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Posted by Rod in Technolust at 7:58 pm on Monday, 19 March 2007
Wellington technology identity Dave5’s latest ‘make things with technology’ blur Ponoko is in beta.
Great website design. Love the How Ponoko works graphic …
My understanding is you can design stuff digitally and then they make it for you. I saw a 3D plastic printer a CeBit a few years and thought that might be fun.
It’s pretty cool seeing some of the ideas coming out of New Zealand now and the quality of design and brand is really lifting.
blog
Great to see some thinking in the way of innovation - design - prototype - manufacture - market. This reminds me of the “Center for smart product” at Weltec in Petone - http://www.cit.ac.nz/smartproduct/ Where you can develop (in cad) your designs, they have rapid prototyping (3D printing) and engineers who can help solve those niggles that develop with most designs.
We must tread cautiously when we make promises of sales. I hope that Ponoko has a strategy to drive the end users to the products - in my experience when you introduce a new technology to the market (even more so if it is a disruptive technology) - is that end users don’t know that;
A - they need the technology.
B - that the technology exists.
There for again in my experience - one of the more beneficial type of marketing is to place your products directly under the nose of your users - so that they cannot miss it. To do this you really need to know who your customers are, (sometimes your customer is not the person who you think they are!) where they are and how they are best approached.
Good luck with your venture Ponoko - I for one will enjoy watching your progress
Hi Jason, good comment. I’m just doing a piece on Ponoko at the moment for Idealog, and from what I can see the audience for the products will naturally come from the networks of the people who design them. Similar model to Threadless, albeit a bit more cutting edge, because while everyone’s heard of t-shirts, it’s easy to make a completely new product which no-one knows what to do with on Ponoko.
Brilliant concept, i will be watching closely. As an Industrial Designer the most difficult thing is getting product to market, i can see this moving in some interesting directions. This will open the floodgates to the student designers.