Our Story
Like it’s founders, CAT – Creative Arts & Technology – is a funky, fresh marriage of tech and fashion. Al, an IT Senior Director at a large Fortune 500 company in Silicon Valley, geeks out making innovative tech projects in their basement, otherwise known as The Lab. And Erin, an IT project manager and fervent fashion enthusiast, gets her groove on hanging out in her overflowing closet with her beloved cats and (many, many) purses. Nearly two decades after these two crazy cats said I DO, they have finally merged their individual interests into one cool, light up bag!
Fresh off his successfully funded PIXEL V2: LED Art Kickstarter campaign, Al was looking into new LED formats. “What’s that,” Erin said one night while he was tweaking around with a rectangular LED matrix. “It’s my latest LED format,” Al said. “You know that would look awesome if we converted it into a clutch,” she said. And Boom – the CAT Clutch was born. Erin got to sketching out bags and Al got to streamlining his Pixel Art boards to fit her designs.
They recruited Keven Lovette to create an app and firmware, Birtu Belete to light up social media, Lorraine Luo for Asia marketing and sales, Seeed Studio & Foxconn to manufacture, and well known pixel artists from all over the world, like Paul Robertson and Jacob Giordano, to provide their art work. The CAT Clutch is patent pending.
We are passionate about entrepreneurship and sharing our experiences and lessons learned with fellow entrepreneurs . Al has delivered a number of talks on how to leverage small run manufacturing to take ideas to products while maintaining a day job.
Running a Kickstarter with a Day Job Presentation
From Concept to Consumer Product Podcast with Electric Runway