Why Patreon?

 What are the Patreon funds going to be used for?

This is going to morph as time goes by. Here’s our plan as things stand right now:

As outlined in this video presentation, our most pressing immediate need is to hire a general manager to take as much of the daily/weekly office work as possible away from Dave, freeing him for actual production (specifically - carving new prints and making new videos).

If we can actually make that transition, a general increase in revenue stemming from his carving and video work should then begin to flow through to cover the costs of that employee … rolling it all into our general business. 

At that point, Patreon support would not be necessary for that specific need, so we will shift it to another area. Just what that will be isn’t knowable at this point, but it would be something from the endless list of important projects that are waiting here for funding:

• We would love to bring our tool project back to life. We have already got the basic designs in place for a set of carving tools  (work done back in 2011~2012), for which there is a very high market demand. Turning those prototypes into actual physical projects ready for market will involve considerable time and money, at least one new staff member, and the creation of production jigs, etc...
• We want to work with our new (experimental) washi supplier to refine the very interesting samples he has produced for us, and develop the means for stable production: helping him purchase a beater, and helping him obtain land and labour for cultivating his own mulberry crop, which would of course be dedicated to producing paper for our requirements. This would be huge for us!
• There is a young man living in Hong Kong who is determined to become a classical Japanese woodblock carver. He began by studying Dave's online materials and practicing by himself, and has more recently continued his development by working together with professional carver Motoharu Asaka, during ‘tourist’ visits to Japan. He is doing some paid work for Mokuhankan already, with the blocks going back and forth by post. Both Asaka-sensei and Dave have the same viewpoint on this young man - he is the best thing to come down the pipe in the entire post-war period, doing stunningly tasteful and refined work. We want to try to get him a work visa, and then residence in Japan (which is his own dream, too). To do that, we would need to guarantee his income for some period …
• Sometime in the near future - nobody knows exactly when of course - Tokyo is going to get absolutely clobbered by a massive earthquake. The experts tell us that this is way overdue … it’s not ‘if’, it’s ‘when’. Now this shouldn’t destroy our business, because even if the Asakusa shop becomes incapacitated, we have other legs to our stool, and could continue as a purely online and subscription business until the infrastructure recovers. But at present, we have absolutely nothing set aside for this. Setting aside a contingency fund would be plain common sense.
• Ready for some ‘pie-in-the-sky’?  Please don’t get too excited about this idea, because even at the earliest it will be a few years away, and it’s of course possible that it might not become practical, but Dave would really like to do kind of a Grand Tour, throwing some tools, paper and blocks into a bag, and doing a couch-surfing trip to various places around the world, visiting with fans and supporters here and there and giving printing demonstrations. This will of course only become practical if the employee situation at Mokuhankan does mature to the point where there is stable competent staff in each of the departments, so that he can get away for extended periods, but that has to be the long-term goal for the organization anyway … so let’s dream big!

Anyway, there you have it. We here at Mokuhankan are all working hard on our dreams and plans, and will continue to do so as far as we are able. We hope you will find our venture worthy of support, in any amount.

Thank you!