Cameron Cooper plans to make his fortune 12 cents at a time.

Working out of his home in Spring Branch, the 30-year-old Rice University graduate this summer launched an Internet-based company making and selling bottle caps stamped with customized logos. His customers include home brewers - hobbyists who make their own beer - and crafters who use the caps to make necklaces, earrings and other pieces of jewelry or art.

Cooper says he got the idea about eight years ago. He was brewing beer himself and marking each bottle with a code keyed to a list keeping track of what was what in his refrigerator.

"That got really silly," he said in a recent interview.

When he looked online for made-to-order bottle caps, however, he found he'd have to buy them by the ton. That's more than 400,000 caps, he said.

"It occurred to me that this is a giant, gaping void in available products," Cooper said. "Over the years, I couldn't let go of the notion that this should exist."

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During that time, Cooper put his degree in computer science to work in Web and software development. He moved into the house his grandparents built in 1958. He participated in Shakespearean productions at Rice, where he met a woman and got engaged. He socked away money from a lucrative consulting job.

About a year ago, he returned to the bottle-cap project in earnest and built a website with an online design tool that allows users to upload their own photo or graphic and order any number of caps for 12 cents apiece, plus shipping. Cooper estimates that as a developer he could've earned about $15,000 for such a job.

He also found a supplier of silver-colored bottle caps, which he buys in bulk for 1.3 cents apiece, and bought a used ink-jet printer. He paid $15,000 for the machine, then modified it for his purposes and built a tray to hold the blank caps in place as they run through it. He fine-tuned a coating process to make the logos resistant to chipping.

Cooper launched BottleMark.com on June 20.

It's a lean operation, just Cooper and his wife of less than a year, Haley, who handles marketing. Their converted den is filled with computer equipment, printer, samples, blank caps and packing boxes. Coated bottle caps dry on metal trays on the back porch. A package containing a filled order awaits the mail carrier by the front door.

The first order, for 200 caps, was shipped to a man in Long Beach, Calif., who then ordered 1,500 more.

Thus far, the Coopers report, they've filled 125 orders - from San Antonio to Norway - and shipped about 17,500 bottle caps. Some feature photographs, while others are strictly typographical, with a beer name, style or even a "brewed on" mark with a place to write in a date by hand. Some small orders are for birthday or wedding gifts.

Some caps aren't meant for beer, but for jewelry - a twist on the popular necklaces or earrings with photos or other designs glued to the underside of the caps.

"Crafters, believe it or not, are really into bottle caps," Haley Cooper said.

Seeking a sliver

But the primary target remains the brew-it-yourself crowd. Cameron Cooper figures if he could capture 1 percent to 2 percent of U.S. home brewers, his business would earn $2 million to $3 million in sales annually.

And that group appears to be spending. Year-over- year sales in June were up 21 percent at Defalco's Home Wine & Beer Supplies, one of four area home brew shops.

Owner Scott Birdwell said Defalco's, which also sells blank caps in different colors that home bottlers can mark themselves, said the increase came in spite of a slowdown in winemaking supplies that he suspects is related to the drought and the scarcity of locally grown fruits. Sales of beer-making supplies were probably up a third, he said.

On Shepherd, the Keg Cowboy store, which had specialized in beer-dispensing equipment, expanded earlier this month as a full-service supply store called Homebrewt. Owner Jeff Woodruff said the new place is three times larger and includes a cold-storage area for grain.

Birdwell is bullish enough that he recently signed a lease to move into a 7,000-square-foot space near his 2,500-square-foot store.

Thoughts of expansion

Meanwhile, Cameron and Haley Cooper plan for their own future. They look to expand the product line to include white caps and perhaps some with a stronger seal for keeping oxygen out. The latter would be more expensive, probably 15 cents apiece, but still less than what is charged by BottleMark's two online competitors. One uses a screen-printing process, and the other seals designs onto caps.

The Coopers hope to be selling 30,000 caps a month within a year, although they concede there is no real benchmark for a business like this.

They hope eventually to automate the loading system and hire employees for the actual production. But for now, the young couple is spending a lot of time together.

"Breakfast, lunch and dinner - and free time and work hours," Haley Cooper said. "We must really love each other."

ronnie.crocker@chron.com twitter.com/rcrocker