I’m Octavio Pardo, founder of Ashler, a design and development studio working at the intersection of brand and digital products. Over the years we’ve collaborated with many type designers and foundries, helping shape their positioning and building websites that have to do a very specific job: present type well, explain licensing clearly, and convert when someone is ready to buy.
Why we’re building The Forge
We kept seeing the same issue: selling fonts online often means bending a foundry’s reality to fit generic e‑commerce. Licensing ends up hacked into product variants, pricing logic gets constrained by checkout limitations, and the whole stack becomes a mix of plugins and custom code you have to maintain forever. Even worse, the browsing-to-buying flow rarely matches how people actually explore type families.
Foundries don’t sell “files”
A foundry sells releases, specimen pages, updates, support, invoices, VAT, renewals, and a constant stream of licensing edge cases that show up as soon as you have real customers. Most platforms weren’t built for that, so you end up simplifying your offer just to make it fit the tooling, instead of building something that fits your business.
What The Forge focuses on
The Forge is a platform designed specifically for foundries:
- Licensing that can match your model (your rules, your pricing, your terms).
- A buying experience that’s fast and reliable when intent is high (cart + checkout performance matters).
- A foundation that can evolve as your catalog and licensing grows, without locking you into brittle workarounds.
The Forge Mini (in progress)
We’re currently building The Forge Mini: a solid starting point that can grow through an affordable monthly fee as you add features and customizations over time. The goal is a clear growth path—and once you hit a defined break point, there should be no reason to keep paying that monthly fee. If you want updates, you can join the newsletter.