, but tormach is also in that right? Like tormach would be like what you got into machining with, but if you use it intelligently, and if you know your process, and if you know your tools, you can use it just as effectively, as Matt Serra did. And I know some people will be like, you're crazy right now. But like, if you if you took out the like, shiny factor of like, ooh, Iona mansoura. The truth is, is that a tool is a tool. It's only as good as the person using it. And I think that what's amazing about CW and T, is you collectively have been able to create lasting, amazingly design amazingly manufactured products, with tools that you just use exceptionally well, you know, and I think that that's honestly pretty damn inspiring for a lot of businesses who are, you know, either where you were at 10 years ago, or want to do what you want to do. I kind of have a random question for you. And I'm curious, would you consider yourself a design practice or an art practice? Both? Can we tailor Are you trying to force us? No, no, no, you can. I think we're, I don't know, I feel like I'm always striving to have an art practice. But design means we get to feed ourselves along the way, then, it has meant that. I don't know. That's a hard question trend. For me an art practice. They're not mutually exclusive. So yeah, you can be both. And I think honestly, I wake up some days wishing I could just have more of an art practice than design practice and the same, right. And sometimes I'll even take it further and say, I wish I could just have a manufacturing practice or an engineering practice. And I think the cool thing about technology today And I think specifically like around things that Autodesk has done as a whole, like it has so many different types of product stacks, that let really anyone make anything they want, right. And I think that that is like kind of how my brain works. I'm like today, I want to be an engineer. Tomorrow, I want to be an architect. The next day, I want to be a sculptor. And the next day, I want to be a product designer. And I think because of the way technology is positioned in the accessibility to kind of the tools to make things these days, like you said, for months, for example, the fact that anyone can go out and buy a formlabs, three or four months, three hour, I think they just launched some new SLS printer to like, the fact that I no longer have to be an innovation, r&d prototyping or major manufacturer to have those, like tools accessible, is phenomenal. We have come to an age of like, people always want to be like, oh, industrial, you know, industrial revolution, 4.0, whatever. It's like, we're so freakin far past that. It's like we are literally at the phase of democratized making. And you can literally choose and make your own adventure. And I think you're a really good example of a company taking the reins and being a lot more specific and owning more. So the fact that you are just two people at the end of the day who have a ton of different instance interests. And you really just want to make what you want to make. But the reality sets in and you have to make sure that that can put food on your table, like Taylor said, I think that's really fascinating. And I think that, like, if you lived in any other time, you could not do what you do. No way. Yeah. And I think, yeah, maybe that's a thing. I think there will be there are and there will be more studios like us. Like, like, I think what you were saying before, like how, you know, there are studios that are really successful with a product, and they they kind of hone in focus around that product. But you know, there are designers on that team that are like have varied interest, and they, you know, they probably tinker with other stuff, but those never make it to light, because that's not their product focus for the company. But they're, you know, the tools to make it possible to launch all these, we're, you know, whatever ideas that you have, they're there now, you know, so for us, we Yeah, we're never like, you know, we never think of us around, we never think about what we're making in terms of what is successful or not, we're always just like, wouldn't it be amazing if we had this and it could be a piece of software, it could be a piece of hardware, it doesn't matter. But we know in the back of our minds that the tools to make that a reality exists, and that we could we could do it on our own. And I think it's we're just in that generation where it's like we we know, we have enough skills and enough knowledge that if we think of something to make, we'll figure out how to make it either we already know how to make it, or we'll figure out how to make it. And I think more and more businesses are, are thinking like that. And so I you know, it's super exciting to me, like I'd love to see, peak make, like, I don't know, something, something that has not camera related, I'm sure they would do an amazing job. You know, it's like, they're amazing designers on the team. And they you know, it'd be so cool if they made some other products. Because I think from a also from a consumer audience perspective, you know, maybe we are the proof of that, it's like, people don't really care if you're focused on pens and like, you know, if you're like Mont Blanc, and you came up with a car, people would be like, Cool Montblanc car, like, I don't really care. As long as it's cool. You know, and I think from a, I think, from a company perspective, there's pie, some hesitation, and like, risk and like kind of diversion from your main product. But I think from a consumer perspective, people don't care. Like, they just want to see great products. And I think people know that if you are, you know, if you can produce great designs in one domain, it's gonna it can translate. I like, everyone's excited about Apple making a car. It's like, yeah, of course, they're gonna make an amazing car. Cuz, you know, they make they have a really good design sense. And they know how to put out products. Do you have any advice for either companies who want to start making other types of products or people who just want to start a design studio in general that works on many different projects at once? Yeah, I think just do it. We do. We do talk to a lot of small starting studios, I guess, and designers who, you know, want advice about this kind of thing. And I think, you know, we're, we're also very, I like to think that we're very generous about the stuff we do like, you know, we were happy to share all the troubles we had and like, you know, any any Any advice is on the table or any part of our business we're happy to talk about. But I think in the end, it's sort of you kind of just have to take a leap and put out products. And I think, you know, we're lucky again, no, you're in the right time, right place. And also, we were relatively financially stable, so that we could kind of take risks like that. But I think, you know, the leap that you have to take is becoming smaller and smaller, like the leap you had to take 20 years ago, to launch a product as an independent designer was enormous, like you had to borrow money from your friends and family. And like, there's so much risk involved in that risk level is decreasing, like, every year, it's just getting less and less this, there's better software available, there's better tools available. You know, it's easier to communicate with your audience and build an audience. And so every time we think about it, and look at it again, whenever someone asks us, I'm always just like, man, all you have to do is like, you know, figure out whether the risk is worth it. And, and just take that leap and see what happens. I think also, another advice that I would give is like, like, learn that, learn the tools, like figure out what you want to make and learn the software like don't hire on your first project, like somebody to design your ego, like your engineering files, like your we talk about it, like it's really easy to learn those things. And it is relatively easy now compared to what it was, like 10 years ago. Give yourself the time and space to do that. And like really invest in that learning, because you'll learn so much along the way. And like you'll have value there, even if like you fall short of exactly what it is you want it to come out of it. You'll just be constantly upping your skills and like your world will get bigger because of it. And you'll become like less afraid of doing things every time you learn anything. I think like it's easier to learn that new next thing. CW and T continues to prove that to run a successful design studio. You don't need to specialize in producing one signature item. It's okay to explore different products, design processes and target market so long as there's an established need for what you're making. And on the rare occasion, maybe not. crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter are great. They're low barrier to entry way to quickly launch products and learn whether or not there's an audience for your work. So what are you waiting for? Get out there, try designing something unexpected. Never know. Like CWT might have a hit on your hands.