Ever wondered why you don’t make and sell as much cool stuff as you’d like?
You are not alone.
Many of us have great ideas for products that never get beyond the concept stage. Why? Because it’s just too hard.
Last year we surveyed over 10,000 creators and found many of them come up against the same brick walls. But if you thought it was time to give up — think again. Things have come along way. And that means many more people are making and selling their product ideas than ever before. You can be one of them.
Let’s take a look at what’s been around for a while and what’s brand spanking new — from Ponoko and others — to help make it faster, cheaper and easier for you to get your great idea to market. And let’s highlight what needs to be fixed.
An evolution in design
Traditionally, product designs were hand-drawn — a complex skill that requires a special talent and years of practice. Even then, it’s tricky and expensive to take a blueprint and convert into a real thing.
Then design software came along. Magic. But it’s still expensive to buy, complex to use well and often outputs a file format that’s pretty much Greek to a conventional machine shop. The advent of free design tools like Raven, Inkscape, Sketchup and Alibre made design software more accessible to emerging designers. These tools work well with the new frontier of manufacturing: digital fabricators and your personal online factory at Ponoko.
But for the ultimate in simplifying the design process even further there’s Ponoko’s Photomake service — you can now make a photo of a hand-drawn design, for real.
Or, if you just do not want to do the design work yourself, you can get a design-pro to help you turn your idea into a workable design using Ponoko ID.
A revolution in manufacturing
You know exactly how your product should be and, if you’ve got the requisite skill, there’s no one in the world better suited to making it from scratch. Great for a prototype or a one-off, but not highly accurate and possibly tedious to make identical copies once the big orders start rolling in.
Getting your product made by a big time manufacturer or even a conventional machine shop can be equally desperate. First you have to search for materials and manufacturing suppliers, sourcing and comparing all of their quotes. If you find a vendor you think you can work with, you then have to wade through the “engineer speak” and refine your design into a format they can handle without compromising its integrity. After you’ve negotiated a maze of upfront costs and minimum orders, you then empty your bank account, place your order and hope it doesn’t get held up behind their much bigger, more important runs.
Then just before you finish tearing the last of your hair out, digital fabrication rides to the rescue. Digital fabrication uses technologies like laser-cutting, CNC routing and 3D printing that output products or product parts direct from digital designs. But you’ve still got to sort through a myriad of suppliers who do everything manually, meaning they want bigger orders than yours, otherwise you’re not really worth their while.
Or, you can take the easiest possible route — get your own personal online factory. At Ponoko, you can “click to make” for instant online quotes and orders choosing from a wide range of materials including timbers, plastics, fabrics and metals. Or you can request your own materials with Ponoko’s Designmake Prime service.
And, if getting started in this new world of possibilities seems a little daunting, it’s worth knowing that there’s plenty of help and support available. Mingle with the Ponoko community. Post your questions on our forum. You can even get a design pro to review your design (for free) before you push the “go” button!
A transformation in marketing
One of the very solid brick walls that creators hit is trying to sell their products. It doesn’t seem fair. You expect to emerge from the labyrinth of conventional manufacturing with a clutch of bright, shiny and inspired products – exhausted but happy – to the rousing applause of a throng of buyers. But no. You have to create a market.
If you’re not keen on selling to your friends and family or laying a white cloth over a table at the local weekend fair, you could try pounding the pavement to hunt down retailers. Or you could get smart and head online. Setting up a good website does not need to be expensive but there’s always the problem — and cost — of driving people to your site. So it’s a great idea to try sites like eBay or sign up to a specialist at selling your products online, like ETSY, SupermarketHQ, Dawanda or Ponoko.
Ponoko offers you a free online store — with zero fees for listing your products and zero fees when you successfully sell them. And, if you sign up to Designmake Prime, we’ll promote you direct to design store retailers too.
Design. Make. Sell. An unashamed plug for Ponoko!
The coolest thing about Ponoko is that we coordinate the design, make and sell steps for you — yours for the asking all in the one place at the click of a mouse. No upfront costs. No dead ends. No wasted pitches.
Before Ponoko, it took about 40 hours of your time going back and forth and around in circles with materials and manufacturing suppliers to get your product made and many months to get the promotional wheels moving. But Ponoko has chopped the making process down to about 1 hour (or about 3 minutes when you know what you’re up to) and the best we’ve seen is from concept to first sale in just 16 days and to major retailer in just 6 weeks (well done Chris!).
Plus Ponoko gives you a single place to test your ideas before you spend money on them by uploading and promoting your design files, particularly to other designers — there’s over 15,000 of them on Ponoko now. And to test market your products at very low cost. For example, Alan Chao’s coasters cost him just $39.33 to get going and are now for sale at places like Veer.
We know it’s possible. People all around the globe are designing, making and selling products with Ponoko. We also know the costs are still a little higher than we’d like. The good news is we’ve got some things waiting in the wings to bring those costs down. But that’s another story. Expect to hear more about that real soon.
And in the meantime you might like to check this out, a great summary of all your options as a designer of products for yourself, for gifts or to sell to others!
The 7 new steps to make your own products from scratch
It’s good to be a designer in the digital age! You might be surprised just how much you can achieve in a short space of time. If you’re ready to start, then check out the 7 new steps to creating a successful product.
Posted in Ponoko News, Various How-To by Ponoko Team | Comments are off for this post
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