“We’ve got a lot going on these days,” a grinning Jeff Rock says as we stand in a bright, 2,000-square-foot single-room warehouse off North Hamilton Street. It’s here where Rock, co-founder of the city’s most prominent software development company, along with his father and colleagues at Mobelux, are trying their hands at creating high-quality handmade products.
To be clear, the eight-year-old Mobelux – Rock and business partner Garrett Ross’ group, which has done work for the likes of Disney, Marvel, Tumblr, and Ford – isn’t going away anytime soon. “We’ve hit the point where we love software, but we wanted to see if we can build great hardware with great software,” Rock explains.
So the team formed New Custom, a technology-driven company that merges handmade goods with a simple website interface that allows customers to rapidly design and customize their product. New Custom’s debut item is a wooden luggage tag that has a map beautifully etched onto one side and identifying information on the reverse. As this company relies on technology so much, it’s important for them to have an IT company on hand if any issues occur. Companies, similar to Sphere IT (sphereit.uk/managed-it-services-london/), can be outsourced and contacted whenever an issue arises. This helps businesses to stay productive, ensuring that any issues are fixed quickly.
Operating the New Custom website is as simple as using Google Maps. The user overlays the precise map area they wish to have etched onto a handsome luggage tag. Customers can pick their wood (maple, walnut, or cherry) and leather color for the strap, and can add a variety of other signature details before finalizing the 1/8th-inch-thick tag, which costs $75.
“What the map means is individual and unique to the person who gets to design it,” Rock says, explaining that some maps may feature the place a couple got engaged or a person was born, or simply a city someone loves.
The final luggage tag is then etched on a laser housed inside a machine the size of a chest freezer. The laser (yes, it’s cool, but really more of a woodworking tool) gives the end product the initial smell of a campfire. The final product is sanded, varnished, and finished off with a leather strap and metal clasp. There’s no telling where New Custom will go, the products it will make, or the materials it will use (laser etching isn’t limited to wood. And New Custom isn’t limited to lasers). As New Custom grows it plans to use tools far beyond lasers, along with new product lines.
“This is not a hobby; this is a business,” Rock says. “It’s something we are going to be working on and iterating on for a long time, so I wanted to make sure that we gave it all the structure and all of the respect that we would give to a client.”
Moving ZIP codes
For the past two years, the Instagram feeds of Mobelux’s Jeff Rock and co-founder, Garrett Ross, have from time to time featured images of graffitied walls, cracked paint, and dark corners of Richmond’s abandoned buildings. The images all made sense late last year when the company announced that, after a long search across old buildings throughout the city, it had acquired the 12,000-square-foot Saunders Station post office on Broad Street as the site of its established and growing software products company.
Built in 1937, Saunders Station was part of the city’s expansion into the present-day near West End, and today, it’s anchored between the thriving Scott’s Addition, development along Broad Street, and VCU-fueled expansion such as the Institute for Contemporary Art at Broad and Belvidere. The renovated Mobelux headquarters will offer flexible space for hosting events such as the company’s RVA Hackathon, a team lounge, company biking infrastructure, and creative and conference rooms.
“Apart from being historically important, Saunders Station is situated in a part of the city that’s fast becoming a crossroads of technology and culture,” Rock says. “That’s a story that we want to help write.”
As this story unfolds, look for Mobelux to begin introducing more design and technology events in Richmond. While they’ve successfully operated the annual RVA Hackathon for years, Mobelux will now have the space to expand into a host of diverse events that bridge technology, craftsmanship, and community.