Where Wanderlust Meets Workshop

Founded in 2018, Odyssey Mercantile began as a lifestyle blog documenting workshops and craftsmanship across America. What started as storytelling evolved into toolmaking when we discovered a critical problem: woodworkers were losing thousands of dollars annually to material waste and calculation errors.

After interviewing over 200 professional woodworkers, we found that 73% of material waste came from manual calculation errors, poor optimization, and the inability to adjust plans mid-project. The "dusty hands" problem meant makers couldn't easily use phones or computers while working.

We pivoted from documenting the maker movement to actively participating in it. CRAFT emerged from this research - a voice-first AI assistant that lets makers say "I need 5 pieces of 2 by 4, each 8 feet long" and get instant optimization.

Our 247 beta testers achieved average material savings of 30% and annual cost savings of $2,400. With 94% retention after 30 days, we're ready to bring CRAFT to the iOS App Store and transform woodworking.

"I spent years writing about elevated experiences around the world. But the real elevation came when I realized we could transform an entire industry. Every master craftsman I met struggled with the same problems. We decided to solve them."— Brian Lopez, Founder

The Maker Moment

The pivotal moment came in a small workshop in Kyoto. Watching a master woodworker with 40 years of experience use a pencil and paper to calculate board feet, I realized something profound: incredible skill was being held back by inefficient tools.

That same craftsman lost 30% of his premium Japanese cedar to poor optimization. When I showed him a rough prototype of what would become CRAFT, his eyes lit up. "This would have saved me a fortune over the years," he said in broken English. That's when I knew we had to build this.