HOT FOIL PRESS - Metallic Elephant KSF mini or Dream Factory?

I'm pleased to say I went for it and I am now the proud owner of a metallic Elephant mini KSF. So far it's great! The customer service was spot on, Vincent was really helpful and gave a complimentary logo stamp, super fast delivery and followed up with me a week later too. The only down side I can see so far is the area for type is a wee bit small but it's good enough for what I need. I'm most happy that it will be easily transportable to pop up events. Thanks everyone who kindly gave advice : )

I was also looking at both. What I didn't like about the Dream Factory machine, just from researching, not from touching one, is that I noticed their logo is the "virtually" the same as the Little King Goods logo, owned by Ryan Savin. I thought well, maybe good for Ryan. "They got some little bidness thang going on."

He did a piece in a YouTube video about the machine and I was wondering if they were affiliated so I wrote to him about it. He said he was "aware of the similarity and gets that question a lot" but that they were not affiliated and he has no affiliate links with them.

I wrote also to Ho Myoung at Dream FactoryKR who said the logos "were similar but they don't share them together".

They look more than freakin' similar to me anyway. Maybe it's just me but I don't like brand confusion, any appearance of collusion, appropriation of one business' logo by another through copy or extreme similarity, trademark infringement, etc., stuff like that.

Interestingly, I also didn't like that neither Ryan nor Ho seemed to be bothered about the logo "similarity". Maybe they are just non-confrontational and really nice guys or something. But, if there would be anything I'd get confrontational about, that would be one. I mean, dang, really!?!

So, Ryan spoke highly of the machine, featured it in a video, and doesn't care that they use a logo so close to his own that I can't tell the difference, but they have no affiliation. Yeah? Maybe.

I get another potential factor also. They are small small businesses. Ryan's Canadian in Canada with his little leather goods business. Ho is Korean in Korea at joongangcnc.com. So, what you gonna do, anyway? Live life and be happy or drive yourself crazy over someone else you can't control?

So I decided, I don't care how good and less expensive it is, I just don't don't want to buy from someone that I don't have a good feeling about. I think, for sure, if there is a problem down the road, it could be a real problem.

Maybe I'm wrong but that's how I feel about it.

I now own a KSF Mini, Upper Case and Lower Case Times New Roman lettering sets, 2 logo stamps and 1 other special stamp that Vincent at Metallic Elephant had made for me. Yeah, it was (much) more expensive but I'm pretty sure I'll be happier in the long run.

Money, as a business investment, and money, as a hobby spend, are two entirely different things.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, that's really helpful. Best of luck rebuilding your Kingsley!

Hey Kelly,

I own neither to be honest. I recently purchased a used Kinglsye machine that I am rebuilding from scratch basically. But that's neither here nor there.

All i can tell you is the few people I know who own a DremFactory machine are not in love with it. For various reasons. Also, a machine that doubles as a HotFoil + Press should in theory be not that good:

Either it gives too much pressing power and it will give a bad stamp, or it has little power and will be a nightmare to use as a press.