USA factory opened 10th March 2023

We have now opened our second factory in USA, two years after the launch of my innovation. Stackers are now manufactured in Santa Maria, California. This means faster and cheaper shipping for our USA customers. The factory in Finland continues fulfilling our European customers needs.

BACKSTORY

I am Marco Melander (MA) and I have been a professional photographer for over 30 years. I started my career during the film era and saw the change to the digital world. The studio photography has still remained the same principles as a working space - it has to be versatile and organized.

I developed Stacker when I moved to my latest shared studio space in 2020. We all had loads of backdrops — over 50 rolls altogether. They were all just leaning against the studio wall in a wild, loose mess. It was a nightmare if you actually wanted to find something at the bottom… I had witnessed the same problem at several of my previous studios.

I like to keep my backdrops in their original boxes because they stay safe that way. It’s so easy to have a tear that destroys the entire roll. And often I have to take my backdrops to a location so the box offers good protection during transport.

I studied the market for a solution to my problem but found nothing reasonable. I started to think about slots, some sort of lockers where I could store the backdrops upright. And then one morning it struck me: I turned the rack upside down. A wall mounted rack with slots was a surprisingly simple solution but I never had seen one before.

I welded the first prototypes myself and then started developing it as a product. And thus the Stacker was born!

Selling Stacker via my own web shop allows me to keep the price affordable — from one photographer to another. Stacker is my own invention and it is manufactured in Riihimäki, Finland.

Marco Melander, March 2021, Helsinki Finland