In April 2020, the prototype for our first Vulpine Creations product sat on my kitchen table in Graz. It was a magic prop — hand-crafted from materials I’d sourced from three different suppliers across Austria and Germany, assembled in my living room, and tested by performing the trick for my wife approximately forty times until she banned me from doing it again.
Twelve months later, Vulpine had shipped four products to customers in over twenty countries. Twelve months after that, we had eight products. By the time we sold the rights and inventory in 2024, we’d shipped twelve products to 50+ countries with a 4.9-star rating and near-zero return rate. All from home offices — mine in Graz, Adam’s in the US.
This is the story of how that happened. Not the highlight reel. The actual story, including the parts where I had no idea what I was doing.
Finding the Partner Before Finding the Product
The most important decision in Vulpine’s history happened before the company existed: choosing to work with Adam Wilber.
I’d first connected with Adam when I needed a keynote speaker for an accelerator event in London. I knew he was into product invention and innovation, so I reached out — nervous and fanboying out like crazy. My wife told me to just shoot him a text. He accepted, delivered an excellent keynote, and we spent three days together around the event. The chemistry was immediate.
After the event, Adam called and proposed starting a magic company. My response: “Yeah, but only if we do it right.”
The partnership worked because our skills didn’t overlap. Adam is a brilliant creative inventor — product concepts, performance routines, visual design. I’m an operational builder — manufacturing, logistics, marketing, systems. He’d create the product. I’d create the business around the product. Neither of us could have done what the other did.
This complementary skill distribution is, I believe, the single most important factor in Vulpine’s success. Not the products themselves (though they were excellent). Not the timing (though it was fortunate). The partnership. Two people with different strengths who trusted each other enough to divide the work and not micromanage.
If you’re considering a business partnership, the lesson from Vulpine is simple: partner with someone whose strengths are your weaknesses, and whose weaknesses are your strengths. Overlapping skills create conflict. Complementary skills create capacity.
The First Product: Speed Over Perfection
Our first product — I won’t name it here to avoid turning this into a product pitch — went from concept to shipped in about six weeks. By product-development standards, that’s absurdly fast. Here’s how we did it.
Week 1-2: Adam developed the concept and built a rough prototype. We tested it through video calls — him performing the trick, me watching and giving feedback as both a magician and a product designer. Three iterations in two weeks.
Week 3: I sourced materials and found a local fabrication partner who could produce small batches. “Small batches” meant fifty units. We didn’t know if we’d sell fifty, so starting small was both prudent and necessary.
Week 4: Photography and marketing. I shot product photos on my kitchen table with a basic lighting setup. Adam created a performance video. I wrote the product description and built the sales page.
Week 5: Pre-launch to our combined email lists (small — maybe 500 people total between us). We offered early access at full price (no discount — we wanted to test real pricing from day one).
Week 6: Public launch. Sold out the initial run of fifty units in about a week. Ordered a second batch immediately.
The product wasn’t perfect. The packaging was basic. The photography was amateur. The sales page had typos I didn’t catch until two days after launch. None of that mattered. The product itself was excellent — a well-designed, beautifully crafted magic prop that did exactly what it promised. The wrapping was imperfect. The gift was great.
Ship it ugly was our operating philosophy from day one. Not because we were lazy — because the market window was open and time spent polishing was time not spent shipping.
Logistics From a Kitchen Table
Shipping physical products internationally from Austria during a pandemic was exactly as complicated as it sounds.
The initial logistics were comically manual. I’d print shipping labels on my home printer. Pack each product by hand at my kitchen table. Drive to the post office with a box of twenty packages. The post office staff knew me by name within two weeks.
Issues we encountered that nobody warns you about:
Customs declarations for magic props. What category does a magic trick fall under? I spent three hours on the Austrian customs classification website trying to determine the correct HS code for “hand-crafted entertainment device made from mixed materials.” The answer was never entirely clear, and I’m still not sure we got it right every time.
Pandemic shipping delays. Packages to the US took anywhere from five days to six weeks, with no predictable pattern. This required proactive communication with customers: “Your order has shipped. Due to current conditions, delivery times are variable. Here’s your tracking number.” Transparency about uncertainty built more trust than promises about speed.
Returns and customs duties. Customers in some countries got hit with unexpected import duties. We couldn’t control this, but we could warn about it on the sales page and help customers work through the process. One customer in Brazil paid more in duties than the product cost. We partially refunded them as a goodwill gesture. They became one of our most vocal advocates.
Scaling from fifty to five hundred units. The kitchen-table approach worked for fifty units. It didn’t work for five hundred. By product three, we’d established relationships with professional fulfillment services that handled inventory, packing, and shipping. This transition was painful — giving up control of the physical handling of products felt risky — but it freed ten to fifteen hours per week of my time for work that actually grew the business.
The EAOS framework (Eliminate, Automate, Outsource, Systematize) was partially inspired by this logistics evolution. Each product launch taught us which tasks to eliminate, which to automate, which to outsource, and which to systematize. By product eight, the operational machine was smooth enough to handle launches without significant stress.
Quality as Strategy
Early in Vulpine’s development, we made a strategic decision that defined everything: we would be the premium option. Not the cheapest. Not the most accessible. The best quality.
This decision meant higher production costs, longer development cycles per product, and a smaller potential market. It also meant higher margins, fiercer customer loyalty, and a brand reputation that made each subsequent product easier to sell.
The quality strategy manifested in specific decisions:
- Materials were the best available, not the cheapest acceptable
- Every product was tested extensively before production (Adam and I both used each product in real performances for at least a month)
- Packaging was upgraded from “functional” to “impressive” starting with product three (this single change increased customer satisfaction scores and social media sharing)
- Instructions were detailed, well-written, and included performance advice — not just “how to do the trick” but “how to perform the trick well”
The 4.9-star rating across twelve products wasn’t a goal we set. It was a consequence of the quality strategy. When you build the best version of something and price it accordingly, the customers who buy it are the customers who value quality — and quality-oriented customers leave great reviews.
The courage to charge premium prices was tested with every product. We priced at a premium — our target was around EUR 200 per product, but feedback from early customers suggested EUR 300 was justified, so we settled at EUR 250. The price was part of the quality signal, not despite it.
The Sale and What It Meant
In 2024, we sold Vulpine’s IP and remaining inventory to respected magic companies. The details are private, but the decision was deliberate, not desperate.
The business had reached a scale where the next phase of growth would require a different kind of operation — larger team, more complex logistics, more capital investment. That next phase would have required me to become a full-time operations manager, which wasn’t what I wanted to do with my career.
The sale allowed us to transfer the brand to an owner better suited for that next phase while preserving the brand’s reputation and customer relationships. It also provided financial return on four years of work and freed me to focus on what I do best: building new things.
Selling Vulpine taught me about what happens when your business outgrows you. The skills that built the company from zero to twelve products weren’t the skills that would scale it to fifty products. Recognizing that — and acting on it instead of forcing a fit — was one of the most mature business decisions I’ve made.
The Lessons I Carry
Vulpine Creations was a four-year education in building a physical product business from nothing. The lessons apply far beyond magic products:
Start with the partnership, not the product. The right partner multiplies your capacity. The wrong partner divides it.
Speed wins when the market is moving. Six weeks from concept to ship. We could have spent six months and launched a better first product. We would have missed the window.
Quality is a long-term strategy. Premium pricing and premium quality attract premium customers who become your marketing through word of mouth.
Outsource operations early. The kitchen-table phase is necessary but temporary. Graduate to professional logistics as soon as the volume justifies it.
Know when to exit. Not every founder should run their company forever. Recognizing when the business needs something you can’t or don’t want to provide is a sign of maturity, not failure.
Building Vulpine from a home office during lockdown was chaotic, stressful, frequently uncomfortable, and one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Every product we shipped was proof that constraints — a pandemic, a home office, a two-person team, zero funding — aren’t barriers to building something excellent. They’re parameters that force creativity.
Key takeaways:
- Partner with someone whose strengths are your weaknesses — complementary skills create capacity; overlapping skills create conflict.
- Speed wins in changing markets — six weeks from concept to shipped is possible and sometimes necessary.
- Quality as strategy attracts quality customers who become your best marketing — premium pricing is part of the quality signal, not separate from it.
- Graduate from manual operations to professional logistics as soon as volume justifies it — the founder shouldn’t be packing boxes past the first hundred units.
- Know when to exit — recognizing that the business needs something different from what you provide is maturity, not failure.
