In The Beginning

This blog entry is really about the very beginning of Praps and has been the unwritten story, and yet very much told to the people I meet in person. Whenever I meet someone, like the people who respond to my Craigslist ads for help, I generally have a need to tell them the story about Praps.

So in the beginning there were those "feature phones" which pre-date the "smartphones". Back then the coolest thing about these phones was the ability to change out their back case covers for another color or design. I certainly thought it was cool enough to beginning thinking about what others things in life could benefit from a similar ability.

The one product that stuck out in my mind was the backpack. I thought how cool it could be to make my own backpack which could had changeable "faces", that is the back viewable part could be replaced with a different one. So I set out to make me such a backpack. I found some people who could make me some and I indeed had 3 different backpacks made. The common feature was that they all had detachable/replaceable components or the entire back face, which could be unzipped and another one rezipped.

It was kind of cool but there was a problem. I thought, what if people are already comfortable with their own backpack and don't want to buy a new backpack just for the sake of the replaceable features. They certainly would not want to go out and spend some money when they already like the pockets and feel of their existing backpack.

So my next thought was to think of a way to attach designs onto any backpack so the only thing for a consumer to buy would be the designs themselves. That thought process got me started looking at all the existing ways of attaching things. At the time I was looking for ways of attaching fabric designs onto backpacks and some time during that process I began thinking more about attaching photos.

Once I had decided that the replaceable designs should be just plain photo prints, I went on a journey of looking at the existing ways of holding photos in place but none seemed to readily combine that feature with the ability of attaching onto a backpack. And that's when I decided to build my own prototype of such a gadget.

My photo holder gadget was made out of a DVD plastic box with the see-through plastic sleeve serving the purpose of holding a photo. On the back of the box I put rubberbands and safety-pins and made it easy for a person to attach the box onto a backpack. It worked and got the job done, but it looked clunky and cheesy.

There were other disadvantages to my gadget. The see-through sleeve was scratchable and with time would become dull and the photo behind didn't look good anymore. The gadget would need to be mass-produced and mass-distributed. Perhaps the cost of patent protection would be added to the cost of the gadget. My gadget just didn't seem all that great.

Then the blow of death, so to speak, hit me. There would come a day when someone would think of a way to circumvent the use of my gadget by finding a way to do the same thing as my gadget with household items, a do-it-yourself kind of replacement. At that point my gadget would no longer be so popular as a free-way to do the same thing.

At that moment I wanted to be that person who thought of the way to beat my own gadget. I want to find a do-it-yourself way of taking a photo and attaching it onto a backpack. I was going to be the person who made my own gadget obsolete because if I didn't think of the way, someone else would eventually.

The years that followed that adventure, has resulted in praps. There is more to this story during that phase and I hope I can gather those thoughts to share with you. Perhaps I can whet your appetite by revealing that there are aspects about praps that became apparent to me during that phase. These will be forthcoming in future "versions" of praps. You see, praps are more versatile than I first realized.

Passion

Hello everybody,

Just a quick update on what's been happening with this project. I actually took about 3 months off from all the coding I do and kind of lost my passion in a sense. Sometimes that's what it really takes to make anything happen, that is passion.

You know that everyone goes through ups and downs in their personal lives. There's moments and periods when you feel so full of energy and vision. Then there's times of despair and hopelessness. Well, I'm just human and I go through the same thing, and I have been through several of those periods during the last 7 years in which I've been working on this project.

The thing is that I'm not quitting on this project and I am now getting back into it. You see I'm a developer by profession and at heart. I actually love programming, whenever I get the chance. However, lately most of my work at my normal job is being outsourced overseas and I'm left to maintain and bug fix someone else's code. That kind of is demoralizing.

But just in the last few weeks I've rediscovered my love of programming and am enthusiastic about this project again. I am now seeing a very clear picture of how I intend to automate this project. You see, I was actually very close to releasing this project to the public not to long ago. That's about the time you joined this website. That's why I was getting the very first artists on board to move it along.

However, many aspects of the project depended on my time and effort, my manual input to connect all the dots, so to speak. I myself was part of the process of getting the project of the ground, but I realized I could not be the bottle-neck in this whole process. I needed to automate the last remaining pieces.

Because I feared the whole project could go down if the site became popular, I started to research and find the right tools and partners to get these last pieces automated. Otherwise, if the site went down due to popularity, then someone else with more money would run with the idea.

Now, I'm looking at implementing all my code in one of those clouds that are mentioned, like the Amazon cloud, and there are many others. I am narrowing my choices and am about to be able to grow the site and auto-scale the site automatically should it become popular overnight.

So the thing is, I took a step back and re-thought about how to accomplish the last pieces so that I would no longer be part of the equation. In other words, the site is going to be driven by the artists themselves and by the buyers.

Take care and I'll talk to you soon again.

To Pay Or Not To Pay, Is NOT The Question

I just want to talk to you about what it is we, as a group, are trying to do here, and that I do not think has ever been done before. Basically, we are trying to create an iTunes or an AppStore, but for artists, photographers, or any digital graphic artists. So what do I mean by that?

Well, here are my thoughts on what I see. When I think about iTunes, of course I think about music, but I also think about all those musicians who are not necessarily famous but are doing well by selling their music through iTunes. It's a rather complicated process to submit your songs/albums, and in the end the musicians will keep about 50% of the retail price. Keep in mind music is stored and delivered as a digital file.

I also think about the developers/programmers who are submitting their apps to the AppStore and some have already made millions. I have heard Apple splits the revenue 30/70 with the developers, so if an app sells for $0.99, the developer keeps about 70 cents from that. It doesn't cost Apple much to host the digital files for the apps. Plus, Apple does not go out and recruit developers and pay them for making apps.

Most recently, I've heard book writers are making money through some online bookstores, whether its Amazon or iBooks. I haven't looked much into this, but the fact of the matter is that profits are maximized whenever the goods remain digital throughout, meaning the goods are stored and sold as digital goods.

In our case the goods are stored digitally at an online gallery, but the goods are delivered as a physical product. When you consider the cost of physically manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution, the profit margins for a 99 cent product are extremely slim to be worth anything to a business venture (unless the goods come from cheap labor in China, but that's a different story!).

So here we are trying to introduce a $0.99 product that is highly customizable and has a reasonably high margin to be shared with the individual artists. What do you think of that? I mean, as an artist, where else could you sell your art, possibly even by the millions of orders, and be able to keep a decent percentage of that?

And so I ask for your trust and patience as well go through this endeavor together. For those of you who absolutely need to see a real physical product and are highly skeptical, well if you live in San Antonio, I may be able to meet with you. Otherwise, you will soon be able to order the product and handle it yourself. You will be amazed at the quality of the product.

In conclusion, the question is not whether you will get paid for participating. The question I have right now is how much do you want to make per sale? Again, this is a real product and  there are real production costs so you won't be able to split the revenue 70/30, but there are some real possibilities you will be able to split it 50/50 from each $0.99.

As with any new venture, there will be unexpected costs to be prepared to pay, so in the beginning I am leaning more towards being conservative on what everyone makes, but believe me, if this thing really takes off and we all help to keep costs down, I don't see why the split cannot be 50/50. I will have much more to say about all this so stay tuned.

Thanks! (-:

Layaway Angels

This Christmas season 2011, we all witnessed the extraordinary love of people towards total strangers. For no other reason but pure, unconditional love, loving angels paid off the layaway balances of total strangers at Walmart. The faces of the recipients we saw on TV were so moving it made me appreciate the awesome potential of people to help others in these stressful times of need. These days we also see the awesomeness of people helping others in the Extreme Makeover Home Edition shows, when entire communities come together to help a family of their own.

So why do I bring this up? It's not that I'm hitching a ride on the coattails of this movement, that is taking advantage of the situation. Rather, as you progress with me through this project, you will witness how serious I am about this project, more so for the awesome potential of being able to help others. If you still have hope that humans can and will love others, then we share that in common.

You will also witness, not only myself, but other participants as well, how much they care about others. You see, by participating in this project, you will have the chance to help other participants prosper as well. It's really quite simple and this is how it works. As a consumer, you will be purchasing designs from other artists and thereby helping them. As a designer you will be marketing your gallery of designs and indirectly also marketing the designs of other artists. 

In a nutshell, we are in this project together and together we stand or together we fall. I promise if we can make this work, there will be even more opportunities to help even more people. This project is just the beginning of some visions I have. I hope you trust me, not because I'm an expert in these things, but because I'm passionate about being able to take others along the ride I am taking myself. 

Trust me. This thing can become so big, so fun, and so beneficial to all. Just as those customers put some items on layaway, your job at this time is to contribute some of your designs. Later we will all see the millions of angels who will come to pay for your designs. So trust me a little, but trust even more all those millions of future customers. They are the ones we will all be thanking very soon.

Thank you for your time and effort. I truly appreciate it.

My Defining Moment

Bear with me as I recount one of my defining moments and related it to my current Praps project. Then you will understand my motivation for doing Praps.

My wife and I were watching a recent episode of Dr. Phil when he was discussing bullying and interviewing some real victims and perpetrators. During the show he talked about "defining moments" in a person's life that made the person be who they became to be. He noticed the victims' defining moments were mostly about achievements, whereas for the perpetrators (the bullies) the defining moments were usually traumatic, like seeing a parent arrested. 

So I got to thinking about my own defining moments and I definitely remember one very clearly. I too was bullied in elementary school by my peers. It was an almost daily occurrence and I at times dreaded being at school. One good thing was that my home was right next to the school's playground so during recess, if the day's bullying was too much for me to bear, I would run home to tell my mother and she would come talk at the office for me and bring me some temporary relief. Anyway those early years really defined who I was to become years later.

I remember the summer before my 5th grade I attended a summer vacation bible school program at our neighborhood church down the street. It was then that I said the sinner's prayer and confessed my sins and asked Jesus into my life. You know, the born again moment. Well, it turned out to be more than just a spiritual awakening for me. During my 5th grade I gained the confidence to ignore the bullying and to refocus my energy into my schoolwork. I prayed so much for the bullying to go away. The bullying continued but I was less focused on it, even though I did abhor it whenever it occurred. 

When I graduated from elementary school and went into middle school, I saw many new kids, apparently graduates from other elementary schools. Then I noticed that just like me, there were other kids who were starting to be bullied. It always seemed to be the quieter and gentler kids who were picked on. It was at those moments, when I saw myself in those abused kids, that my tipping point boiled over and I started to do something about it. I had enough. 

It was only a few short weeks into my 6th grade that I gained the strength and stamina to take abuse and to dish it out as well. Only this time, I was dishing it out back at the bullies who were trying to gain the upper hand on me and those other unfortunate students. I remember being in fights so many times during PE and even down the halls between classes. The old bullies were still around and quickly realized I was no longer the same. The new bullies were already giving me some respect because they did not know my history. 

I remember the anger and the passion against the bullying whenever I saw it, especially during PE or recess, when the bullies thought they could get away with it. I really lost track of how many times I jumped in to defend someone else. It was almost numbing, getting hit on the face and stomach or getting kicked on my shins, and trying to dish it out even more before they got the best of me. In a matter of a school year, I had transformed into a fighter, even a street fighter since occasionally some of this bullying happened on the street on my way home. 

Regardless of the intensity, I never lost sight of not being a bully myself. And yet, my intensity was spilling into my class. I remember my dad and I having a conference with my 7th grade English teacher, who with tears in her eyes told my dad I was a really bright kid but interrupting the class too many times. I had gone mad and out of control and it took a sobbing teacher to bring me back to my senses. It was then I decided I would remain strong within and yet gentle as a lamb. I would continue to defend others and myself, and adamant about maintaining a good learning environment for all. 

And that brings me to my current project. Sure I would love to see success for myself, but it's so much more than that. I have five kids and a wife and any kind of success is really just keeping my family afloat in this tough economy. This project is really about bringing success to a segment of people who may not have had the opportunity before. 

Throughout this project I have been focused on the best means to bring this success to others. In so doing, there have been many bits and pieces of the project in which I have made decisions not commonly made by the profit-minded. As I reveal more details, I hope to explain why this project has taken the turns it has. As you begin to see more of the project, just keep in mind it is what it is in order to best maximize the benefits to others, both to the consumer (in terms of affordability) and to the designers (in terms of commissions). 

In a way you could say I am trying to defend those who lack opportunity against those with so much power, it's not even funny anymore. I mean, in a way you could say the bullies of today are the big corporations who are so profit-minded that they could never introduce a product like mine to the masses for so many different reasons. Perhaps the profits margins are too low. Perhaps the paid out commissions are too high. Perhaps they fear loosing control of the whole concept.

Well regardless, I believe the various industries involved in my project would rather go about producing a product like mine in totally different means. The problem is that greedy corporations and organizations leave very little profits to be shared with the common folk. But what if my experiment, which is all it is up until now, can really flourish. What if my project can make others utterly successful? Let's give it a try. Help me help you.

I really hope I can bring this to market, as there are many bits and pieces yet undone in the grand scheme of things. Yet with your help, all this can be realized much quicker. Please stay tuned in, as I reveal more specific ways in which you can participate and help.

Some of my friends who attended school with me may also remember how helpful I was to them to get them to understand their schoolwork, both in high school and in college. Perhaps at times a little bit too helpful (as in sharing answers). I hope I can continue this same passion via my praps. I hope you can have your very own praps really soon. I promise I am going to give you all the answers really, really soon. Thanks!

Stop All The Whining Already

I read the TechCrunch story Siri-ous Mind Blowing: Video Evidence Of Apple's Prophetic Past - Circa 1987, and I am deeply humbled. What am I talking about when I've said I've been so frustrated for the past 6 years because not all the technologies have existed to accomplish what I envision? Poor little me for not being able to finish my project sooner. Tell me about a self-pity party!!! Read that story and you will know what I'm talking about.

The visionaries at Apple, which included Steve Jobs, are people made of steel IMHO. They are persistently rock solid to the core. I mean these people have had to endure a quarter of a century to bring their vision to light. They must have the heart of a champion who never, ever quits. I can only imagine what they had to endure.

You see 25+ years ago, the conditions and technologies were very different than what we have today. To have the vision of a voice-controlled assistant back then and to begin working towards it must have taken some real guts. Knowing that so many new technologies would be needed, and no one on the horizon able to provide them, would discourage just about anybody. No third parties to turn to for help, not even a soul talking about the non-existent technologies. 

And yet, there were the Apple visionaries, starting a conversation about these things. One by one, the list of missing technologies increased in number. They would be needing this and that and even that....to accomplish the Knowledge Navigator, or Siri. As they continued their planning, the insurmountable heaps of missing pieces must have looked overbearing, but still they took the very first step.

And that brings me to my personal project, my very first step which I took just a few years ago. In light of Apple's mind blowing prophetic past, I now have new found strength. Thank you Apple visionaries for showing us the way. It is a long dark road, but the glorious day will come.

As I write this, I wish the same hope and destiny to all those unknown and uncounted visionaries who are pursuing their own dreams. May you keep chugging and pounding until and beyond you reach your sweat-earned goals.

Revolutionary??? Yea, Right!!!

Hard to believe? So what's so revolutionary about what I'm doing, and is it even revolutionary? Let me take a stab at it and we'll come to some conclusion.

First of all, the premise is that I've got a product which attaches onto fabric or solids, and onto this piece full-color art can be attached and detached again and again. But today, there are already things that can attach onto fabrics and onto solids. That's no big deal. I guess what's different about mine is that it can "receive" art pieces. Then when you don't need it anymore, just take it off. The other difference is that it can be produced extremely cheap and fast. But again, that's nothing new. There are plenty of gadgets which can be produced cheaply and fast.

Alright, alright. What's is the big deal after all?

Well, I think the big deal is on the production side. Being that I'm just one individual, I've had to search far and wide and study all sorts of processes, combining them in new ways, to produce what I want and whenever I want. That's what's called "on-demand".

Here it is in a nutshell: My product can be produced "on-demand". Yep, no inventory required. It is produced and shipped to the customer the same day it is bought.Theoretically, it can be in the customer's hand within minutes, more realistically the next day, and absolutely by week's end.

Ok. Let's take a step back and see what this really means.

Let's say a customer wants to buy just ONE design. Then just sell him one at the same unit price you would sell him a million pieces. Production costs are the same for each and every single design. That's right. Why should a customer have to buy 100 pieces to get the benefits of economies of scale? That customer doesn't care what your production costs are for one pieces versus a million. All the customer cares is the retail price for any design.

So if we can get over the hump of economies of scale, then other possibilities are possible. Imagine this. The customer sees a design she likes, but would like to customize it a bit, say changing a color. That should be easy enough. But it will turn out that single customization will be the only one of its kind ever, and that customer will be the only one who will ever buy that design.

Enter PRAPS. Stay tuned because this is going to get really, really good, and fast. And as a teaser, this is just the first product to annihilate economies of scale. Let's get this rolling and you will see what I'm talking about.

:-)