The listing for the Mojave color is complete and the Royal Blue is in progress. Amazon has checked in the Mojave inventory and it is now available for purchase.
Visit the product page for more information: The Vanguard Guitar Strap Line
After several months of research, planning, strap design, packaging and labeling trials, communication challenges with various suppliers, the creation of countless spreadsheets weighing options, ordering and testing of various samples, and working through shipping and import hurdles, the first shipment of the first product line for Sovereign Straps has arrived!
Next we need to sort through a GS1 UPC issue that is preventing the creation of the Amazon listing, then they will be shipped to the warehouses while product pictures and sales pages are created.
It won’t be long now…these should be ready for the holiday season.
Stay tuned for more updates on each model.
The Vanguard Strap design is now complete, samples have been received, and the first production order has been placed. The order should arrive in about a month. As we prepare for the launch we will be providing updates with increased frequency.
Today lets talk about the product tag. The tag is interesting because it is the elevator speech for the product. It attempts to tell the potential customer why this particular item is better than the item next to it on the store shelf. Creating the tag is oddly satisfying after spending months designing a product because you are gathering up the good about the product and trying to make it impossible to miss by the customer. It is remarkably similar to creating a dating profile!
So what makes the Vanguard Strap better than the 1000+ other options?
Progress continues on development of The Vanguard Strap! Over the last week we have been fine tuning the design and manufacturing process for the genuine cow hide leather ends.
On the back end of the strap, the leather will be folded through the buckle and sewn all the way around the edges and the slot. For the front end, two pieces of leather will be sewn together by going all the way around the edges and around the slot as well. The strap itself will be sandwiched in the middle.
I personally like the look of the additional stitching and the security of the two ply strap end design. What do you think?
The selected manufacturer for The Vanguard Guitar strap is running about 12 trial patterns for Sovereign Straps and they sent me a picture of one of the trials today. The colors are not exactly what we were going for but the weave is amazing (picture in the header).
Since the color was a bit off target, I spent a couple of hours tonight reviewing Pantone Swatches with the supplier to prepare to run another sample. This is quite difficult to do electronically. Photoshop is proving to be very valuable for this work, however, it is difficult to pick up actual colors in photos.
During October in the USA many people change out their home decorations for the fall. The colors shift black and orange then then more brown as Halloween moves to Thanksgiving. Then the collective decorating skill of the USA seems to fall apart as Christmas approaches. The pattern below attempts to strike a chord (pun intended) with that want for fall colors. I think it needs more orange and the next trial run should be done tomorrow.
What do you think? Note that these pictures are of the weave layer only which would be attached to a white cotton base material which brings it all together in my opinion.
The machines that do this work are a marvel of modern technology. From the back of the strap you can see the complexity of the work performed by this machine. Picture below…
After many weeks of preparation, discussions, calculations, marketing investigations, and back and forth between 15 different suppliers we have chosen the manufacturer for this first product and have ordered 12 samples of around 3 different design ideas for testing, trials, and quality inspection. With any luck, at least one of the samples will be worthy of being labelled as the first product for Sovereign Straps.
Sovereign Straps 