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Twisters, stole my camera harness. My number one product. The best selling product. The product that built this whole brand. And I can prove it. And I love the original twisters so much that I wore out the VHS tape. I asked Santa Claus for three years in a row for a tornado in a jar. The next year, I asked for lava because I realized a tornado in a jar was a little unrealistic.
And so what we're going to do is review the footage to try to figure out if the harness in the movie is actually one of mine. Is it a knockoff, or did the blockbuster hit of the Summer twisters actually steal my patented prop? And we're talking twisters with the ass, not twister. Because the original twister was released in 1996.
I was just a young lad at the time, sitting in front of my parent's TV watching twisters, being absolute terrified. Death of tornadoes for the next like three months after the first time I watched it. But a couple decades later, no longer afraid of tornadoes. In late 2014, when I was in college, I was just doing lots of woodworking mechanics, leather working, and a few other things just working with my hands, and I wanted to create a brand to put on all the random stuff that I was making.
And some of my roommates went to McDonald's like 3 a.m. and came up with the name that represented of two really big, important people in my life that really made me who I am my grandparents. My grandma had this giant rose garden. She was a super talented artist, she award winning artist, and she really taught me that artistic, the esthetic side of things.
Meanwhile, my grandpa, polar opposite the Korean War vet, an old rugged farmer, tough as nails and he's the one that really taught me how to work and how to work hard. So I wanted the brand name to represent those two important people in my life. So the rose, obviously for my grandma and the anvil for my grandpa Rose anvil.
So a year later, in 2015, I was sitting in the plasma center donating my wife essence just to pay for college. I got an email about a business competition where they're giving teams $100 to start and run a business for four weeks, and whoever makes the most money wins. So me donating my life essence is like, oh, I can use 100 bucks.
I just came up with that name. I can make it a real business. And I just grinded as hard as I could, and I end up winning the business competition. Pawn off as many belt rings, wallets, all the handmade stuff I could to friends, family, everyone around me. And with that investment money that I won from that competition in 2016, I lost my very first Kickstarter with the claw wallet actually having my pocket that was actually named after that grandpa.
Grandpa called. He was also the one that taught me leather working. And so we launched that Kickstarter and after 30 days we raised 12 grand, which to me at the time was a lot of money. You remember, I'm donating my my blood and my wife to just make like 50 bucks or 12 grand. I was like, oh, I can make this a real thing.
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So a year later, 2017, a photographer friend of mine was like, hey, all the camera harnesses on the market suck. I want to hold two cameras. They're all just like two, two belts wrapped around a body. They're really uncomfortable. They pull your hair. I was like, I could do that. I could, I could make something better. So I pulled a bunch of inspiration from the industries that I knew better.
Like, backpacking gun holsters, stuff like that, where you need to hold a lot of weight comfortably. And so I went to work designing this harness. And then by 2018, we were ready to launch the camera harness on Kickstarter again. And so we launched it. And in the first five minutes we already reached our goal by an hour, and we're already over 20 grand.
And by the end of the 30 day campaign, we sold 750 harnesses and raised $175,000. So we relaunched it on Indiegogo. Another crowdfunding campaign raised $250,000. So by the end of all the launches and all this pre-sale, we raise around half $1 million in sales and sold over 2000 harnesses, which for me at the time, you know, didn't have any employees.
I was running the whole business out of my house because I couldn't afford a shop and a house. So I was like, oh, I think we did. I think we figured out a way to make leather working a living. And then through 2019, we built all the harnesses, shipped the all and got everything figured out, hired more employees, and I thought I just had it figured out.
I was finally going to be able to get this idea of this business off the ground and running, get to my ultimate dream of having this giant shop full of tools and toys, and I can just lock the door and make anything I want out of wood, leather, metal. I was like the dreams coming true. Mattel started hearing some whispers of a virus going on in China that might affect the whole world, and we started to see that manifest in our cells.
As the virus slowly got more and more popular, people started buy less and less of these camera harnesses. So I got these employees that now I've got to fill up their time. And so I talked to my friend Zach from Jerry everything. We're making his wedding ring for a video on his channel. I was like, what should I do?
I need to keep these guys busy. I want to start a YouTube channel and after talking to him, I decided I'm going to cut apart a pair of Doc Martin boots. I'm going to tear it apart and like, review it from a leather worker's perspective, similar to how Zack does the cell phones of tourism park. You didn't get crazy views, just a few thousand views in the next days, but it was enough that I was willing to gamble and double down on doing another one.
But little did we know that that little virus they're talking about in 2019 would completely shut down the entire world in 2020, and brought the entire business to a screeching halt. No photographers anywhere were booking anything, so they'd had no money to buy these camera harnesses. So our sales just fell off a cliff during Covid. So all through 2020, I just kept cutting boots and shoes in half.
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By the end of that year, we're at 20,000 subscribers. 2021 we did the first collaboration. We filed a patent for the harness and ended the year at 200,000 subscribers. 2022 we ended up 400,000 subscribers. 2023 I received the official patent for the camera harness and then May 3rd of 2024 twisters is officially released in theaters and I immediately start getting texts from people, hey, is that your harness?
Hey, bro, they stole your heart. It's hey, bro, is this yours? Is that how do I find this? So what was this harness that twister stole? Well, the brand is Rose anvil. The styles, the lone bandit. It's the single camera version of our full harness. It weighs about 11oz. It retails for $175. Made in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Right here in this shop by me and my crew. And the way that we positioned this is the bandit camera harness has an ergonomic design and contours to your body and moves with you instead of against you. This seamless back and shoulder piece eliminates pressure and pain points, and no more ripping your hair out. It harnesses handmade to order right here in our shop.
So now start looking at the actual footage and the photos to really figure out what's what. Starting with the straps. Because those straps are definitely not mine. There's no visible adjustment holes. They're sewn, and they probably do this because I use a cheaper, thinner leather, so I had to sew it to back it. We use this really heavy, basically horse tack belt leather that's super thick.
It's four millimeters thick and we've got tons of adjustment holes because you need be able to adjust your harness. So the way that we did it, you don't have to worry about the stitching failing in those two layers separating. And the one of the movie had zero adjustment holes. Which leads me to think it was made specifically for her, that if you look at the Chicago screws, these little guys here, they just look like regular Chicago screws or rivets.
But either way, they're definitely not my Chicago screws because I designed these to fix the one problem with all Chicago screws. I can't believe nobody fix this before me, because most Chicago screws have a single flathead screwdriver groove to be able to undo them and tighten them with nothing on the other end to be able to grip it.
So if you overtighten it, you can't get it undone or you need to tighten it really tight. It's almost impossible. The way we solved it was we just went to a manufacturers like we want a Chicago screw with a little bit of Loctite on it and a Allen key on top. And so that allows you have two points of leverage.
And one more big piece that's very much not ours is this junction piece where these two straps under your arm come together and the tether is held on, and the one in the movie is just an absolutely terrible idea because there's a little button snap here that you can undo and remove the tether and your camera, which works maybe great for props in a movie set, but when it comes to the actual camera harness, you don't want one little button holding your entire multi thousand dollar camera setup together.
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And we learned that the hard way because the first version of this harness, this tether is only held on with a single Chicago screw. So if that failed your camera fell. And so I had to completely redesign this part. And this is probably the most understated and missable part of this whole design, but it's probably my most favorite.
And the thing I'm most proud of, because we had to reinforce where these two straps come in, and we needed to have the tether not being held on by anything that could potentially fail. And so what I did was I just doubled up the layer of the leather where these connect and then fed through the tether that was also connected with these two straps through the front piece.
So it looks like it's just a regular junction, but it's doubly reinforced and the actual tether has no fail points. You'd have to rip through two layers of leather and pull it through this groove here in order for it to actually fail. So then what did they actually still? Well, one of them is just the overall design and esthetic and shapes of the thing, especially the shoulder piece, are almost identical.
It widens over your shoulder and tapers down to a point. So you got that pressure distribution over your shoulder while not causing too much bulk in your flex points. But there is some differences because on the back they've only got one rivet holding it together. So if one of those rivets failed, your camera falls. Which leads me to think that it might just be a prop, because if you're actually designing it, you would want some redundancy in it, especially those key fell points.
But even that's not technically my exact design because you can tell us a little bit different on the back. It's clearly designed after my design. So then what is for sure stolen from me? Well, one thing is a snap shackle, because you can see the flat end of this bell that distributes the weight of the strap more evenly.
It has a little hole right here that you connect a safety strap to. You can see the integrated hook that I designed, and it's never been put on a snap shackle until we designed it and filed a patent for it, and have the manufacturer manufactured. And you can see the progression of the design throughout the years to prove that it is my original design.
We started with the original snap shackles, started adding a hook, then we added the hole and we ended up here with the final version that works really, really well. So clearly this is ours and you can almost see the rose anvil like shadow of this little stamp here on it. But that's not the only hardware that's in the movie, because this chest hook is also on that harness.
And this is another exclusive hardware design that I designed that you can only get from us. And it is truly unique because no other hook like this has the swivel. They don't have this flat belt and that holds a three quarter inch strap. It's solid brass. And the biggest evidence is if you look really, really closely, you can see the little shadow of this tiny little anvil that we have stamped on every single one of these.
And you can see it in the movie, there's just a little teeny shadow. And I thought that's where it was going to end. I thought were like, oh, that's cool. It like has some similar hardware. It looks like my harness. That's cool. But then we went through all the orders of people who have ordered a snap shackle and a chest hook through all the orders over the last three years, and there was one order with nine snap shackles in it and nine chest hooks, and that was it.
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And it was being shipped to Oklahoma, where the movie was filmed. And in the address it says in the attention spot costume. And the biggest evidence of all the email address associated with that order is twister costume at gmail.com. So clearly they stole a harness design directly from us, the brand that has it patented that we designed and built the entire brand without asking for approval, without giving us any form of credit, and bought $300 worth of hardware from us, and basically did everything they could to rip off my harness and give us as little credit as humanly possible, instead of reaching out to us to be like, hey, we want the main character of
the entire movie to wear your harness through like half a movie that you designed in your bedroom in the remake of one of your childhood favorite movies, twister. So then why didn't they just use my heart as well? Prop departments are always on a really tight budget, even like what is given to it for free. Movies have to be really, really careful about product placement because they they charge crazy amounts of money for real product placement.
So if you give us a little small leather working business, an hour of free screen time, the other advertisers would be understandably upset. And then maybe just part of the design wasn't functional enough for set. Ultimately, I honestly have no idea why they just didn't ask us or use the real deal. So then what do you do? Do you sue them?
Do you smear them all over the internet? Do you cry about it in a YouTube video? Yes, but the cool thing is our sales have increased a little. A lot of my friends and family on and people online have been reached out like, bro, I saw your camera artist guys. Hell yeah, good for you. I saw your camera.
Like it's really cool. Someone thought that my design was cool enough for the lead character of the movie to wear for, like an hour of the movie. And allegedly, the main actress, Daisy Edgar-Jones, specifically wanted her character to have a camera. And so I'm just assuming she wanted my specific parts how it's going to be found, because it was mostly there to make her look more badass.
It was just really cool. It is a wild experience and it was really, really fun for me to see something I designed on the big screen, and the movie's good. It got like 72 and 96 on Rotten Tomatoes. I loved it, it's really funny and corny in a really good way. It harkens back and gives homage to the old version, but at the end of the day, as a small business owner, you're just waiting and hoping and wishing for the day that maybe one of your products would end up on the big screen.
That in the hands of an actress or a famous person, anything to get you a little extra exposure. So when it actually happens and they use your hardware and copy your harness to the tee without actually using your harness, it sucks. But it's also really, really cool to see something you design on the big screen. So if you want to look more like a badass storm chaser, check out our handmade leather goods that we produced by hand here in the shop, because it's the only way that we've been able to do this and build it to a point where Hollywood still in our designs, even if it is a little cool.
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Photos via Universal Pictures / Warner Brothers Pictures / Amblin Entertainment