The Grampian

A DIY wallet kit designed to build connection.

Client: Self Initiated

Services: Product Design, Experience Design, Design for Manufacture, prototyping, 

Brief: Design a premium leather card holder kit that delivers an experience. In a throwaway economy, the goal was to create a genuine connection between maker and object, rooted in a craft practised for over 400,000 years. The kit had to be accessible to a total beginner while producing a result a seasoned maker would be proud of.

Meet The Grampian

A DIY, premium leather card holder kit that takes you on a journey of discovery into a craft that has been practised for 400,000. With this kit you would get:

✓ Your choice of matched full grain leather

✓ All of the tools to get started with leather working (needles / edge beveler / leather glue / edge slicker / burnishing gum)

✓ Designed Experience: Die cut leather and a high value video guide to guarantee even a total beginner can produce a premium wallet to be proud of and cherish

Design Requirements

Beginners welcome. The experience must be designed so that zero prior knowledge of leather working is a starting point, not a barrier.

Premium output guaranteed. Die-cut leather and a high value video guide to remove the variables - every customer should finish with something worth keeping.

Complete from the box. All tools included. No additional purchases, no friction, no excuses not to start.

Connection over convenience. The deliberate decision to sell a kit rather than a finished wallet was grounded in the IKEA effect - research consistently shows that consumers place significantly higher value on objects they have had a hand in making.

The Approach

The design had been refined over several years, working through the details of the leather pattern, the tool selection, and the instructional content in parallel. A die-cut template removed the most technically demanding step for a beginner - accurate cutting - while preserving all of the hand finishing that makes leather working satisfying. The video guide would be produced to a standard that could carry a first-time maker from unboxing to finished wallet without a single point of confusion. Leaving them with the key tools to then produce further projects.

Launching as a kit rather than a product was a deliberate positioning choice - not a cost decision. It reframes the object as an investment of time, not just money, and builds the kind of ownership that keeps things out of landfill.