Going-away gifts · Made in Detroit
GIFTS THAT OUTLAST THE GOODBYE.
Someone you know is leaving. New job in a new city, college three states away, a partner getting stationed somewhere with a different time zone. You want to send them off with something. A card is the default move, and a card is also the first casualty of a move. It rides in a box marked KITCHEN, gets soaked by a leaking shampoo bottle, and surfaces eight months later flattened and forgotten.
A Thudletter does not do that. You photograph a note written by hand, and we 3D-print those exact strokes into a raised-letter slab of hard PLA plastic. White slab, black letters by default. It has weight. It does not bend, run, or hide in a box. It is the heavy thing that survives the move and ends up on the new desk, which means a piece of the people they left lands in the place they went.
THE THING THAT SURVIVES THE BOXES
Moving is a sorting machine. Everything soft and flat gets crushed, lost, or thrown out in the unpacking panic. A slab is dense plastic. It is the object that gets set down on day one because it will not fit anywhere it can be ignored.
PLA is a hard plant-derived plastic. It lives on shelves and walls. It will not melt in a mailbox. It will melt in a dishwasher or a hot parked car, so do not put it in either, but a desk in a new apartment is exactly where it belongs. Years from now it is still sitting there saying the thing you wrote, in your own handwriting, in the place they moved to, long after the goodbye itself went quiet.
WHAT TO ACTUALLY WRITE
The temptation is to write a speech. Resist it. Raised letters reward short and blunt. Write your line out by hand, photograph it, and we print those exact strokes. Your loops and your slant, or the whole crew's, now permanent. Whatever notebook is going round the table works. We find the ruled lines and drop them. Use a dark pen, light the whole page evenly, and keep the shot sharp.
Good slabs are specific. The inside joke. The nickname only your group uses. The bad thing you both survived at the old job. The date you met. One line that only the two of you fully understand reads better in plastic than any generic goodbye.
No handwriting to hand? There is a typed fallback inside the flow. It caps at 280 characters, which is still the right amount of room for one true line and not a paragraph of feelings nobody will read twice.
THE GOING-AWAY-PARTY HAND-OFF
Cards at a going-away party get a polite glance and then live in a tote bag. A slab gets passed around the table. People pick it up. They feel the weight, run a thumb over the letters, ask where you got it. It is the rare group gift that survives the night sober and the morning after.
If the whole crew is signing off together, the puzzle add-on earns its keep. We cut the slab into friction-fit pieces, so it shows up as a small box of plastic the person has to assemble. It is plus $5 on Small, plus $6 on Standard, plus $11 on Jumbo. Hand them the box at the party. They build the message later, alone, in the new place. That timing does more work than any speech.
SIZES, PRICE, AND THE DESK TEST
Three sizes. Small at $22 fits a desk corner or a packed-light carry-on. Standard at $28 is the safe default and reads cleanly across a room. Jumbo at $39 is the wall piece, the one that announces itself in a half-furnished apartment. Free US shipping, United States only at launch.
Think about where it ends up. Someone moving into a tiny first apartment gets a Small they can find a spot for. Someone moving into an office gets a Standard for the desk. Someone you really want to floor gets a Jumbo on the wall.
SHIP IT AHEAD OF THE MOVE DATE
Timing matters more here than with most gifts, because the address is about to change. Small and Standard take about 5 days to the mailbox. Jumbo takes about 7. Build in a buffer and order with the move date in mind.
Two clean plays. Ship it to the old address so it arrives before they pack, and it becomes the last thing in and the first thing out. Or ship it to the new address so it is waiting when they walk into an empty place. Either way, order early enough that the slab beats the truck.
If it arrives broken or we misprinted it on our end, we reprint it free within 30 days. That is on us, not on the post office, and not on the chaos of a move.
Enough reading
Pick a size, write one honest line by hand, and photograph it. We print those strokes, box it, and mail it from Detroit so it lands on the new desk before the goodbye fades. Hit Make one and send the heavy thing that survives the move.