I don’t know whose idea this was. I’m pretty sure it was Nadja’s. But let me tell you the story of how we got here.

I was minding my own business, searching some online classifieds for a die press I could use for a skunkworks project I’m working on, when I came across an add. Seems this guy was done with his old offset presses, and was closing up shop. He was selling the whole kit and caboodle. Very reasonable price, serviceable machines, take over renting the space for a really low price.

Totally not a die press. But very very intriguing.

The three of us had been talking, sorta informally, about getting together our little collective maker butts and making stuff together. We already had a name (Makersfield) that we were pretty married to. And we had sorta long term ambitions, but no real starting point.

The more we looked at this, the more it looked like this could be the starting point we had been looking for, just as long as you ignored the fact that we didn’t have the money, don’t know anything about printing, and didn’t know how to really run a printing business. Or a press.

After some discussion, we decided we’d try. It would require a number of things to fall into place. The current owner, the one selling out, he needed to be willing to work with us on getting paid. We’d need to scramble to get some money together. And really, we’d need an awful lot of tailwind. In the end, we got two out of three. We got the owner to work with us, and we got enough together to convince him we were serious. Now all we need is a tailwind.

What are we going to print? Lots of things. That information is classified. We can’t tell you yet. How are we going to do it? Not really sure yet. But we think between the three of us we have enough smarts to work that out. If not, then watching us fail miserably should provide to be highly entertaining.