A Year of Cherry Keeper

A Year of Cherry Keeper

Today marks the one year point of having officially announced the Cherry Keeper cage, and making them available through the Shapeways marketplace. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported my efforts, provided feedback, and shared their experiences far and wide. It's been an interesting road; it's one I didn't plan on going down; it's one that got me out of my comfort zone (well, well out in some cases!). I've gone down that road and I'm still here.

Honestly, some days are really hard. This is not my full time job, nor could it replace my primary source of income, which limits the time I get to spend working on projects for kinky friends! I have to split my time between e-mail support, design updates, "custom" rings, custom size cages, managing store inventory and keeping up with social media. The bright light that keeps away the clouds of negativity are the messages I get from happy customers who love the designs and are elated that they found something that works for them. Without seeing tangible proof that I'm helping people have a positive experience with Chastity, I would likely have thrown in the towel.

Besides my friends and customers, I have to give a big shout out to Shapeways, who has done a really good job getting out products in a timely fashion and handling the occasional customer support problem that comes up. I realize that I would not have the time to fulfill these orders on my own even if I owned all the machinery necessary to do it - So, for the foreseeable future, I'm going to leave the printing to the experts. I looked into the possibility of having the orders shipped to me for final finishing and then send them on to customers, but the amount of time it would take and the cost it would add did not make it viable or sustainable.

So, to give everyone an idea of how many Cherry Keepers have been printed in the last year, I ran my Shapeways sales report today and added up the numbers. I was truly humbled, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when I looked at the quantities and the money spent. When you're dealing with things day to day, you tend to focus on the things that are important right then, and sometimes lose a little focus of the picture as a whole.

In one year: 1,402 Cages; 1,521 Rings, 102 Add-Ons; 173 Misc pieces (lockers, safes, etc); 31 pieces of jewellery (keys and pendants); 79 sets of Permalockers (you kinky boys and girls!), and the Cherry on top - Unlimited quantities of dick pics!

That's over 3,200 different 3D printed chastity related pieces in 365 days! So, I'm rich, right? Not even close! The lion's share of the money my customers spent went into the printing of the devices and goes to Shapeways. I would make more money working full time at McDonalds, but for part time work, it's been good.

To that, I would like some input from the community - I want to make more of a difference. In my humble opinion, two of the biggest problems I see facing us today are the wealth gap in the United States (and I'm sure in other countries), and the fight for equal rights for LGBTQ individuals. I would like to hear input of some good causes that could use periodic donations and turn "kinky money" into money that goes to a good cause. If there's some organization that has had a positive impact on and of my customer's lives, I'd love to hear about it.

I'm looking forward to being here another year, wiser, more experienced, and I am always interested in how to improve.
Love, JosieLynn

 

PA integration is the one feature I get the most requests for, but unfortunately, I don't have access to a penis with a PA to figure out the logistics of adding such a feature. Of course I've looked to see how others have done it, and I don't think it's an easy integration without adding a second lock to the tip.

If anyone with a PA has suggestions or ideas, I can't completely rule it out, but most of my (limited) time is pretty full with customer service e-mails and custom requests

 

I really appreciate the kind words, there's been a lot more positivity directed my way than I expected.

So, interesting points you raise....
1.) I need a better way to look at sales and where each "part" falls in the income range, but I don't want to fall in the trap of only doing things to maximize that. There's already a bunch off that out there and we need some specialty or other sized stuff that 3D printing brings to the table. The cool thing about this "design and someone-else-print" model is that I could stop working on designs, and you all could still order parts since the designs are done and printing, shipping and ordering are all handled by Shapeways. Technically I get "royalties" for allowing them to print and sell each of my designs.

2.) I may do just that! I did get an initial charity from my Miss and made a donation last week. It's one she's volunteered for periodically over a number of years, so I made a donation to them and volunteered a number of hours to help them. It's not ideally aligned with kink/chastity as it's technically a Christian organization, but "Feed My Starving Children" is something I feel good about supporting. Thanks to Cherry Keeper sales, three children will have food for a year. It doesn't sound like it's helping a lot, but that's over 1,000 meals.

Talking about metal.... So, the first Cherry Keeper metal cage was printed a couple weeks ago and shipped to the beta tester. What I didn't know was it was going to China, and it got stuck in customs, and nothing the customer was able to do got it released and they eventually gave up. I know it's possible to print it now, but I haven't "approved" it in metal yet. Steel at Shapeways has a bigger margin of error in dimensional accuracy than the SLS nylon printing, so I worry about clearances. They felt very strongly about wanting to try it in metal even knowing that it hadn't been tested, so I helped them order it. Since that failed, I'll probably just order one myself and see what it looks like.

I did order a newly developed add-on prototype in Stainless steel from a different printer, but that won't arrive for another month or so.