04 · BusinessClosed in 2024
QsCables
- Role
- Founder / Maker / Marketer
- Timeline
- 2021 – 2024
- Status
- Closed in 2024
Description
I started an artisan cable business out of my bedroom: a Shopify store, a production line, a photography booth, my own marketing, and orders shipped internationally.
A finished buildCoiled, aviator connector The build was obsessive, on purpose
First, raw wire was double-sleeved with German paracord and Techflex. Then each coil was heat-set around a brass rod in the oven, shocked in the freezer, re-coiled the opposite way, and set again. Then hand-soldered aviator connectors, heatshrink, and the final touches. It sounds like overkill until you pull one: most cheap cables on Amazon slacken and never recover, while mine spring right back to a tight coil. I knew a strong product was the most crucial thing for an artisan business, and the multi-hour build process reflected that.
Detachable ends and connectors, the parts most people never see. It had to look as good as it worked
I shot all my own product photography. Every image in this case is mine. If the cable was going to sell online, the photo had to do the selling.
Dual-colored cables, a delicate add-on process of melting the sleeving together. ▲ my marketingAnd I marketed the whole thing myself
I had no ad budget. Using just organic posts in the keyboard communities on Reddit and Instagram, plus a few giveaway campaigns, I reached over 50,000 post impressions. My Instagram was only 115 followers, but the engagement punched way above that, and most importantly, it drove converting traffic to the store.
Out in the wild, on real keyboards
The best part was seeing them land on customers' desks. The color combos were built to match a specific board, right down to the keycaps, a small tribute to the quality and care I put into every order.
A customer's board, with their cableAnother customer build in the wild Why I closed it
As bigger vendors scaled into custom cables, order volume slowed and the margins stopped making sense. By then I'd run every part of a business at once, product, brand, marketing, and fulfillment, before I could drive. I moved that same energy into videography, where the market was wide open and the craft ran deeper.
