Get ready to launch or scale your creative business

Find out how Evka Home kick-started with the Mayku FormBox and Jesmonite homewares

Ready to turn your creative passion into a revenue stream? Looking for inspiration on launching a craft business? Team Mayku chatted to London based Evka Home to hear their lockdown business launch story.

Photos by Nathan Joyce.

How it started

Ewa is a designer from London with a history of selling her own prints. To keep boredom at bay during lockdown, she ordered a DIY Jesmonite Coaster kit and became inspired to launch her own homewares brand. It included a mold made on the FormBox and she became inspired to launch her own homewares brand using Jesmonite terrazzo and the Mayku FormBox.

Ewa got to work designing objects in Adobe Illustrator, which were then laser cut in wood for her first FormBox master shapes. Due to limited studio space, Ewa commissioned her masters from a local maker, who manufactured 10 shapes for £80. In September 2020, she launched and Evka Home has since grown into an exciting part-time job.

More about the Mayku FormBox

I want to eventually be freelance and work for myself alongside selling products that I've designed. Once I did DIY Jesmonite kit at home, I kind of realized I can do this, but with my designs.

Why homewares?

Ewa had experimented with selling art prints in the past, so had some knowledge of running a craft business already. It's difficult to sell prints though, because the space on people's walls is so precious.

Making custom molds on the Mayku FormBox cost only £1 each and with Evka Home's make to order workflow, it's simple to keep costs down and customers happy.

It’s been so much easier and faster to grow a creative business selling tangible, useful objects - the market doesn’t feel as saturated.

How it's going

Ewa is currently manufacturing 30-100 objects per month using molds made on the Mayku FormBox. Being only a few months into her craft business journey and managing it in her spare time, the scope for growth is huge!

Hoping to find the perfect work/life balance with Evka Home, Ewa ensures she takes time off regularly, closing her store to allow time for product development and, most importantly, rest!

My dream is to make Evka Home work and be a freelance designer. That is a way I can work towards getting the lifestyle I want. I want to make the most of my creative ideas.

Why the FormBox?

Ewa needed to launch Evka Home from home and in her free time, so it was critical that the manufacturing process would work in a small space with limited resources. The FormBox is quicker, cleaner and more affordable than endless custom silicone mold experiments. You can test an idea in minutes rather than hours and at just £1 per custom mold, extremely cost-effective for growing craft businesses.

By collaborating with local artists and makers, Ewa was able to produce professional-quality laser cut master objects without needing to invest in additional machines or learning extra techniques. It takes less than a minute to transform almost any shape into a reusable FormBox mold. It's also possible to make FormBox masters with found objects, clay, 3D printing or CNC machines. For Evka Home laser cut wood works beautifully, whilst making use of her digital design skills.

Talk to a Specialist

What was actually really refreshing about Mayku is that you clearly value good design and creativity. So it kind of made me feel like, okay, this is actually designed for people like me.

Just £599 for everything you need to get started

Every FormBox comes with 40 free sheets, 1kg of casting material, three starter templates, full instructions and a universal vacuum cleaner adaptor. Just add your household vacuum cleaner and you're ready to go. After that, it will cost you just £1 per mold.

Talk to a Specialist

Trusted by Thousands

From chocolatiers to Nasa engineers - We have more than 5000 customers in 74 countries and the number keeps on growing.

“The FormBox gives you freedom when creating. It's super easy to use, it's clean and it can be easily combined with other technologies.”

Agustín Arroyo

WikiFactory and UFV Madrid
Madrid, Spain

“What's really refreshing about Mayku is that you clearly value good design and creativity. So it made me feel like it's actually designed for people like me.”

Ewa Lefmann

Evka Home
London, UK

“I don't have to go to a mold maker! It's super fast so I can react creatively with my ideas and create bespoke molds to order for client products.”

Paul A. Young

Paul A. Young Fine Chocolates
London, UK

“You can make whatever you want: if you press a Yale key down into the machine, it will come out exactly the same!”

Damien Wager

Edible Arts Patisserie
Cheltenham, UK

“It's fast to set up and really easy to use. It’s always magical to see children's clay molds being formed into a plastic gargoyle. Works every time!”

Luke Wiehink

Education
Netherlands

“The Mayku FormBox is a great tool to get students engaged in product design from a young age.”

David Baker

Education
London, UK

“Even gaining access to an industrial vacuum former was harder than expected, so being able to produce everything ourselves from our studio with just a vacuum cleaner made the project extremely straight-forward.”

Mike McCabe

Playdude
London, UK

Get ready to launch or scale your creative business

Get ready to launch or scale your creative business

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