Japanese Designer Folds Profitable Paper Wallets

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

The art and practice of origami comes from the Japanese words for folding and paper. It started in Japan in the 17th century and has since expanded to be a common art form worldwide. There's barely anyone who isn't familiar with the folded paper crane, one of the most common origami symbols. But have you ever heard of a functional and long-lasting origami wallet? Well, very soon you will.

After spending his 20s studying in Europe, a Japanese graphic designer returns home to a small village, where his story of making paper wallets unfolds. This is a fun story. I really enjoyed working on it. And after I finished, I went to the website and got ready to place my own order just because I thought it was so cool. So can't wait to tell you about it.

Japanese designer opens the paper kimono. That story's coming up after this shoutout to our sponsor. Kan Yamamoto is a freelance graphic designer and woodworker based in Toshiyama, a rural village in southern Japan. There he works with clients around the world from his small studio. Toshiyama is a tiny place with a population of just over 1,000.

Kan is from there originally, but it hasn't always been his home base. He spent most of his 20s in Switzerland and Germany, studying fine art and graphic design. While he enjoyed refining his skills in Europe, the call of home eventually drew him back to Japan. So, in his 30s, he returned to the land of the rising sun to rediscover his roots and contribute to the local community. Living in a remote village has its advantages, including a close proximity to nature and a high quality of life.

But there is one great disadvantage, the lack of jobs. That's why so many people his age move away to the larger cities. But Kan wasn't willing to compromise. When he returned, he was committed to making it work financially. While he looked for design clients, he picked up some local jobs, including working as a lumberjack and producing charcoal the traditional way.

Even though he got by, he had a more defined long-term goal. You see, most people from Toshiyama move away for work and never return. Kan thought the best thing to do was learn how to start a small business, so he could be an example for the younger generation of villagers. He could show them that it didn't matter where you lived, you could build a global business using your skills and the internet. Being creative, he began brainstorming ideas for products that he could make by hand.

He landed on the idea of a wallet because he couldn't find the type that he actually wanted. Something slim, lightweight, cruelty-free, and eco-friendly. Inspired by the ancient Japanese art of origami, he began folding paper into different shapes in hopes of finding a design that suited his needs. He spent weeks shaping and folding different papers until he eventually found something he liked. In his career as a designer, he'd work with many different types of paper and remembered that some were actually machine washable.

They were also durable and didn't use any animal products. It turns out paper, which he'd always considered a material just for prototyping, was the perfect solution for actually making the wallets. Now, Kahn was serious about this. He didn't want to launch this side business and have it fold or remain stationary. So he decided to test the market before investing any more time or money.

And he did it in a unique way. Rather than create actual wallets and try to sell them, he designed a template that others could print directly onto paper. With that template, they could fold a wallet themselves. He made a landing page offering the DIY template and asked visitors if they would be interested in the production version, which would be made out of more durable material. To promote the page, he shared it on Reddit, Medium, and elsewhere.

The response was two-fold. He received hundreds of downloads almost instantly, but also had a number of people express interest in the production version. That was all the validation he needed to determine this was an idea worth pursuing. Over the next few months, Kahn learned the basics of e-commerce. He launched a website on Shopify and refined his prototype a bit further.

He set aside $500 to launch the shop. That included the web hosting as well as having someone write the content for him. He named his new venture "Kamino Wallet," and it was time to launch. Would it go well or be death by a thousand paper cuts? By this time, several hundred people had expressed their interest in purchasing a wallet.

It was here that Kahn learned his first hard lesson. An email address does not equal a sale. He assumed that most of the people who signed up would buy. But in the end, only a few of them did. He feels he could have improved that conversion rate by launching the product sooner, because three months had elapsed between the time people expressed their interest and the time they could place an order.

But despite the disappointment, he was not deterred. Like a stubborn poker player, he wouldn't fold, and instead thought of new ways to market the Kamino Wallet. He set aside an additional $300 to spend on Instagram and Facebook ads. And there he found some success. It seemed customers were much more likely to purchase on impulse, when the product was already made and ready to be shipped instantly.

After selling his first few wallets, he received some feedback, which he used to improve and upgrade the design. He did the same with his ads. The ones that worked, he put a little bit more money behind, or improved them. And the ones that didn't got thrown out like scrap paper. It was a successful method.

After a year of running the Kamino Wallet as a side hustle, Kahn is now selling up to $1,500 worth of wallets per month, of which 80% is profit. He's expanded into five different types of wallets, and plans to continue obtaining customer feedback to create even more. This story has proved that living in a rural community is no excuse for not moving forward with your idea. And we'll look forward to watching the rest of the story unfold. Well listen, these paper wallets really are beautiful.

I mean, honestly, I went to look and I was like, wow, I want to get one for myself. It might be too late for a holiday gift, depending on when you're listening, but then again, it might not. And even if it is, it would make for a wonderful gift at any time, even a gift for yourself. It also made me think that we should have a side hustler gift guide to support many of the makers and creators we feature on the show. So I just came up with that idea.

So put a pin on it, and we'll return to it next year, hopefully before the middle of December rolls around. And my only comment on the story is, yes, three months is too long. Three months is too long to wait in between, you know, saying, hey, this thing might be available and then actually saying, okay, now it is available. You can order it. So I'm not too surprised that he had a low conversion rate at that point.

Just chalk it up to a lesson learned. And now as you heard in the story, his business is going well. So amazing project. Do take a look at the Kamado wallet. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Today's show notes, including links to everything I mentioned are at sidehustleschool.com/1076, episode 1076. I'll be back tomorrow. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.