The Game Gripper

A little more than a month ago, Hyrum was talking on the phone to his brother about their phones. They liked to play games on them, but kept pressing all the wrong buttons. Hyrum came up with an idea, and that first night, he was so excited that he went down to the basement and spent hours making a huge mess. I was pretty annoyed. This is what he came up with:
That would be a mutilated plastic cutting board, and little wood pegs that he whittled with a knife. I told him he should sell it, and he took me up on that.

The following weeks were spent with Hyrum working on designing (and coming up with the name for) the Game Gripper and the buttons, talking with manufacturers, setting up our website and a whole lot more that I don't remember or don't know. Between his full-time job, taking a class for his masters at the U, and this, he was busy all. the. time.

He got a prototype (which he later lost), bought an injection molding machine to make buttons in the garage, and sent me to Wal-mart to buy airsoft ammo to melt for the buttons.
Then, last Tuesday, the day came that we had been waiting for! We got a package of 25 Game Grippers. Hyrum took a half day off of work to finalize the website and make sure we were ready to sell. We went "live" that evening and he sent out emails to places like engadget, and posted on public forums for droids.

Wednesday morning we woke up and there were no sales. Hyrum was a little disappointed, but about 5 minutes after he left for class, I got an email that said "Notification of Payment Received." Exciting! I sent him a text. Then 6 minutes later, we got another. 5 minutes, yet another. Then 2 minutes. Then 1 minute. A half hour later, I told him to take the day off of work again. I was getting overwhelmed! Within 3 1/2 hours, we sold out of the 94 that we had posted, so Hyrum set up a pre-order system and those have continued to roll in.

Here we are shipping out the first order! It's around 3 in the afternoon, Claire and I are still in our pajamas, and I'm pretty sure Hyrum and I hardly had time to eat or do any other "necessity" all day. We included a certificate and a coupon for some free buttons, which Hyrum signed of course. Those first 2 nights we were up until 2am.
Because we didn't really know what we were doing, paypal was charging everyone sales tax, so I had the task of refunding 85 people $1.03. Did you know that paypal only lets you view 20 transactions per page and you can't change that number? Did you know that you can't change the order of how you view them and that you see the newest first? Did you know that Hyrum and I were ready to jump off the paypal bridge by the end of the day? Same goes for printing shipping labels. It was like they wanted to hurt us.

Oh, and when Hyrum designed the buttons the first time (we got a new mold today, so this isn't an issue anymore) he didn't think about one little thing. When you break the button off of the "tree", a little plastic bump protrudes off the end. That likely would have damaged the keyboard on the phones. So, we bought a big pack of emery boards at the dollar store, and started sanding. And sanding. And sanding. We sanded at least 1000 buttons. Claire liked to help by holding and chewing on the emery boards.
She also was a fan of shipping. Bubble wrap and paper and boxes and more!



We have hired 2 people to make buttons in our garage so Hyrum can spend his time designing Game Grippers for more phones (he's taken the whole last week off of work for everything, and he's got 4 more phones designed so far). We have a day shift and a night shift. We've also bought another injection molding machine, a new printer, a shipping scale, various shipping supplies, a new laptop (this little netbook is just not cutting it) and lots of plastic (not to mention the molds for the new Game Grippers). We plan to hire someone to handle shipping and receiving from our basement, and I'm pretty sure we're getting a house cleaner (the kind that comes 2x a month, YAY!) and a gardner/yard person. Claire even had her first "mother's helpers" yesterday. Some neighborhood girls came and played with her for 1 1/2 hours while Hyrum and I worked/did chores. I was surprised by how great she did, but when one girl came today, Claire was a little tired and freaked out if I left her sight. I've never seen her crawl so fast and lunge into my arms! It was still nice to have the girl come, though, because I could work on the computer in the same room and Claire was occupied.

We looked into having the buttons manufactured and into a fulfillment company to handle orders, but it would be so expensive that it just wouldn't be worth it, or we'd have to charge way more money. We are kind of excited to keep things at home and under our care, but it's also a little overwhelming. We are optimistic right now, but it's still kinda scary. Especially since we're not really in the "making profit" area. There are a million other things to do/plan/decide, but it's fun and crazy and awesome.