Are we really doing this again? Guess so.

Wanna know why this site is up and running again? Well, make yourself comfortable. It's storytime and we're starting with...

feinwasser 1.0

It's 2016 and me and my friend Crispin start feinwasser. We want to be an ethical, disruptive company, challenge capitalism and greed head on. Spoiler: Capitalism wins, big time. After raking in 22 000€ in crowdfunding by offering shirts from a transparent supply chain with a pay-what-you-want model we face our biggest enemy: Selling.

It's not that people do not want to buy. We just realize we suck at wanting to sell. Don't get me wrong, our logistics was crap as well. But the big pain is that feinwasser was supposed to be a political project, changing stuff, making fashion fair and all that. In the end we are just selling more clothing to people. People by and large have enough clothing. Spending your precious time to tell them to buy even more just sucks.

So we bail. Crispin starts a family, I have a hard time accepting that feinwasser is not my future and live in the woods of southern france for a while, mostly depressed.

(though I managed not to look like that most of the time)

That was 2018. By 2020 I have overcome my depression and make a very comfortable living as a freelancer. I have well paying and fun jobs, like writing and illustrating a children's book on children's right for some NGO. Which is just great. Life is great. I have a van, 12 000€ in my bank account and no obligations at all. So I decide to travel for some time and as I pack my stuff, some guy on a market on the other side of the world starts coughing. Whoops.

Prints of the People

With Covid raging and travelling impossible, I quickly think of an even better plan to burn through all my savings: feinwasser 2.0 : Fail Harder. This time the company is called Prints of the People and spoiler alert: capitalism wins again.

It's hard to count all the different ways Prints was doomed from the start. It certainly should have been a warning that we somehow managed to get even worse with logistics.

But seeing the obvious is always easy with hindsight. At the time, the logic to me was sound: Think bigger. Buy the means of production. Print the shirts yourself. And while you're at it: The whole company is now a grassroots collective. Owned by none, shaped by all. What could go wrong, entering a market that is heavily dependent on economics of scale, with 0 capital and 10 strangers that happened to like your facebook post dreaming of a fairer economy?

...

If I was a stand-up comedian, there would be a drawn out pause after that last rhetoric question before I would follow with: "Anyways, I was able to leave the depression ward of Bochums Psychiatry in late 2021."

But as a storyteller it is my duty to inform you that stuff actually happened in the time between starting Prints and experiencing what will, hopefully, always be my worst existential crisis.

(I will not tell you the stuff though. Which sounds like there was lots of conflict, which there was not. We were just naive. And I personally thought I could compensate all the obvious shortcomings of our half-baked ideas by just working harder. lol. )

The Inbetween

The past four years were intense in every way. I was suicidal for the better half of 2021. 2022 was mostly spent recovering and getting back on my feet. 2023 and 2024 gave me some of the most beautiful times of my life. But this text is already quite personal and I people trying to force their "How I managed to beat depression" feel good stories down your throat are a dime a dozen these days.

So I will spare you the details and get to the main question:

Why on earth would I try this a third time?

Actually, let's rephrase that a bit:

Why would I think feinwasser will succeed now, after it has failed twice already?

And the answer to that is: It cannot fail. I tricked you. It's done already. If you are reading this it means, I managed to finish this text and put it online. And that means: feinwasser, in its third iteration, is finally a success.

See, this time I managed to avoid the most basic mistake: feinwasser is not my identity and purpose anymore. I am not dependent on the money here in any way.

I built this site for two reasons:

I wanted to learn a new webdesign framework
I wanted people to be able to appreciate and buy what I design, without any pressure to generate profit

And guess what? Goals achieved <3

If I had to guess I'd say i have spent around 300 hours building this site while learning Svelte 4 and 5 and some GraphQL. I was frustrated at times and I dropped everything and started from scratch three times. But I am incredibly happy with the result. This site looks and feels fresh and fast. I spent countless hours on small details and secret features. Everything is coded clean and ready to be enhanced with new functionality should I feel like doing that.

So yeah, like I said: tricked you. You read all this text and in the end it's just and ad for my webdesign gig.

Just kidding, I must admit I am also extremely happy whenever I see someone with a feinwasser shirt. So of course I do hope this little shop finds some friends and I will get to see my art in the street. And if you really did stick around this crazy long text you can discount any order you want by 20% with the code yeahireadallthat. (Please be fair though: Some shirts are sold for 22€ regulary. They are superficially hidden with access given to certain NGOs. These shirts are sold with no profit to support these NGOs and using the discount on them means your order will actually cost me money.)

Some last words... for now.

It's getting late and concentration is dwindling. I could spend another two hours tomorrow polishing this text, but fuck it: I want to keep enjoying working on this project for the foreseeable future and that means letting go of some of my perfectionism.

So here goes the last call to action (unpolished):

I am really looking forward to use this shop to support cool projects, causes and NGOs. I want to design stuff for your cool project, cause or NGO and I can either sell stuff with the design on a no profit basis or share some or all of the profits. Just hit me up! (But also keep in mind that this is not my main job here and these things take time.)

Oh and I would love to put stickers and postcards and stuff like that in every order but as of right now, you'll just receive your clothing. I am sorry for that. But if that does not deter all of you and people actually buy stuff here I might invest the 500€ or so it takes to print some and store them with the printshop.

Ok, I'm done with writing now.
Lots of Love
Lukas

(lol this was also my OKCupid picture, but I have yet to find a nicer photo of me)

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