Imagination, becoming reality

It's been a long hard slog to get this far, but we have almost arrived at the official relaunch of Imagination Doors, Switzerland. Let's look back on what we have had to do, to get to this point.
Keep in mind, when we left Aotearoa New Zealand, we left everything behind. The only thing we brought with us, was our intellectual property, our website and our good ideas.

Workshop: With the help of a local friend, we found a small workshop space. Stephen transformed it from a storage room, to an efficient and tightly organised workshop. It is close by, so he can be there when the kids arrive home from school, and he pops back in the evening when I get back from my day job.

Tools: Sourcing tools turned out to be much harder than expected. Instead of being able to pop down to the local Bunnings or Mitre 10 we had to first learn what the names of the hardware shops were and which ones sold which items. It took months to source and acquire all the necessary tools and machinery. And while we looked into having stuff shipped from New Zealand, the cost of doing so was prohibitive.

Materials: Would you believe finding glitter, in amounts larger than 200g and in a range of colours proved next to impossible? After days and days of research, we decided to ship glitter to Switzerland. Putting in an order for 12 Kilograms of glitter was something I never thought I would get to do! Even finding similar wood to work with was tricky. As a result, Stephen has had to tweak the design of the doors in order to balance effort with efficiency.

Door handles: In our earlier iterations, Stephen made each and every door handle from scratch, crafting the handles using both copper and brass. He hammered and heated them in order to shape them just so. This time around we decided to have the handles produced for us. We worked with a 3-D designer and created a design that we believe will enhance our doors even more. They are plated to be a single colour and have elements from our logo in the design.

The prototypes arrived yesterday. We are thrilled with how they have come out and are delighted to show them to you now. Swirls in the corners and an "ID" on the knob. We have confirmed production and expect more to be arriving soon. Once they get here, doors can finally start leaving the workshop.

So now what?

Step one: Wait for the final door handles to arrive.
Step two: Set up the online shop and update the website. LAUNCH!!

Simultaneously, we are going to run a Kickstarter to crowdfund customised boxes to ensure our doors arrive at your doorstep safely. This is equal parts scary and exciting! Running the Kickstarter will enable us, for a limited time, to sell doors at prices similar to our original New Zealand prices. After that, they will be set to reflect the increased cost of production.

Watch this space...

The day of being able to finally send out doors to their new homes is getting closer and closer. A big thank you to all those people who continue to believe in Imagination Doors and in us.