Curtis Matsko was not setting out to build a major leather company when he cut his first journal in a Portland garage. He made it for his girlfriend, then asked her to leave her job and build a business with him. They began selling their work at art festivals, where the response gave them something a business plan could not: proof that customers would pay for what they were making.
Those early sales also showed Matsko where the opportunity might be. The products were handmade, useful and built from leather, but they were not positioned as luxury goods. The company could make something that felt substantial without putting it behind the kind of price tag usually associated with premium leather.
