In the summer of 2015 I bought my first smart phone. That Nexus 5X was a big step up from my previous favorit Motorola RAZR, not just in technology but also in size. I had a problem with that. How do you carry this “huge” thing around without turning into a dork? So, after toying around the idea of making my own phone carrier pouch for a while, building a prototype out of cardboard, perfecting my design, I came up with this device that I call “ExxoPok”.
invention of the ExxoPok

As soon as people saw me sporting that invention I got requests to make them one for their phone. After giving away about a dozen to friends and family, I set up an Etsy shop and made my first sale in December of 2015. Over the years I made and sold about 150 of my phone pouches. The price I charged was just about enough to cover the cost of making them. I never intended to turn this into a serious source of income, it was just a fun hobby. In September of 2019 we moved to Germany,  so I put my Etsy shop on “vacation” to give me time to settle into my new life.

When I thought I was ready I opened up an Etsy shop in Germany and also built my own shop on my personal webspace – to practice HTML5, using a free shop with ECWID.
buy an ExxoPok from me

Since I didn’t advertise and didn’t really care if I sold anything or not, there was hardly any activity on Etsy, or on my personal page. In December of 2023 I made one sale on Etsy. Somebody bought a Christmas present for her friend. At that point I calculated Etsy’s listing fees against my “profit” from that one sale in four years and decided the whole thing wasn’t worth it. I closed the Etsy shop and removed the payment methods from my personal ECWID shop. Done.

Along came December 2024 when I received an email from Eve in Oklahoma. She had found my personal website and tried to purchase an ExxoPok for her iphone 7. Because there was no payment method linked to that shop anymore she couldn’t pay.

So I made an exception for her and I also linked my Paypal to the ECWID shop again. Today I received a very nice message from my surprise customer with a picture of herself carrying ExxoPok number 160. She likes it.