About Us

Our Story

Rock on Road began with a small animal and a big regret.

After more than 35 years in gift design and manufacturing, I reached a chapter in life where I started quietly preparing for retirement. I had helped create countless gifts for other people, but when it came time to honor a relationship of my own, I realised there was nothing on the market that felt “just right”.

At that time, the one I missed most was Curry – a guinea pig who had been my little companion for many years.
When Curry passed away, I wanted a keepsake that could live in my home and wouldn’t just be another piece of paper. So I ordered a custom rock slate photo from a seller on Etsy, hoping to keep Curry’s image on stone.

I went back and forth with the seller, explaining my idea again and again, but every design felt “a bit off”.
In the end, I even created my own artwork and sent it to the seller to print.

When the finished slate finally arrived, my feelings were mixed.
Yes, it was a slate with Curry’s photo on it.
But the price was high, the print quality wasn’t what I had hoped for, and the turnaround time was long.
Deep down I knew: this was not the tribute Curry truly deserved.

Some time later, I visited a gift fair.
Standing in the exhibition hall, looking at product after product, one strong thought came to me:

“If I were the one making these, I could create something better than what I see on Etsy.”

Once that thought appeared, it refused to go away.

So I started a journey that was anything but easy.
I handled my daily work during the day, then spent nights researching and learning:

• Machines and equipment

• Printing methods and coatings

• Inks and colour performance

• Slate quality and suppliers

• Cost calculations and packaging tests

Solve one problem, and three new ones appear.
Days turned into months of test prints, adjustments, failures and reprints.

Until one day, I finally produced the first rock slate that I was truly proud of.

In that moment, I felt like a kid.
I held the slate in my hands, looked at it again and again, and kept thinking:

“If Curry’s memorial slate had looked like this, how happy would I have been?”

For several days, I was genuinely excited.
Because I knew this was more than just a piece of stone –
it was the real beginning of a new custom gift project in my life.

From the first idea to the first slate I genuinely approved of took around six months.
And in reality, there was more behind it.

I often joke that I’m “very Virgo”.
If a product isn’t good enough, even a small defect means it will never reach the market.
I never want anyone to repeat the feeling I had: high expectations followed by disappointment.

I’ve been in small gift manufacturing for 35 years.
That experience has given me an almost “obsessive” standard for this rock slate project.
Every piece must reach the level of “something I would personally want to keep forever” before it leaves the studio.

I set myself a simple but very strict rule:

“If I wouldn’t accept it for myself, I will never ship it to a customer.”

To live up to that rule, I kept tweaking the machines, testing samples and adjusting details.
What I thought would take a few months ended up taking an extra four.
Only then did I feel ready to say, publicly:

“Okay. Now we are ready to ship.”

For that one sentence – “we are ready to ship” –
I spent a total of thirteen months.

The next step was turning this into a real business.
I started listing my products on Amazon, Etsy and Shopify.

That opened up a whole new world.
Setting up an Amazon account felt like another kind of training:

• Company documents

• Personal identity checks

• Verification processes

Form after form, step after step.

It took about two weeks from deciding to apply to finally getting the account approved.
And even then, the story wasn’t over – I still had to learn how to list products:

• Image standards

• Titles and descriptions

• Keywords and categories

• Shipping and logistics setup

None of these tasks were individually difficult, but together they formed a completely new system I had to learn from scratch.

When the first product finally went live on Amazon and I saw the “Active” status on the screen, one sentence stood out clearly in my mind:

“So it’s really possible to put my story – and other people’s stories – onto stone and send them to homes around the world.”

From that “not quite right” Curry slate I bought on Etsy,
to the first slate I printed with my own hands,
to where Rock on Road is today –

this is not just a business.
It is the path a middle‑aged man chose, to walk into the next chapter of life with a new kind of purpose.