New site, same uncertainty

Hey! It's me, Sam. Things may look a little different around here, but it's all for the best.

We're growing up, and with that comes a new website and newsletter platform. I did my best to carry everyone over, but please don't hesitate to unsubscribe if you don't want to hear from me. I won't be offended.

The New Site

Let's chat about the site, because I'm really proud of it! Previously, I was running everything through Squarespace — which is great for a dingus like me to build a pretty decent website in not too much time. However, I started bumping up against formatting issues and features that Squarespace couldn't support. I did what any dingus does in 2026 and booted up Claude to help me make the site of my dreams. I have a lot of feelings about AI, but I think this is a use case where I've found it to be incredibly capable.

The site features a few new tricks that I love:

First — I have a very cool 3D model on the home page. You can pan and zoom around to see the Donut Hole-der from any angle. Clicking on the highlights will open a little text box describing some features. Similarly, clicking on the text box rotates and zooms into the feature automatically. It's really fun to play with.

Second — the whole site can be reskinned at the click of a button. I loaded up a few colorways which may make their way to the product and implemented a color picker to quickly repaint the entire site to match the theme. I had a strict "no emoji" policy on this site, but I did violate it with a silly raining animation that happens whenever you change colors. I think it was worth it?

Third — a preorder tracker. I've been super transparent through this process and thought it would be fun to show everyone how many preorders have been placed so far. The numbers aren't very impressive yet, but we can change that together!

Fourth — new domain names. I have donutholeder.com (and donutholder.com in case people don't get the joke) and you can now email me at hello@donutholeder.com if you're bored and want to chat.

Fifth — we're using a real newsletter platform called Klaviyo. It allows me to make much better email experiences and feels far more professional than what Squarespace provided.

On top of all of this it's all far far cheaper than what I was paying before. I'm on free plans for everything at the moment, from web hosting to email templates. As we grow, that will change and it's ok!

Trademark is pending

Part of growing up is paying for things like trademarks. I had never done anything like this before, and some quick googling showed me it's not too difficult to do. $350 and 45 minutes of my time later, I think I did it right!

What nobody tells you about the trademark process is that it's full of scammers. In fact, the first email I received from the US Patent and Trademark Office was a warning that I would probably be a target for scammers. Boy, was that an understatement.

I have received about a dozen calls and texts from people pretending to represent the USPTO and demanding more money. Two have sent me physical mail. Physical mail! In this day and age. When I brought this up to folks familiar with the process they all replied with something like "yeah, it sucks." This seems like a fairly easy thing to fix, but maybe I'm out of the loop on how hard it is to not expose a ton of personal information online.

Anyways, I should hear back from the real USPTO within the next 24–36 months.

I was on the news!?

The Dear Dunkin' documentary has been making the rounds up here in Vermont and I received a message from WCAX about doing a profile on my company for their "Made in Vermont" series. It mostly focuses on the work I do for my actual job that pays me money, but I was able to sneak in enough Donut Hole-der content in the b-roll that they had to talk about it too. I'm pushing for a Daytime Emmy.

Next up — social media

I haven't been shy about how much I suck at social media. One look at the @deardunkin Instagram page will confirm it too.

I use Instagram to watch videos of factories that mass produce toilet paper, or people who can run really fast on their hands and feet. I'm not really up to date on what is popular or trending. I'm a 35 year old dad whose friends refuse to open Instagram videos he shares with them in fear of polluting their algorithm. I need help.

Luckily, Katelyn is joining the team to manage socials. She was the co-creator of the Dear Dunkin' documentary, so she already knows how strange I am. Plus she's amazing behind a camera and has tons of footage already to splice and dice. And she's not a 35 year old dad. Stay tuned for a night and day improvement on the Instagram page.

I'm printing a lot of units

I love handing out Donut Hole-ders to friends and family members, and have been mailing a few to influencers (that word makes me queasy) as well. This means my 3D printers have been working nearly non-stop over the last few months. I'm used to using 3D printing as a prototyping method mainly, where I print one version of a design and then move on to improving and refining it. Here, I'm using it more like a low volume manufacturing method and I've been learning how to tweak and improve how I print parts in this manner.

The first thing I've been doing is adjusting the printing parameters for each part to optimize support material. Support material is extra plastic that is deposited to hold up overhanging shapes in my parts. I have to manually break this support material off the print, then it gets thrown in the trash. Reducing the amount of support I use lets me get more prints from the same amount of material, so it's a no brainer. The bigger improvement for my life, however, has been reducing the time it takes to remove the supports.

The original support structure for the body of the Donut Hole-der was printed with the stock settings, including "normal" supports. This resulted in 8.3g of material being used for the support and a total print time of 85 minutes. The annoying part was that it took nearly 2 minutes to clean up each print after completion. That adds up fast! Especially considering it takes only about 15 seconds to assemble a Donut Hole-der once the parts are ready.

Changing to a "tree" support design reduces my material usage by 5g down to 3.3g, and shaves 13 minutes off each print. Most importantly, it takes literally 1 second to remove the support material. That time savings is massive!

Another fun optimization I've been playing with is something called adaptive layer lines. The curved surface of the cap can cause 3D printing artifacts called "stepping." Each 3D printing layer is usually about the same height as one sheet of printer paper. When printing a curve, layers become very apparent where the curve begins to flatten out.

Reducing the layer thickness is the best way to reduce the visibility of these artifacts, but it takes far more time to print. Adaptive layer height is the solution — I can print at the default 0.16mm for most of the part, then drop down to 0.08mm only where needed to reduce the visible lines. The prints look phenomenal.

What's next?

We're going to focus on building enough of a preorder campaign to justify ordering injection molded units — or getting a cease and desist letter. Either are ok. I'm excited to see how socials drive more eyeballs to the site and increase preorders too!

It's pontoon boat season. Enjoy it!

💗Sam