Product Design & Brand · Self-Founded · 2019–2024
Flatlander Supply Co.
A creative journey in building a product, a brand, and a business from the ground up.
I started Flatlander in 2019 because I wanted to make something of my own, from the first sketch through the moment it landed in someone’s hands. What began with leather goods grew into a five-year run across product design, branding, photography, video, e-commerce, marketing, and sales. I drew the patterns and cut and stitched every piece, and everything around the making was mine too: the brand, the photography and video, the Shopify store, the marketing, and the boxes that went out the door. It ran out of a studio in Vermont, and it turned a profit.
A design language built up across the line out of repeated construction: contrast interior panels, V-shaped envelope flaps, exposed saddle stitching in a contrasting thread, brass snaps, and a gold-foil mark debossed by hand. Those details carried across card sleeves, money clips, long wallets, clutches, totes, and belts, while each product and colorway kept its own character. 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, and it was built to do that. The pictures had to be recognizable at thumbnail size, so almost everything was shot against leather hides, picking one that pushed against the product rather than sitting quietly behind it. Those frames are overhead and hard-edged, with color carrying them. The bags and long wallets got 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 meant knowing what people wanted before committing materials and labor to it, and brought cash in ahead of the work. 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 obvious ways to scale it would have changed what the brand was. Hiring out the stitching or moving production overseas might have grown the business, but it would have turned it into something else.
The studio is still here, and I still work in it. Making things by hand keeps my creative process connected to the physical world, and it makes the rest of my work better.
At a Glance
01 Identity
The Mark
One mark had to hold up everywhere a customer met the brand: debossed into the leather, printed on the tissue in the box, and set at the top of the Shopify page.
Badge · Three Colorways
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. Three colorways, black, yellow, and cyan, pulled from the same hides the product was shot on, so the identity and the photography reinforced each other everywhere the brand turned up.
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
Cut from full hides and stitched by hand in small batches. Repeated construction details tied the line together, and color let every piece be its own thing.
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
The photography wasn’t just documentation. It became part of the acquisition strategy, and it is what grew the Instagram account to 18,000 followers.
Studio · Colored Hides
Natural Light
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.
Color became one of the brand’s biggest differentiators. Bright, unexpected combinations ran across the products and the photography at a time when much of the category was visually restrained. It gave the brand an energy that helped it stand apart, and it made a frame read as Flatlander in the feed before anyone got to the caption.
All of it shot on my own gear, in a studio about the size of a spare room.
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
Stop Motion
Made in the 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
The whole business ran through this store. Launching by pre-order showed what people actually wanted before a hide was cut, and brought the money in ahead of the work.
Shopify
I built the store on Shopify: 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. That showed what people actually wanted before any materials or labor went into it, took most of the risk out of a production run, and brought cash in ahead of the work. 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.”
