Welcome to Last chance Customs!

Hey stranger - Thanks for stopping by! Right now, this website is a little bit like a trading post far out in the unexplored wilds of Ontario circa 1701. There are no roads, no trails...and yet, in the midst of a clearing, there's a cabin with buttery light emanating from the windows and a lazy question mark of red pine smoke hovering above the mud chimney...

And do you smell biscuits baking? Maybe...

Until I wrote that, I hadn't consciously associated my intentions with such an image, but it's...curiously apt. 

This project comes at the end of, and maybe because of, a long road. More on that later, but let me toss this to you: The world is in a bad place right now. Particularly our country (I'm talking about the United States right now, just to clarify for my inexplicable visitors from the 'Stans). To be as non-partisan as possible, let's just say there's a veritable archaeological table of BS covering everything, it's rising by a foot a day, and it was up to our eyeballs about four generations ago.

​Everything is fake.

I've done a long tour through all of it, and dear reader, I'm tired of treading in it. Even at my professional peak, I made nothing. I produced nothing. At the end of a grueling day, when the mission was accomplished, there was nothing to point to, or to hold, and say, "I made that." 

Later, as my career went a very different direction, a successful day might be measured by a modest number of new signups to a monthly plastic toy subscription service. "Look at these numbers," I might say, "They're...modest."

Five or six years ago I picked up some scraps of leather from Michaels along with some tools I had no idea what to do with, entertaining the idea of starting a hobby just to mollify the now-powerful desire to do something real. Then life happened some more, and then again, and then again...

Long story short, I finally decided to explore this weird desire to make real things. To call it a "disruptive" decision would be an understatement.

So here we are. I make things. Primarily notebooks for now, because a routine meeting in a conference room sparked that first impetus to get moving. A colleague showed up with this gorgeous, mocha-colored notebook with a wood backing, held together with hand-cut and hand-ground copper rings. 

"Where on earth did you get that?" I asked.

"I made it," she said.

Watch Roger Rabbit to get an idea of what my googly-eyes looked like in that moment.

"YOU CAN DO THAT?"

Evidently, you can. So I did. And now I do.

More on my philosophy of the hand-written note later (I seem to have a philosophy for everything), but for now, suffice it to say that this didn't start as an opportunity for market penetration, but as a calling. 

Right now you might be thinking, "Why is this barista talking to me?" I get it. No worries. I'm glad you stopped by. If you like what you see, feel free to support The Calling(TM) with a purchase. Or, if you'd like to see what I might be able to make for you, click here. But that's my story (for now.) More soon.