UpsetCats.com

My latest personal side project involved building an e-commerce store. The inspiration for this idea came to me from my pet cat and after doing some market research I decided to give it a go.

This is basically a passion project, something I’ve been working on for a long time because I believe it was a unique idea that is worth bringing to life.

The idea for this shop came to me from the cat I gifted my wife on her birthday. I have owned cats before of course but this one was a little bit special. It was our first pet as a couple. Since for my wife it was her first experience owning a cat there were things that she started to point out that someone who was around cats before simply won’t notice anymore.

Yes, this cat was an absolute menace to society. And most of all a menace in our lives as it turns out.

At some point I wanted to gift my wife a T-Shirt with a picture resembling our orange cat. But all I could find were these very cute looking designs with cats looking very happy and adorable. Nothing like our cat who was always up to no good.

And that’s how the idea for Upset Cats was born. I decided to create a clothing brand that would depict our beloved pets in the most realistic way possible: frowny and moody as they always are.

To my surprise my wife adored the idea and was convinced I should see it through, so I did.

Initially I’ve spent a lot of time drawing and creating these designs so that I could start working on the website. Later in that process I decided that the whole project would have more ‘‘soul and heart’’ if I used actual real cats with real stories from real people as a template for my designs.

So I first started asking around in my friends circle for people’s cats pictures and stories to inspire my creations. Now the shop has designs inspired by real cats, it borrows their names, resemblance and stories from their owners. Currently I’m trying to reach out to more people and put out a word to our customers to submit their cats and stories to be featured in our future collections.

After creating the designs I had to come up with a logo and a presentable website. I like minimalistic design and that’s what I chose for the shop.

As simple as possible with focus on quality and easy to use user experience was my focus when creating the online storefront. The same goes for the logo which I believe conveys my idea very well and is easily applicable throughout many different media.

After assembling the website I invested an unreasonable amount of time and money into advertising and marketing.

The rest is history, UpsetCats.com was a success! Go check it out.

The Protector