I grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, and graduated from Mitchell High in 2019. After that I went west to study mechanical engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines. I started Figura Studio because the things I loved making weren't reaching enough people, and the things reaching everyone were rarely thoughtfully made.
Before Figura I was building custom furniture out of wood and welded steel. Heavy, deliberate pieces, but pieces that only ever ended up in a few homes. Custom work is its own reward, but I wanted to make objects that could show up in a lot of places without losing the care that went into them. So I shifted scale: smaller, household, repeatable. Things you live with every day and shouldn't have to think about until you notice they're better than what came before.
The names are Italian. Figura means "shape" or "form," and I chose it, along with the name Roto, as a small tribute to my wife, who is from Italy. Good design starts with paying attention to the geometry that makes something work beautifully. That's the whole brief.
Why a toilet paper holder.
The first object had to be small enough to make in an apartment, useful enough to feel right immediately, and broken enough on every other version available that there was actually room to do better.
The standard toilet paper holder hasn't been redesigned in fifty years. The pop-out spring bar falls in the sink. It bounces across the floor. You need two hands and a minute of your day. None of that is necessary.
I prototyped the Roto on a 3D printer in my apartment in Wichita. The first working version came together in about a month. Then dozens of iterations. I tightened tolerances, refined the spring tension, switched materials. I tested every version in my own bathroom, which is the only honest test bed for something like this. I filed a patent in April. The first fifty units went out in August.
The reload you'll actually look forward to.
One hand, on purpose.
Halfway through prototyping I had a conversation with the team at Bim Bam Boo, a Minneapolis sustainable toilet paper company. They pointed out that the one-handed mechanism wasn't just a convenience. It was an accessibility feature. People with limited grip strength, mobility challenges, or one-handed use cases (which is more people than you'd guess) actually struggle with the spring bar.
That pulled me back home. LifeQuest, Mitchell's residential services program, picked up a dozen Rotos for new microhomes and remodeled apartments. I donated a few more. Independent clients started ordering their own. Something as small as not fumbling with toilet paper genuinely changes the texture of someone's day, and that's a much bigger reason to make this thing well than the one I started with.
Day jobs and side jobs.
I'm a full-time engineer at Textron Aviation, working on components for Cessna and Beechcraft aircraft. On the side I'm pursuing a master's in innovation design at Wichita State, so the engineering side of my brain has a counterweight now.
None of that is unrelated to Figura. The aerospace work teaches discipline about tolerances and materials. The innovation design work teaches me to question whether the thing I'm engineering is actually the thing that should exist. Both feed back into the studio.
What's next.
Right now the Roto is 3D-printed body, anodized aluminum arms, concealed mounting. Six colorways. The next step is moving from 3D printing to injection molding so I can produce more of them, faster, without losing the build quality. I want to release premium versions in solid aluminum, brass, and stainless steel.
Beyond that, the long list. I've been collecting product ideas since high school. Small household objects that have been waiting on a manufacturer who actually cares. Figura is going to ship them one at a time, only when each one is right. Not before.
Thanks for reading. There's more coming.