Most phone cases come out of a single factory. A machine stamps out a plastic mold and that's it. That's not the process that Beau Point takes. By the time one of our needlepoint iPhone cases gets to you, it has moved through three countries and taken over two months to make. Here's how it actually happens.
Haiti
Every Beau Point case starts with the needlepoint. We partner with a certified B-Corp based in Haiti. In case you don't know, a B-Corp certification means the company meets rigorous standards for social and environmental impact, and our partner has built their whole business around providing fair, sustainable work for Haitian artisans.
Each needlepoint panel is stitched entirely by hand on French cotton canvas. A single panel takes four to six hours to complete, which means every case you hold represents most of a workday for the person who made it. Because of that, no two panels are perfectly identical. There are tiny differences in tension and shading from case to case. To me, that's a big deal. You're not buying something a robot made a thousand of. After the panels are finished in Haiti, they get shipped across the ocean to our manufacturer in Shenzhen, China.
USA (Chicago)
The leather starts in Chicago. Horween has been tanning leather at the same location on Chicago's north side since 1905. They are one of the last remaining American tanneries of their kind, and they supply the leather for NFL footballs and NBA basketballs.
I ordered 1,000 square feet of their Dublin leather for the first run of 200 cases. That leather ships from Chicago to Shenzhen separately, where it meets the needlepoint panels for assembly.
China (Shenzhen)
This is where everything comes together. Our manufacturer takes the needlepoint panels from Haiti and the Horween leather from Chicago and turns them into a finished case.
The process goes roughly like this: the leather gets molded to the exact shape of the phone, the needlepoint panel gets affixed to the front, the metal hardware gets attached, and the camera cutouts and port openings get finished. There is also a MagSafe magnet layer built in so the case works with all your existing MagSafe accessories. Once everything passes a quality check, the cases get packed up and shipped from Shenzhen to Atlanta.
Why Do It This Way
This isn't the easiest way to make a phone case, but that's the point. Each component makes the case better, and together they make something no one else is making. That meant searching for the best needlepoint, best leather, and best hardware, regardless of where those parts come from. The first run is 200 cases. Sign up at beau-point.com, and we will notify you when pre-orders go live.