The Street Soul Story — How Customer Questions Turned Into a Craft

We didn't plan to become a personalisation brand. Our customers kind of decided that for us.

Street Soul started as a men's accessories store. Rings, chains, army tags — the kind of stuff that's hard to find in India without it looking cheap or too flashy. We were happy doing that.

Then the queries started coming in. "Can you put my name on this tag?" "Can you stamp a date on the keychain?" At first we didn't know how to do it. So we figured it out.

Hand stamping isn't complicated to learn, but it takes a while to get right. Each letter is struck individually with a metal stamp and a hammer. You do it wrong, it looks wrong. There's no undo button on copper.

Today it's me and one other person in a small workshop. He's been with me long enough that I've taught him everything I know — which means he's probably better at the straight lines than I am now.

The bigger jobs — cutting sheet metal, larger blanks — we get done at a separate place we rent out. But the stamping, the finishing, the checking — that happens with us.

Every piece that goes out has been held by someone who cared whether it looked right.

That's about it really.