our journey creating pro-draw™
Q: How did all this begin?
A: The idea behind pro-draw™ started back in March of 2021. With the COVID lock down of the previous year, I had been drawing more and more than ever…some days it was 12, 14, 16 hours a day, it started to take its toll physically…and I started to develop a pretty painful case of carpal tunnel in my drawing hand. Stopping drawing wasn’t an option, so I started looking into grips for the Apple Pencil and just ordered an absolute ton of different options off of Amazon. And….they were all garbage! But seriously…none of them were big or wide enough to provide the physical benefit of having a grip…plus….some of them slipped while drawing and the ones the ones that didn’t slip took forever to remove. And that was a big thing…every single grip had to be removed to charge the Gen 2 Apple Pencil. You couldn’t leave them on to charge. I also lost the Gen 2’s double tap feature too. Need the grip? Well, can’t use that feature of Pencil! So here are all of these grips that are supposed to be a solution to a problem but instead are creating even more problems. Here are all of these grips that are supposed to provide benefits but instead are causing you to lose benefits and features of your device. That’s when I got the idea which eventually became pro-draw™. What if I made my own drawing accessories that were designed from the ground up with the artist in mind?
Q: Walk us through the process of what it took to go from this idea you had in your head to a finished product that’s ready to go to market…
A: Well, it’s been over a year and a half now since I started working on this…and full disclosure: I have no manufacturing experience. I have never done anything like this…i just jumped in head first. So…back to March 2021…in addition to drawing, I also like to sculpt so that’s where I started with the idea. I used super sculpey clay to rough out a few basic designs…and then just by sheer luck, I found a prototyping company that had just opened less than a mile away from my house. Using the sculpts as a jumping off point, we worked together on the design, they got the final AutoCAD file completed, and the first 3D printed version was made for testing. I made tweaks, did more testing, made more and more tweaks with more and more testing…and then eventually landed on the final grip design with the sixth version. From there, it was dealing with setting up the right manufacturer and facing supply chain issues. Once we locked in a manufacturer, we had went through multiple test runs to decide on the silicone grade and reworking the inner grip diameter since 3D printing and injection molding resulted in different sizing. Once the final molds were made, we had to approve the first run before starting mass production. And all that was just the product itself….we also had to lock in a packaging manufacturer, have meetings with our lawyers for all of the fun legal things that come with launching a new business…it all seemed like a never ending process! And of course, that doesn’t even factor in packaging everything ourselves once it arrived.
Q: Why was creating pro-draw important to you?
A: I feel that any art accessory should exist to solve a problem or benefit the artist in their creative process…and that’s why I started pro-draw™. Being an artist myself allows our brand to deliver quality products that have been designed and tested through the lens of our customer…the artist.
Q: Which brings me to my next question…These products are designed by artists for artists. Elaborate on what that means.
4: So…as my YouTube channel began to grow, I quickly became bombarded with daily emails from digital art supply companies who were looking for sponsored video deals. “Share our product with your audience! Review our product on your channel! Tell people to buy our product, and we will pay you!” Here’s the thing…it’s easy to tell that the majority of these “must-have” accessories aren’t made by artists; they are made by companies who don’t truly understand the audience they are selling to. The form and function of many of these products fail to take the needs of the artist into account or how they would actually be used. And that’s exactly what i experienced first hand when I bought all of those grips off of Amazon. Designing products from the ground up as an artist and always thinking about how I would use them as an artist is what is really going to set pro-draw apart and is the reputation I want to establish for the brand.
Q: What can people expect from pro-draw™?
A: Well, the grip is the first product we have announced but we have more accessories in the works right now…some of them are in the final prototyping stages and some are just in the early development phase. That being said…the future really depends on the success and response to this initial release. We don’t have investors…we didn’t go the Kickstarter fund-raising-route to launch. This thing is completely self-funded…so, a little scary but I think that really shows how much I believe in what we are creating here. I see pro-draw™ as becoming a brand that is known for putting the needs of the artist first.