Building a business on the internet’s love of cats: the maker of Katt shares his story

This post is part of a new series by Product Hunt, Makers’ Stories, highlighting unique products and the people behind them from across the world.

Bregt Colpaert is the maker of Katt, an e-commerce platform featuring feline-inspired items, which was featured on Product Hunt on Halloween this year. Bregt runs Katt as a side project with his partner Alejandra from their home in Bruges, Belgium.

What are you building and why did you decide to work on this?

People don’t look to fashion brands and corporations for fashion inspiration. They want to decide for themselves. They seek personalized, individual style. Katt is part of this rebellion. With small pieces of art, we allow people to express themselves. Even a pin can turn an ordinary piece of fabric into something special. Something unique.

Katt isn’t just about beautiful statement pieces. The traditional idea of pins, t-shirt and prints was to show support, and so do we. Katt is a unique platform for local designers and illustrators.

We introduce our customers to exclusive collaborations from some of the most relevant independent artists and creatives, showcasing their work and supporting the artists behind them. Our products have more than just cats in common: each collection has a face, like the artists behind them, like our customers, and like us.

What age were you when you first started making anything? What did you make?

The first thing I ever made was a Nintendo fan magazine at the age of 12. I sold yearly subscriptions to family and friends at school, which I used to pay for my games to review. The magazine was in black and white, printed on my own dot matrix printer and copied at the local print shop.

I also started a PlayStation fan site that got just enough traction to get me free games from publishers to review. This later evolved into a social network targeting gaming journalists (gameleon.net) that was later sold, but the new owner unfortunately did not invest in it.

Where do you usually work from? What’s your ideal setup?

While there are many start-up hot spots around the world, hard work can be done from every spot there is an internet connection. Devotion is more important than location. Try. Fail. Learn. Repeat.

I bounce around too often to have an ideal setup. 😅

Who are the people you admire and look to for inspiration?

Lorenz Bogaert & Toon Coppens. They hired me almost 8 years ago to work for Netlog, a pre-Facebook era social network with 30 million unique visitors and four billion page views per month, while I had no professional experience in tech. It’s amazing what you can do when people believe in you.

What were some of your favourite products, toys or gadgets when you were growing up as a kid?

The Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega MegaDrive, Sony MiniDisc, Napster, and the Iomega Zipdisk / Zipdrive. I used to use Napster at home to download music using a dial-up internet connection, put it on my Zipdisk to take it with me and listen on other places with no internet connection. I loved the transparant design of my ZipDrive.

What worries or scares you about the future of tech?

Most new technology involves some kind of increase in screen time for the people using it. I’d like to see more “offline” or “non-screen” start-ups. We keep getting pulled to a screen and even if we connect with real people on our screens, we’re still only seeing a representation of reality.

If money were no object, what would you do with your time?

Most likely the same as I am doing today, except taking some more time off to spend with my family 🙂

You’re on a desert island and you can only bring one app with you. Which app do you bring?

The Chrome browser would be the safest choice.

What are your most used and favorite emojis? Please share a screenshot of your most recently used emojis on your phone.

🐺 Wolf Face & ❤️ Red Heart — We are a newly blended family with 4 kids in total, my two boys and two girls from my partner Alejandra. We all have our own emoticons which refer to the animals we relate to. I’m the 🐒 monkey, Alejandra is the 🐺 wolf, my sons are 🐿️ squirrel and 🐻 bear, and the two girls are 🦉 owl and 🐇 rabbit.