Old About

This was the first rock I painted some years ago. A gift to my girlfriend.

2014 every gift I gave that Christmas was a painted rock.

I realized right away painting all these gifts that flat/smooth rocks are harder to come by than I thought.

Being a skateboarder I've learned how to use Bondo (automotive body filler) to fill in cracks in the cement...

to make rolling over or grinding through them easier.

I applied the same idea to the rocks. Making the painting surface much cleaner.

This also meant I could paint on any rock, instead of just flat ones or smooth ones.

Everyone who received a rock that Christmas told me that I should be selling these.

“Would people really be interested in buying these, how could I find out?”

 

6 months later. Still no store for these rocks, I began learning how to use analytics for a business I own. I was testing out QR Codes in ads that linked to my analytics.

This flooded my mind with ideas.

This is where I started thinking. I wanted to experiment with the rocks, QR Codes, and analytics all together. I told myself something along the lines of this...

“If you can make some rocks and go place them in high foot traffic areas and see that people are interested in them, then you can make an online store for them.”

 

So I made several rocks like these to test my little thought experiment in action.

On the back of all those rocks I put a QR Code.

I linked the QR Code landing pages to the analytics and began placing them all around downtown Phoenix on multiple occasions.

As I hid them I also "Location Tagged" them on Instagram as I posted (this allowed people from the Internet as well as people that randomly stumbled upon them to play "Petrafind").

It worked!

People were finding them and scanning the QR Codes.

If you're curious here's what it looks like if you find a rock and scan the code.

This is how I came up with the name Petrafind.

Petra means stone or rock in Greek.

Find means find.

Petrafind sounds like petrified. Petrified means to convert into stone.

This is a fun side project for me. We'll see what happens with it from here.

For now you can get a custom rock and I can put...

I hope. Otherwise you can...

now.

Or follow along on Instagram and...

Thanks for visiting,

John Motta

Artist, Pro Skateboarder, Business Owner, INFJ.