Why Washi?

This is the latest rose gold foil washi tape I launched for JournalXO -

⁠It may seem unusual that a software engineer decided to making washi tape. It’s really not so weird, so I'll tell you how it started.

My daughter asked me how she could earn some money. She trains for gymnastics every day after school so she doesn't have a ton of spare time. So we came up with the idea of running an Etsy shop.

This way she could invest that time in learning how to run a small business. It’s of course, a good amount of work for me as well, but it’s worthwhile because I want my kids to have life skills and choices.

As for my involvement, I'm on a personal sabbatical from tech, and I really love design. When colors come together, I think it's just magical - and cute washi tape is an expression of that.

Over the course of my career, I actually had developed most of the skills needed to launch this brand. Product photography took a bit of effort, but it’s fun, and I almost minored in Art History — so I'm familiar with studying composition, form, tone, line, color, etc.. enough to snap and crop a decent web resolution photo!⁠

⁠So that's that. JournalXO is the business I'm running with which ever kids are interested in helping out, to teach them about the fundamentals of starting a small product based business. And it happens to be a product I enjoy!