Closing the Business

As of today, we are no longer producing or selling the oStylus. It's been a great few years. We started this blog January 6, 2011, which means we have been with this project for over four years. But now it's time to stop.

My background and skills are in jewellery design and fabrication, not your usual main street jewellery, but contemporary work in alternative and traditional materials. It was this experience and skill that led me into designing the original oStylus, even before the first iPad was launched. I had seen the need for an accurate stylus for creative people to use when  drawing on the iPhone, but it ended up being a perfect fit for the iPad.

We never intended to make this a mega-business, more like a cottage industry, but we worked out the intricacies of designing for machine tools and got parts produced in Ontario, had them shipped to our studio, and assembled and finished them here by hand. I had a lot of help and advice from those with experience in the manufacturing field, particularly here in Owen Sound.

From the moment we started production we had serious demand and it was hard to keep up with that demand. Part of the reason for that was because we were early innovators onto the stylus scene and tablets were fast becoming big news. But because we insisted on quality and hand finishing, and we refused to go offshore for parts production, our prices stayed high. and demand slowly fell off.

In  March 2012 we introduced another design, the oStylus DOT, and we had another spike in demand. But it too has slowed down. We attribute this to two things: the use of Bluetooth in highly accurate styluses with a price not much more than the oStylus, and the generally very low cost of most other mechanical styluses.

Dragonfly Pendant, Sterling Silver

For those of you that own an oStylus let me say thank you. For those who might still want one, email me and we'll see if we have any left. Meanwhile I can now devote more time to my jewellery making. If you would like to see the sort of work we do, check us out at Goss Design Studio.