撕不烂杜邦折叠纸钱包的起源与现状

2013-06-01 23:57阅读：

http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/u/2243077047

2005年，tyvek纸钱包面世，自此以后，许许多多的品牌不断涌现，由美国Dynomighty公司生产的Mighty Wallet，美国的Paper Wallet，澳大利亚thewalart，中国oneday，中国iWallet等等，并且99%的杜邦tyvek纸钱包都made in China。
1、Dynomighty，生产杜邦纸钱包Mighty Wallet
Dynomighty公司创始人兼设计师Terrence Kelleman在2005年发明第一款商用纸钱包，2006年设计出第二款，2007年设计出第三款，也即今天流行于世Mighty Wallet，2012年第四款，Mini Mighty Wallet。
Mighty Wallet是所有杜邦Tyvek纸钱包的起源、发明者。如果严格区分，这以后国内国外出现使用杜邦Tyvek来设计生产Tyvek纸钱包的设计师或生产商，都是Dynomighty的模仿者或抄袭者。
撕不烂的iWallet纸钱包

以上已概略说了杜邦纸钱包的起源，接下来引文一篇，来自Terrence Kelleman的早期创业blog，此文非常详细而准确的说明了杜邦Tyvek纸钱包的起源。
Ever since I discovered that people were making their own wallets out of Duct-tape wallet I realized two things: There are tons of people with a passion for D.I.Y. projects and there are tons of people obsessed with Duct-tape. This post concerns the former and is the story on how I came up with the idea for the first Tyvek Wallet.
First of all I loved the idea of the Duct-tape wallet. It took a material that everyone was familiar with that was associated with strength and durability and converted it into something functional. The only limitation I found was that the material itself was bulky and didn’t fold very well. During this same period I had been fascinated with Tyvek as a material and I had been trying to come up with ways to use it in a new product design.
Using Tyvek to make a wallet seemed so obvious to me that I was surprised that no searches online came up with any results. This sparked a wave of excitement in me to find a way to use this material in a tear resistant, water resistant and recyclable wallet design! The idea consumed me for several days as I tried to come up with a design that would reinforce the inherent properties of the Tyvek material itself.
When I thought back on any wallet I have ever owned it seemed obvious to me that the weakest point was the stitching. Another prohibitive factor of sewing Tyvek is that it would create tiny holes that could eventually rip or create weak points so I resolved myself to create a folded design that would be made from a single sheet of Tyvek. This created some real headaches for me, besides I could barely keep track of which folds went where on all of these trial designs which were just blank sheets of paper strewn across my desk.
One of the biggest prohibitive factors of designing a new product is the initial costs involved in production. This was another reason the design had to be simple and easy to produce. As a result I had to limit the printing to only one side of the paper or else the costs would double for the printing if it was printed on both sides. All of these design limitations made it seem nearly impossible to achieve. But like most of my creative process, I just buried my head in this project to the exclusion of all other work and kept folding blank sheets of paper over and over again with an obsessive desire to find a workable design.
I don’t remember the date or month of when I designed the first Tyvek Wallet but it was shortly after moving into a new office space on Broadway just south of Soho. The Tyvek Wallet was my first big step out into retail just after moving into a new rented office space (no more toughing it out in my apartment). From this point on I had a monthly commitment to pay all the bills and rent for this studio with a view on Broadway. At the time I didn’t have any other employees except for some help a few days a week. One day I decided to focus on designing a stitch less folded Tyvek Wallet design and taking that time off was very valuable.
The funny thing about finally finding the best design was that it wasn’t a eureka moment at all, but more of a “can this really work?” moment. It turned out that I had actually made a folded design that could work the night before but at the time I didn’t think it would work. First, I didn’t know if it was technically possible to fold Tyvek in the ways I needed to. I knew that Tyvek could be folded to make envelopes but just how many folds could you make and could it be possible to make a machine made folded design from one single sheet of Tyvek?
The initial design limitations to increase strength and keep costs down were only the beginning. Now I was faced with a new challenge of finding a company who would be willing to work with me to create something that no one had ever made before, the first Tyvek Wallet. This turned out to take more time than any other part of the process. Its hard enough sometimes just getting something basic printed let alone asking a company to die-cut, print, fold and package a product in a way no one had ever done before. In the end the first wallets were printed with a company in China that a friend of mine had worked with in the past and she made all the initial communications for us.
This was the first really big gamble that I had to take for my initial investment. I didn’t have any money of my own and the incoming money from the business was just enough to pay the rent, electric, phone etc. I drafted up a business plan for the Tyvek Wallet and estimated how much I would need to borrow and when I could potentially pay it all off. I remember walking into my bank after setting up an appointment with my representative and finding myself sitting at a large board room table with two tan bankers freshly shaven and equipped with all the banker trimmings including presidential Rolex watches, pin stripe shirts with white cuffs with gold cuff links. I introduced the product idea to them and I had some prototypes produced that I showed them. They loved the concept and listened attentively to my business plan. I couldn’t believe it – I had wrapped them up – they were so excited by the concept that when I asked for a credit line of $20,000 (the cost of the initial order) they said “Oh no you should have 50K, that will give you some flexibility”.
After our meeting they had me fill out a standard form for the loan approval and it was at this point that my credit history with student loans caught up with me in a terrible way. I was refused. There was nothing they could do for me. I got the call a day later and felt completely devastated. I asked if I could use my 401K savings as a means to guaranteeing the loan but there was nothing they could do. The banker’s assistant said if I needed to lease any printers or computers for the business that he could possibly help me out. Now I was really screwed. How was I going to get the money to make the wallets? After all this work I couldn’t accept the idea that it was over.
I can’t even remember how many times I have found myself in a situation that seemed impossible to overcome while running this business but somehow there is always a way, there is always a solution just around the corner, and many times it comes when you least expect it.
During this same time my wife and I had just married a couple of months earlier. Ingrid was living in France until she finished her semester as an Art Teacher in Aix-en-Provence. We were calling and emailing each other very often and during a call I told her about the bad news with the bank. That is when she immediately offered to use her life savings to pay for the first order of wallets. The phone must have been silent for a second because I was totally shocked.
I never expected that she had a savings, let alone enough to cover the entire first order of wallets. It was incredible to have such an unquestioning commitment from her. No one had made such a major contribution to the growth of the business like that before, especially on a product that had no demonstrated sales.
It was a major investment in a new product that I didn’t even know if I could sell. I felt such an enormous responsibility to care for that investment preciously. I worked so hard to make the first Tyvek Wallet a success that I can remember putting in late nights working to 1 or 2 am and being back in the office first thing in the morning before 9 to put in another intense day of work.
In the end the money was sent off and the first order of wallets was under way. It would take about a month for production and then a week or so for delivery. There was nothing left that I could do except start preparing to market the product as best I could.
Every year in the gift and accessories industry the defining show that sets the barometer for the retail industry the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF) was coming up and I had to do my best to sell the most wallets possible in order to get the sales necessary to pay back the loan. It was an amazing challenge. I had to bring a new product to market (which no one had ever seen before) and to convince a buyer (who I’d never met before) to invest in a product on the spot that no one had ever sold anywhere before. It was an incredible challenge but I was motivated by a new desire to secure a stable future for Ingrid and I through the business. Little did we know that there were many incredible surprises and challenges lying right around the corner.
2、Paper Wallet
除开Dynomighty，美国还有一个2007年成立的相对较大的Tyvek Wallet厂家Paper Wallet。Paper Wallet更多的倡导定制化，撇开一般的工厂批量生产款式，设计师们有时把图案绘制在纯色的钱包上加价销售。
撕不烂的iWallet纸钱包