Product Design & Brand · Self-Founded · 2019–2024

Flatlander Supply Co.

I designed, made, photographed, and sold everything on this page.

Client Self-founded

Year 2019–2024

Discipline Product Design · Brand · Photography · Motion · E-commerce · Email

Role Founder · Product Design · Craftsman · Brand Identity · Photography · Creative Direction · Sales

I started Flatlander in 2019 to find out whether I could design an object, make it well enough that someone would pay for it, and build a brand around it without handing any part of that to somebody else. It ran for five years out of a studio in Vermont and turned a profit. I drew the patterns, cut and stitched every piece, shot all the photography and video, built the Shopify store, wrote the emails, and packed the boxes. The photography is what grew it, taking the Instagram account to 18,000 followers with no paid follower spend.

Every piece uses the same construction: a contrast interior panel, a V-shaped envelope flap, an exposed saddle stitch in a contrasting thread, a brass snap, and a gold-foil mark debossed by hand. I repeated those details across card sleeves, money clips, long wallets, clutches, totes, and belts so the whole line held together. Everything was cut from full hides with a knife and a steel rule, and stitched by hand with two needles.

The photography is what grew the business. I wanted the pictures to be recognizable at thumbnail size, so I shot almost everything against leather hides, choosing one that matched or complemented the product, and kept to a fixed palette of yellow, cyan, red, magenta, and olive. Those were shot overhead and hard-edged, with the color of the leather doing the work. For the bags and long wallets I used a second, warmer setup: natural light, textile and hide backdrops, and a shallower depth of field.

Some of the frames have no product in them at all — a spiral of cut yellow offcuts, a stack of dyed edges photographed end-on, or the shears, waxed thread, and clamps arranged around the piece they made. I shot those because they show the work behind the object, which is difficult to communicate any other way.

I built and ran the Shopify storefront, a newsletter signup offering 20% off a first order, and product launches structured as pre-orders with a code for each release — CARGO15, MARINA10, FLAT20. Pre-orders let me measure demand before cutting a hide and brought cash in ahead of the labor. Orders shipped in printed tissue on compostable stock. I also ran the paid advertising that drove orders, along with the A/B testing, geo-targeting, and referral program. The follower growth itself was organic.

Flatlander stopped trading in 2024. Everything was made by hand, and the ways of growing past that — hiring the stitching out, or moving production overseas — would have changed what the brand was. The studio is still here and I still work in it. Making things by hand is how I keep my creative process connected to the physical world, and it makes the rest of my work better.

Impact

18K+ Instagram Followers Organic. No paid follower spend.

5 Years Trading 2019–2024, profitable

1 Pair of Hands Design, pattern, cut, stitch, shoot, ship

01 Identity

The Mark

I drew the identity myself and applied it to everything the customer saw — debossed into the leather, printed on the tissue in the box, and set at the top of the Shopify page.

Badge · Three Colorways

Flatlander Supply Co. badge in the yellow colorway

Flatlander Supply Co. badge in the cyan colorway

Packaging

A two-peak mountain over a condensed geometric wordmark, locked inside a circle so that one piece of artwork could serve as a sticker, a deboss, a profile photo, and a tissue print without being redrawn. I made it in three colorways — black, yellow, and cyan — using the same colors as the hides I shot the product on, so the identity and the photography stayed consistent.

The packaging is custom tissue printed with illustrations of leatherworking tools, on noissue compostable stock, carrying the second strapline, Made on Earth.

02 Construction

The Product

Every piece was cut from full hides and stitched by hand in small batches, using the same five construction details across the whole line.

A bifold wallet standing open on a cyan leather hide, yellow and red contrast panels inside, with the waxed thread and needles used to stitch it — Bifold · contrast interior

An envelope clutch in tan and blue leather with a V-shaped flap and a brass snap, on a blue backdrop — Envelope clutch · V-flap

The Marina long wallet in navy leather with a yellow snap strap, beside a matching keychain — The Marina · long wallet

An oxblood and tan envelope clutch photographed on a sheet of the same leather, showing the cutting lines it came from — Clutch · cut from one hide

A card wallet open flat on a cyan leather hide in yellow, red and blue panels, with loose waxed thread beside it — Card wallet · four panels

A crossbody bag pairing indigo ikat textile with a brown leather base, on a hide backdrop — Crossbody · leather and indigo ikat

Every piece started as a paper pattern and a full hide. I cut with a knife against a steel rule, then beveled, burnished, and dyed the edges, marked the holes with a pricking iron, and stitched by hand with two needles and waxed thread. A saddle stitch is slower than a machine, and it holds if a stitch breaks.

The contrast panels came out of how the pieces were cut. Each one uses offcuts left over from other pieces, so a yellow sleeve got a red interior because red was what remained, and I chose a thread color that read against both. That is the detail people came to recognize.

03 Art Direction

The Photography

I shot all of this myself. The photography was how people found the brand, and it is what grew the Instagram account to 18,000 followers.

Studio · Colored Hides

A vertical stack of dyed leather card sleeves clamped between two hole punches on a yellow leather hide

Cyan leather offcuts fanned into a starburst around a pair of black shears, with a yellow card sleeve, on a pink leather hide

Navy card sleeves with red and cyan contrast panels scattered across a yellow leather hide

Two hand-stitched leather belts crossed on a yellow leather hide beside a hammered buckle

Two yellow money clips with cyan and red interiors on a red and cyan color-blocked backdrop

A yellow card sleeve with red and cyan contrast panels tucked into the back pocket of worn denim

Fifteen card sleeves and money clips in every colorway, arranged in a loose grid on a yellow leather hide

A tan and cyan envelope clutch on a cyan leather hide surrounded by leather offcuts

Two stacks of dyed leather panels photographed edge-on against yellow, showing the striped colored edges

A teal card sleeve with yellow contrast stitching, centered in a nest of coiled pink cord on a pink leather hide

A navy bifold wallet with red and cyan panels, held against a red and white color-blocked backdrop

Yellow leather straps fanned out from a card sleeve with brass snaps set into each strap

A yellow card sleeve and yellow sunglasses on a cyan leather hide

Money clips in orange, yellow and red laid out in a grid on deep blue leather

A magenta card sleeve and matching money clip on a magenta leather hide

A radial fan of cut yellow leather panels spiraling on an olive backdrop

Six card sleeves in mixed colorways arranged in a ring on a yellow leather hide

A detail of a navy messenger strap with orange and teal contrast panels, photographed with a keychain clip

A navy card sleeve suspended above a plume of yellow smoke on a yellow backdrop

A natural leather and printed-cotton envelope clutch on a red leather hide

Natural Light

The Marina long wallet in purple leather styled with beaded jewelry on an olive backdrop

A purple long wallet with an olive snap strap tucked into a worn leather bag

An olive leather tote with dark leather handles, photographed against ticking-stripe fabric

A brown leather tote against a wallpaper of printed orange wings

Twenty frames from four years of shooting, in the two setups I used. The studio shots are overhead and hard-edged: a single colored hide behind the product, one light, and the leather’s own color doing the work. The natural-light shots were for the bags and long wallets, using hide and ticking-stripe backdrops, window light, and a shallow depth of field.

I shot all of it myself, on my own gear, in a studio about the size of a spare room. The part that mattered was choosing five colors in 2019 and staying with them.

04 Motion

In Motion

Video showed the things a photograph leaves out: how a wallet opens, how thick it is, and how much it actually holds.

Short Video

Bifold · :12

Billfold · :07

Stop Motion

Money Clip · :08

Pocket · :14

Colorways · :17

I made these in my studio, silent and square, because that is how they were watched on Instagram. Some are short videos showing the practical things a still photograph leaves out: how thick a wallet is, how it opens, and how many cards fit inside. The others are stop motion, animated frame by frame against the same hides I used for the stills.

05 Commerce

The Storefront

I ran the whole business through this store. Launching by pre-order let me measure demand before cutting a hide, and brought the money in ahead of the work.

Shopify

Marketing email announcing a Cargo Card Sleeve pre-order at fifteen percent off with the code CARGO15 and a new purple colorway — Pre-order · CARGO15

Marketing email for the Marina Long Wallet pre-order at ten percent off with the code MARINA10 — Pre-order · MARINA10

Welcome email on cyan — Welcome all Flatlanders, with the discount code FLAT20 and a Shop Now button — Welcome · FLAT20

I designed, built, and ran the Shopify storefront — hero, collections, product pages, checkout, shipping, and a “Meet the Craftsman” page about how the work was made.

Launches ran as pre-orders with a discount code for each product, which let me measure demand before cutting a hide and brought cash in ahead of the labor. The emails all used one template: a rule, the offer and its code, a hero photograph, product copy, and a pre-order link. I signed them the way I actually wrote to people, “Peace and Love from Vermont, Joseph + The Flatlander Family.”

Credits

Everything

Joseph Lambert — Product Design, Pattern Making, Cutting, Saddle Stitching, Finishing, Brand Identity, Packaging, Photography, Video, Copy, Shopify Build, Email, Sales, Fulfilment