A brief history of (Javik) time
Many years ago, two people had good jobs and an interesting hobby, borne out of 3am ‘what can we do with our spare time and spare cash’ ruminations. We investigated the options, researched several companies and even had road-trips to be dazzled by laser salesmen – which involved coming home clutching some nifty acrylic thing they had made to show us what their lasers could do. Eventually we decided on a good, British made CTR laser, rearranged our workshop, bought a computer to run the software and eagerly awaited the delivery date.
It arrived in late summer of 2015, and our passion was ignited. We made all sorts. All sorts! Some of it was useful, some of it was very decorative (we made a 3ft tall wooden Eiffel Tower which proudly stood in our front hall for a good few years until the pup decided it was too nice to just stand around doing nothing; it would look much better displaying itself in its various [chewed] parts all around the house), and some of it was just stuff – but even ‘look, I made a thing’ helped us find out what the laser could do, how to make the software do what we wanted it to do; and how this setting would engrave a tiger on a sheet of 80gsm printer paper while this one would cut straight through 9mm of plywood… It was a huge learning curve but one we thoroughly enjoyed and took full advantage of, as we had the time to indulge ourselves.
Then came ‘The Near-Death Experience’. Mr Javik had a really bad day at work, and everything changed. A year of recovery, which provided plenty more time to learn, practice and improve our skills, led to the realisation that actually, lasers were safer and far more interesting. The ‘hey, look what it does if I do this’ turned into a bit of an obsession with finding new ways of doing new things. We went through the house looking for ‘things’ to see if we could laser designs onto whatever it was we found. Apples were very successful, eggs, chocolate, plant pots, chopping boards, cutlery… The laser worm hole had opened up, drawn us in and swallowed us whole. This is what we wanted to do. This is how we wanted to spend our days. What we needed now was a way to turn the obsession into something that meant we could make our passion our livelihood. And so - Javik Laser was born.
What about the name? Well, deciding what to call our new business was one of the more difficult things about the whole process. Bits of paper everywhere with suggestions, discussions, differences of opinion (ok, arguments!) We get asked where are you from, Scandinavia? (West Norfolk!) Are you Vikings? (No.) Is that some obscure ethnic god? (Not that we know of.) In the end it was quite simple. He’s James and I’m Vicky - known to everyone as Vik. So, there we are. Javik. Simple!