Geoffrey Franklin

Geoffrey Franklin

Owner


Walnut Studiolo

Milestones

My road in life took a while to figure out.
Was luckily filtered into an arts magnet high school.
Got into architecture school.
Learned the general design process at architecture school.
Was an architectural draftsman for several years.
Moved into the city and started commuting by bike.
Started tinkering with my bike and designing leather gear for fun when I was downsized.
Started my own architecture firm and got serious about the leather gear with my wife.
After a couple years, my wife quit her job too and we both started working on leather gear full-time.
Keep following my journey

Education

High School
Bachelor
Architecture
University of Oregon

Career

Owner

I design and make leather bicycle gear.

Career Roadmap

Roadmap
My work combines:
My work combines:
Design
Entrepreneurship
Being Creative

Day to Day

Wake up, make breakfast, and plan the day with my wife. Go into the workshop, which is attached to my house, where I make products and tinker on new product ideas all day, taking a break for lunch with my wife and employee.

Advice for Getting Started

Here's the first step for professionals

Just start making and put it out there. Don't overplan your launch. The first one you make will never be perfect, so don't worry about that. It might help if you have an objective friend or partner (like my wife) who will put it out there for you. It's so hard as an artist to call something "good enough". My wife played that role for me and listed my first product on Etsy before I was ready to. Thank goodness. Once it started actually selling, I was incredibly encouraged to keep going.

Recommended Education

My career is not related to what I studied. I'd recommend this path instead:

certification
Associate's Degree

Hurdles

The Noise I Shed

From Society in General:

"You should find another normal salaried job in your college degree profession. I mean, good for you for trying out the entrepreneur thing but you know it's not going to work. It's not going to pay your bills."