Make Me Passport - the story of one idea
I think, each habrayuzer during a week has not one cool idea. But, as we all know very well, an idea is a peculiar thing. On the one hand, this is the main conceptual component of any project, on the other - it alone does not mean anything at all. The most difficult thing is not to come up with an idea, but to begin to implement it. In this post we will tell dear readers about one idea. The idea of ​​the category of "cool, but I do not know the fool who would have taken it."
It all started with a conversation on the chronic lack of interesting souvenirs that did not predict trouble. Not only in Russia, souvenir shops all over the world are crammed with, in general, the same repetitive products. There are a lot of souvenir shops, but there is nothing to buy there. There are also more and more shops in the “Funny Gifts” series, but you leave them, most often, with empty hands. As a result, one day our idea visited our miracle heads. The idea seemed fresh and really interesting to us. I would even say this idea was fun.
It consisted in the creation of souvenir passports of the USSR, and their subsequent sale to visiting tourists. We found no problems with tourists in St. Petersburg. It remained to resolve the issue, in fact, the printing of passport books and their further personification. The stated goal was highly presumptuous: souvenir passports should not differ from real passports in terms of the quality of materials or other visible signs. We have been looking for a suitable printing house for a long time. Somewhere they could not make the covers like a real passport, somewhere they did not want to sew a book with threads. Somewhere they did not understand anything at all and hung up. Ultimately, we stumbled upon the St. Petersburg state printing house, printing a lot of protected products, up to category "B".
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Now it was necessary to create a layout. Week - we thought. The designer, however, thought differently, but in the end, resigned, he began to study the nuances of iris rolls and guilloche with a thickness of 40 ÎĽR lines. Never before confronted with such projects, he, nevertheless, very quickly got a taste and after two months (we will not talk about deadlines) gave an excellent result. But it turned out that we do not have the right to print an iris roll (this is when the lines are printed with a gradient), since a license is necessary for the production of such protection. Get it for a long time, and there is no need. As a result, all the iris peals in the layout were replaced by their imitation. A non-specialist will not see the difference. But the designer, having bought himself a special magnifying glass with illumination, is now ready to take any protected document and hold an hour-long lecture on the methods of the Oryol press.
As for the concept of the layout itself, we very long hesitated between “come on, just like that” and “as if this passport was designed now.” The second option seemed to us more interesting. But, we must pay tribute to the designer, he managed very carefully to introduce elements of Soviet condo aesthetics in the layout. Then we literally added a pinch of kitsch, which brought the whole picture to perfection. We had a mockup of the excellent passport of the Soviet Union. It turned out that our passport is much more beautiful than both internal and foreign passports that are valid in our country. Probably, in order to understand to what degree they were unaesthetic, one had to make one’s own version. As a result, the cost of printing turned out to be twice as high as originally intended, but we went for it, knowing that this is the only way we can make a souvenir passport “like a real one. The only thing, of course, was to add the inscription “souvenirs” to the fly-leaf and the back cover. Without this, the printing house refused to accept the layout in print.
In October, we decided to take part in the tourism (they, it is true, they say “tourist”) exhibition, held at that time in Lenexpo. We took part, were surprised at the passivity of other participants and decided not to deal with tourist (in a broad sense) organizations anymore. The format of inbound tourism, souvenir and excursion businesses has not changed for about 20 years already. All of these dolls and fur hat are sold not because they are of great interest to foreigners, but because this sphere cannot offer anything else.
In short, we put the layout in print in late autumn. In the meantime, more than 3 months have passed since the moment the idea appeared. In November, having received passport books, we realized that it’s hardly possible to look for tourists in St. Petersburg at this time of year, so with a flick of the hand “the best souvenir from Rush” ... turn into ... elegant “cool gifts”. But retailing such products is not very easy, so we turned our attention to corporate customers. Several serious companies have ordered good circulation for Christmas gifts to their business partners. As the issuing authority in the souvenir passports were the names of these companies. We still have to learn the reaction of those who are done to such a corporate souvenir.
Nobody expected, but the personification process became a small problem on our way. In the passport book you need to enter the data, paste the photo and laminate the page. And if the first time decided to purchase a special matrix printer, then for lamination, similar to the passport, several tricks were born. What I will not say - a secret.
Just the other day we opened an online store. The user on the site makes an order, specifies the data for personalization and attaches a photo. We print a photo, print the data, put a stamp and we laminate it all. As for the site, everything is standard: WordPress + engine is a fairly modified free theme from Site5 + Ecwid + Robokassa store.
In the near future, the development of PayPal for full-fledged trade in the States and Europe. We are waiting for advice from Habra readers on this issue, because the sphere is absolutely new for us. And by the beginning of the tourist season we are planning to open a shop in the center of St. Petersburg so that foreign tourists do not have to look for Wi-Fi and wait for the order all day.
Anyway, we unexpectedly brought to ourselves an absolutely crazy idea at first glance. Now it is difficult to say what will happen in a year, but our plans are Napoleonic. By the way, in addition to the USSR passport, a Russian Empire passport and a Galactic Republic passport will soon be on sale.
Site of our modest project: MakeMePassport.ru
UPD: Almost forgot! We give all users of Habr a crazy 23% discount. Promo code: IAMFROMHABR
UPD 2: Sorry for the Habraeffect
It all started with a conversation on the chronic lack of interesting souvenirs that did not predict trouble. Not only in Russia, souvenir shops all over the world are crammed with, in general, the same repetitive products. There are a lot of souvenir shops, but there is nothing to buy there. There are also more and more shops in the “Funny Gifts” series, but you leave them, most often, with empty hands. As a result, one day our idea visited our miracle heads. The idea seemed fresh and really interesting to us. I would even say this idea was fun.
It consisted in the creation of souvenir passports of the USSR, and their subsequent sale to visiting tourists. We found no problems with tourists in St. Petersburg. It remained to resolve the issue, in fact, the printing of passport books and their further personification. The stated goal was highly presumptuous: souvenir passports should not differ from real passports in terms of the quality of materials or other visible signs. We have been looking for a suitable printing house for a long time. Somewhere they could not make the covers like a real passport, somewhere they did not want to sew a book with threads. Somewhere they did not understand anything at all and hung up. Ultimately, we stumbled upon the St. Petersburg state printing house, printing a lot of protected products, up to category "B".
')
Now it was necessary to create a layout. Week - we thought. The designer, however, thought differently, but in the end, resigned, he began to study the nuances of iris rolls and guilloche with a thickness of 40 ÎĽR lines. Never before confronted with such projects, he, nevertheless, very quickly got a taste and after two months (we will not talk about deadlines) gave an excellent result. But it turned out that we do not have the right to print an iris roll (this is when the lines are printed with a gradient), since a license is necessary for the production of such protection. Get it for a long time, and there is no need. As a result, all the iris peals in the layout were replaced by their imitation. A non-specialist will not see the difference. But the designer, having bought himself a special magnifying glass with illumination, is now ready to take any protected document and hold an hour-long lecture on the methods of the Oryol press.
As for the concept of the layout itself, we very long hesitated between “come on, just like that” and “as if this passport was designed now.” The second option seemed to us more interesting. But, we must pay tribute to the designer, he managed very carefully to introduce elements of Soviet condo aesthetics in the layout. Then we literally added a pinch of kitsch, which brought the whole picture to perfection. We had a mockup of the excellent passport of the Soviet Union. It turned out that our passport is much more beautiful than both internal and foreign passports that are valid in our country. Probably, in order to understand to what degree they were unaesthetic, one had to make one’s own version. As a result, the cost of printing turned out to be twice as high as originally intended, but we went for it, knowing that this is the only way we can make a souvenir passport “like a real one. The only thing, of course, was to add the inscription “souvenirs” to the fly-leaf and the back cover. Without this, the printing house refused to accept the layout in print.
In October, we decided to take part in the tourism (they, it is true, they say “tourist”) exhibition, held at that time in Lenexpo. We took part, were surprised at the passivity of other participants and decided not to deal with tourist (in a broad sense) organizations anymore. The format of inbound tourism, souvenir and excursion businesses has not changed for about 20 years already. All of these dolls and fur hat are sold not because they are of great interest to foreigners, but because this sphere cannot offer anything else.
In short, we put the layout in print in late autumn. In the meantime, more than 3 months have passed since the moment the idea appeared. In November, having received passport books, we realized that it’s hardly possible to look for tourists in St. Petersburg at this time of year, so with a flick of the hand “the best souvenir from Rush” ... turn into ... elegant “cool gifts”. But retailing such products is not very easy, so we turned our attention to corporate customers. Several serious companies have ordered good circulation for Christmas gifts to their business partners. As the issuing authority in the souvenir passports were the names of these companies. We still have to learn the reaction of those who are done to such a corporate souvenir.
Nobody expected, but the personification process became a small problem on our way. In the passport book you need to enter the data, paste the photo and laminate the page. And if the first time decided to purchase a special matrix printer, then for lamination, similar to the passport, several tricks were born. What I will not say - a secret.
Just the other day we opened an online store. The user on the site makes an order, specifies the data for personalization and attaches a photo. We print a photo, print the data, put a stamp and we laminate it all. As for the site, everything is standard: WordPress + engine is a fairly modified free theme from Site5 + Ecwid + Robokassa store.
In the near future, the development of PayPal for full-fledged trade in the States and Europe. We are waiting for advice from Habra readers on this issue, because the sphere is absolutely new for us. And by the beginning of the tourist season we are planning to open a shop in the center of St. Petersburg so that foreign tourists do not have to look for Wi-Fi and wait for the order all day.
Anyway, we unexpectedly brought to ourselves an absolutely crazy idea at first glance. Now it is difficult to say what will happen in a year, but our plans are Napoleonic. By the way, in addition to the USSR passport, a Russian Empire passport and a Galactic Republic passport will soon be on sale.
Site of our modest project: MakeMePassport.ru
UPD: Almost forgot! We give all users of Habr a crazy 23% discount. Promo code: IAMFROMHABR
UPD 2: Sorry for the Habraeffect
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/109809/
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