It Started With a Soap Dish
It started with a soap dish.
Recently, someone who'd bought one of our Bonesaw boxes reached out with a simple ask: could we make a wood soap dish? Fair question, good idea — we didn't have one yet, so we said let's talk.
Somewhere in that conversation, the same Bonesaw box came up again. Turned out they'd wanted to use it in the bathroom for Q-tip storage — which, honestly, we thought was a genius use for it — except it wasn't wide enough. 😔 So now we had two threads going: a soap dish that didn't exist yet, and a Q-tip box that needed to.
Here's the part where we had to be honest with them.
Custom work costs more; especially for small stuff. Let me explain why: our regular products are priced the way they are because we batch them — we spread sandpaper, finish, and shop time across a run of similar pieces, and we can match material purchases tightly to what a batch actually needs instead of guestimating. Custom, one-off pieces don't get any of that. Same skill, same materials, none of the efficiency. So yeah — a "simple" custom box can cost more than you'd expect; often more than you would want to pay.
But then something clicked.
While we were kicking ideas around with them, we realized — this isn't just a "them" problem. A wider Q-tip box is a real want for a lot of bathrooms. And a soap dish? That's not a weird one-off ask, that's just a good product we hadn't gotten around to making yet.
So we did what we do: earmarked materials, planned it out, and ran a small batch. Meet Soap HOLDERZ! (the one that kicked this whole thing off) and The EARZ! box — the Q-tip box that finally fits. And while we were at it, we figured if we're already building a bathroom lineup, we might as well finish the job. Enter The FLOZERZ! box, a proper home for your floss picks, because loose plackers rattling around a drawer is nobody's idea of a good time.
Put all three together and you get The Ultimate Potty Collection (working title) — everything your bathroom counter didn't know it was missing.
Funny thing — the walnut we pulled for this batch happens to have that deep, chocolatey brown that just feels at home in a bathroom. Maybe that's related. Maybe it's not. We'll let you decide.
Idea to inbox to on sale. Not a bad outcome for a soap dish question.
So what about the customer who started all this?
Great question. Yes, it's our design, our materials, our shop time — but it started with their conversation. We wanted them to actually win here, not just get a nice "thanks for the idea" email. So instead of writing this up as a custom project (expensive), we're treating it as what it actually became — a real product. Which means they get it at regular product price, instead of a custom product price. And since these are launching straight into our Limited Run collection — which is on sale right now — they get that discount too.
Most of what we build starts with family, friends, napkin sketches at 1am, or what we're pretty sure is often divine inspiration. But every once in a while, it starts with you. We love when that happens. It doesn't always turn into a product — but when it does, we get genuinely fired up about it. So if you've got an idea, a "what if you made this," a random ask about bathroom storage — talk to us! SHARE IT HERE! You could be the next story and, for sure, we will make it worth your while, too!
Soap HOLDERZ!, The EARZ! box, and The FLOZERZ! box are launching in our Limited Run collection — first batch, while it lasts. If they sell well, they'll graduate to Signature Products!
