So I’ve gone viral. Now what?
If you’ve kept up with the Wood Rather DIY instagram page, you’ve noticed that there was an influx of new followers, just shy of 20,800 at the time of this writing. There are a few of those who were pulled in from the Catio video (totally unplanned), or what I like to call the ‘catmosphere.’ For those who aren’t well versed in cat slang, a catio is cat + patio = catio. Now, some of these folks have expressed interest in purchasing a fully built catio so I have been busy modifying my original design yet again, which brings me to Catio v2.1, the same catio but now shipment friendly.
Shipping a completely built out catio just wouldn’t make sense, flat pack is the way to go. Not only is it the opposite of cost effective, it would also result in damaged parts upon arrival. The first task is to make it so that it arrives flat and hopefully, undamaged. To do that, it needed to come with some assembly required. Emphasis on the some, otherwise, I may get angry letters or worse, a one star review on my Etsy page.
My initial plan was to disassemble the original and ship it with all the screws. While that does sound like an easy move for me, considering I used a combination of star drive screws along with pocket screws with square drives, I may need to include those bits too. Not great. Also, realizing that without clamps, it might be a challenge to recreate the same steps that I took during the original build. That’s going to get more bad Etsy reviews!
Okay, okay, you get it. It’s not easy so reverse engineer a custom catio. What is the solution, you ask? I finally settled on a total of only 6 bolts. I’ve remade the same cat box and using only 6 bolts, it is actually more sturdy and has a much cleaner look than the one in my original video. I also need a way to attach the platform to the frame, so that means 4 to 6 standard phillips head screws depending on the size of the catio. So this means I only have to include the allen wrench for the bolts and everyone has a screwdriver so that’s covered. As far as some assembly required goes, I think this counts as fewer than ‘some’. In case customers still need extra help, I wrote up instructions with diagrams just so everyone understands how to put it all together. With this plan, I went ahead and sold my first 5 catios on Etsy.
I may have gone viral on IG, but haven’t had the same success with Facebook or Tiktok. It took about 3 years on IG to become internet famous, so let’s see if we can have a repeat on the other platforms. With this new catio design, I’ll try to tell my story in these other two platforms. I’m hoping that I can expand my reach and continue to build what I like and also, inspire others to DIY. Here’s to the next 3 years!
