Hello all, my name is Aaron. I'm an Australian that has been living in China for the past 9 years, and continue to do so. I have always loved leather goods, and it has been a dream of mine for the past 12 years or so to be able to create these goods as well as admire them. Unfortunately, time, life and business commitments have always gotten in the way. But FINALLY now my business is running well and I have been lucky enough to be able to delegate most day to day operations to others so that I may pursue something which I love, and hopefully turn into a business unto itself (my ultimate dream - making a living off of something I love doing) My background is in engineering (I am a toolmaker by trade, and engineer by profession) - so if you have steel questions etc - feel free to ask! I strangely enough also have a heavy background in sewn product, and my wife and I own/operate a sewing factory . I mostly take care of the machines, pattern making, technical stuff etc etc. I had researched long and hard before deciding to purchase the courses from Phil, as his style is exactly what I am interested in - european elegance with an old world twist. I also have a great respect for Phil as he obviously practice what he preaches and his work is outstanding - something which I hope to emulate. The issue I had found previously when researching leathercrafts is that most of the content is American based saddle/tack biased, which, whilst it has its place, it is not something I am greatly interested in. I am currently in my purchasing phase, gathering a list of suppliers/ materials and building up my tooling arsenal. I will admit to being overly eager though - I purchased 3 full hides of leather prior to finding this course, had them all laid out and got excited - then after watching a couple of videos, I rolled the hides up nicely in kraft paper and put them away and bought a couple of bags of scrap leather...need to learn to crawl before I can walk. I hope to be an active member of this community, and thank you all in advance for having me! Warm Regards Aaron