Soft Opening

Today is the first day I talked about StomaStrap in a public forum (in a Reddit thread on /r/ostomy). So someone might actually see this site. What's the plan from here?

I honestly don't know if the solution I use every day will work for other people. I think it will, but starting StomaStrap.com seems to be the only way to find out.

Guess this means that the store is open. Email me at sales@stomastrap.com if you have questions. Or call me.

If we can sell systems 2 a month, that's enough to pay for the Shopify website. Barely.

If we can sell 5 and find a couple of enthused users, maybe we buy a cheapo Google-Ad to see if that moves any product.

If we sell, say, 10 systems in a month AND we get some good feedback from users, then we pack up our 3D printer and drive down to the Wound and Ostomy care conference in Orlando. It would be fun to talk to WOC nurses while the printer jams out new support systems. Plus the chance to talk to people about the possibilities of custom designed ostomy solutions.

If we sell like 20 a month, I'm going to have to get my kids working on filling orders and printing product (I have a day job doing regular engineering type things). Plus maybe some more color options.

What if we sell more? Well, then we'll just need to listen to our customers. I've been wearing a version with the same dimensions for about a year. It took a while to get the design down. What if someone needs supports that are 2mm higher? A fatter ring? Can we offer customizable product via a web interface? Absolutely, if there's demand for it.

Support for some wafer or bag that I've never seen? That's motivating. Got a wafer that we don't support, but looks like it'd work? Contact me and we'll see what we can do.

Want to see where I'm coming from? You can click to view you're not squeamish.

This was me in Sept 2022. Just back from a 40 day hospital stay after complications from rectal cancer surgery. That I'm home and able to get some sleep must be why I'm smiling, because that is a hell of a wound to put a bag on.

That open abdomen contained multiple fistulae. It was like the worst ileostomy ever. Cold drinks came out cold. Here's what it took to bag it.

Google photos shows we did about six months of this, with leaks almost weekly, and a dedicated WOC nurse at my house 2x a week. Finally came up with this brace:

If you want to see what it looked like on:

From that time on, I was able to go places without fear of leakage. Trips to the grocery (even though I couldn't eat). Back to working on-site more often.

Lots of medical professionals said 'you should make those - people with fistulas would love that'. So I said 'Great! Give me a call, I'd be happy to make one for someone else.' No one called.

So, there's some backstory. What I'm motivated by is getting solutions out to people that have lost hope. I have been hopeless, depressed, sick, avoided, and slimy with output. Woken up to soaked bedsheets and a ruined mattress pad. Told that the spots on my CT were suspicious for metastatic disease.

So compared to that, possibly failing at an internet 3D-printed medical device venture run out of my basement seems like pretty small potatoes.

And yes, 'soft opening' is a wildly inappropriate pun. That's par for this course.

~Ed