You can now make and ship from USA and NZ!

By the end of the day today (Friday June 5^th, Pacific time) our existing making hub in Wellington, New Zealand will be joined by a new hub in San Francisco, United States – and our online making system will be updated to reflect this big change.

This means you will be able to get your products made and delivered from both USA and NZ.

It also means that by the end of the day today all Prime members will get free shipping from our USA node to any continental USA destination (excluding Alaska), or shipped from our NZ node to any NZ destination for all orders of $100 or more (making + materials).

Yippeee! This is another small step we are taking to bring you the world’s easiest making system.

This means you can:

1. Continue to make and ship products from the existing NZ hub, using the NZ materials catalog; AND
2. Also make and ship products from the new USA hub, using the US materials catalog.

Here’s some more details about this or scroll to the bottom of this post to get the quick start summary!

So how does this affect you?
This all depends upon your shipping destination … 

USA or Canada
If your shipping destination is in the USA or Canada it is more cost effective (and greener) for you to make and ship your products from the new USA hub. This is because the shipping miles to deliver to a US or Canadian destination from the US hub is substantially lower than the miles to deliver from the NZ hub. No brainer.

UK, Europe or Northern Asia
If your shipping destination is in the UK, Europe or Northern Asia it is roughly the same price (but certainly greener) for you to make and ship your products from the new USA hub. We encourage you to use the US hub so we can more rapidly increase our bargaining power with the new US shipping provider and bring these costs down for you. 

NZ, Australia or Southern Asia
If your shipping destination is in NZ, Australia or Southern Asia it is the same price for you to continue to make and ship your products from the existing NZ hub. So there’s no change for you. Just keep doing what you’re doing.

Still not sure? Well, login to your MyPonoko account to check out the differences for yourself!

The changes in a little more detail – for existing members

Just one change
When you login to your existing MyPonoko account, you’ll immediately notice one change …

Under the ‘MyDesigns’ tab your existing products (tip: product = design + material) will be tagged with a NZ flag. This flag tells you where your product will be made and shipped from.

So, if you decide to click to make any of your current products (tagged with a NZ flag), you’ll see that they will continue to be made and shipped from the existing NZ hub.

In other words, while there’s a visual design change to your MyPonoko account, there’s no practical change. Easy.

Set and forget
BUT … what if you want to make and ship from the new USA hub instead of the existing NZ hub?

Well, you need to do just one thing – change your default country preference from NZ to USA. That’s all there is to it – set and forget.

You can change your preference country by clicking here, and selecting USA instead of NZ.

Selecting the USA country preference
If you choose to change your country preference to USA instead of NZ, you’ll notice 2 key things:

1. Your EXISTING products will be tagged with a NZ flag.
   In other words, all of your existing products will continue to be made and shipped from the NZ hub (just as they were when your country preference was NZ). This is because the materials have been selected from the NZ materials catalog.
    
2. Your NEW products will be tagged with a USA flag.
   In other words, all of your new products will be made and shipped from the USA hub. This is because the materials have been selected from the USA materials catalog. 

How to get products made and shipped from the new USA hub
First, make sure you have set your country preference to USA (instead of NZ).

Then, create a new product in two different ways:

1. Upload a design and add materials (just like you always have previously). Easy peazy.
2. Change the materials of an existing design tagged with a NZ flag. To do this you click on the product image, click on ‘View details’ of the materials attached to this design, then click on ‘Change materials’ and follow your nose through the drop down menus as per normal.

In both of the cases immediately above you will only be able to select materials from the USA catalog. And as a result of adding these USA materials to your design, your products will be tagged with a USA flag. Which means they will be made and shipped from the new USA hub.

The changes in a little more detail – for new members
When you signup for a new MyPonoko account, you can now choose your default country preference on the signup page.

If you choose USA, you will only be able to add materials from the US catalog. This means all your products will be tagged with a USA flag, and hence they will be made and shipped from the new US hub.

If you choose NZ, you will only be able to add materials from the NZ catalog. This means all your products will be tagged with a NZ flag, and hence they will be made and shipped from the existing NZ hub.

The changes in a little more detail – for everyone
All visitors to our public website will view the new USA materials catalog by default, instead of the existing NZ catalog. But you can still view the NZ materials catalog by using the US/NZ toggle button at the top right hand side of the materials page.

A few other things to think about …

You can change your country preference at any time
This means you can make and ship products from both the NZ and USA hubs simply by changing the country preference before you add materials to a design.

In simplicity, the only thing that determines whether a product is made and shipped from the USA hub or the NZ hub is where the materials are sourced. If you choose materials from the USA catalog (which is only possible when you have chosen USA as your country preference), then products will be made and shipped from the USA hub. And vice-versa. 

Some items in ‘MyDesigns’ are not tagged with a country flag
A country flag will not appear in 2 cases:

1. When you have uploaded a design file, but have not added a material to it. A country flag is not displayed because you have not created a product by coupling a design with materials selected from either the USA or NZ catalogs.
2. When you are hosting a product (ie, design + materials) with 2 or more material set options – eg, ring design and black acrylic or red acrylic. A country flag is not displayed because one of these material set options may have been selected from the USA catalog while the other may have been selected from the NZ catalog.

The USA and NZ materials catalogs are purposely different
For example, some materials available in the NZ catalog (like NZ native Rimu) are not available in the US catalog, and vice versa. As a further example, some materials that appear to be the same (eg, white acrylic) may be different too (ie, the NZ catalog material is sourced in millimeters, whereas the US catalog material is sourced in inches). Over time both the USA and NZ materials catalogs will continue to grow. And the best way for you to speed this up is to request new materials. When you do this, we’ll make just for you – then add the new material to the public catalog. So you’re in control of how fast it grows! 

Checking the pricing differences between the 2 making hubs
We do not currently have the online facility for you to do a side-by-side pricing comparison of making and shipping the same product from the USA hub versus the NZ hub. But you can do this by setting the USA as your country preference and checking the pricing to make and ship a product from the USA hub, then repeating the pricing process with NZ set as your default country preference.

And finally …

You’ve got a price freeze grace period
To give you some time to get up to speed with this new system, all of the shipping costs from the NZ hub will remain the same to all shipping destinations until the end of June 2009.

This means the immediate change to your current MyPonoko account will be a visual one only – there’s no change in where or how your NZ flagged products are made, and there’s no change in the pricing.

But from July 1st 2009 Pacific time, and because we now have a new US hub, the shipping costs from the existing NZ hub will go to full market rate for all shipping destinations outside of NZ and Australia.

In other words, you will pay the true cost to ship a product from the NZ hub without the current subsidies. This means you will be able to compare apples with apples on the shipping costs from the different making hubs. And the concept of distributed digital making will become crystal clear. In an over simplification of the situation, the lower your shipping cost, the lower the carbon footprint of your product.

In short, if you want to make things using materials from the NZ catalog June 2009 is the last month to do it at the very best price – because the cost of the shipping will increase at the start of next month.

What do you do next?
Phew! Well, that all depends on what’s important to you. Here’s a quick guide …

I want to continue to make and ship products from the NZ hub only
Take a chill pill. Just keep doing what you do. No change necessary. Just login here to see the visual differences.

I want to make and ship products from the new USA hub only
3 steps:

1. Change your country preference from NZ to USA here; then
2. Change your materials for each of your existing products here.
3. Add new products (design + materials) here.

(By default, all your new materials selections in steps 2 and 3 will be from the USA catalog and this means all NZ materials will be deleted and all of your existing and new products will be tagged with a USA flag).

I want to make and ship products from both the NZ and USA hubs
2 steps:

1. Change your country preference from NZ to USA here; then
2. Add new products (design + materials) here.

(By default, all your new materials selections in step 2 will be from the USA catalog and this means all of your existing products will remain tagged with a NZ flag while all of your new products will be tagged with a USA flag).

Go to it!
This is just one more small step in us bringing you the future of making – it’s online, it’s digital and it’s local. This means it’s easy, it’s communal and it’s green.

We really hope you enjoy the changes. We’ve worked really hard to get to this point and we’re super charged to see what you think about them.

And remember if you are a Prime member, shipping is free  from our USA node to any continental USA destination (excluding Alaska), or shipped from our NZ node to any NZ destination for all orders of $100 or more (making + materials).

And what you can give is … a higher level of service.

Recently we did a bit more thinking about how we should use Twitter. And we decided to use it for providing a higher level of service.

At the start it was tough to know whether were on the right track - until a customer sent us this email …

———-

On 22/04/2009, at 7:14 AM, Tom McNamee wrote:

Gentlemen:

I’m writing to inform you of a rather extraordinary customer service case handled by Ponoko’s Josh Judkins.  Late at night, I wanted to check on my first order to Ponoko, worth about US$ 80. All I had was my iPhone, and I quickly found that I could not log in using it. Nor could I use your ‘contact us’ form.  So, being more than a bit petty about it, I bitched via Twitter to my friends, in general about the usability problem, but I did mention #Ponoko.  Mr. Judkins got involved a few hours later.

I had heard that some US ISP’s and cable companies monitored Twitter, but I had no direct evidence that it was part of anybody’s CS program.  So imagine my surprise when Mr. Judkins got involved:
1. He apologized for the lack of iPhone support, and indicated it was being considered for the future.
2. He did some research and found my name, then found my Ponoko order (#12377).  Keep in mind I had not said anything about even having an order.
3. He checked my order status and found I had made mistakes on my CAD input.
4. He corrected the mistakes and resubmitted the job.
5. His corrections simplified the design, so he indicated that I was due a refund and said he had started that process.

He did not, however, fly to the US, knock on my door, and personally apologize. As you might expect, I find this inexcusable.

I hope you will take the appropriate action with Mr. Judkins, who, if allowed to continue unchecked, just might earn Ponoko the reputation of having the finest customer service on the planet.  I have wasted no time in contacting my Twitter following (all eleven of them), and told everybody else I could find about this experience.  Quite simply, it is wonderful to do business with a company such as yours.

Tom McNamee
Tucson, AZ

———-

Of course, we reprimanded Josh appropriately.

You can follow him and us on the Ponoko Twitter stream.

In the last 24 hours things moved into a higher gear!

Photomake was launched last night - you’ve got to check this out … (includes a spanky video.)

We knew there would be a bit of a rush on the site as soon as we made it live.

But we certainly weren’t expecting this!

Thousands more were hitting the web page than we expected. And as soon as the clock struck 5, loads of uploading kicked off a hammering on the order button.

Here’s a few examples of some stuff people have made using Photomake in the last 24 hours - shots of the designs versus the finished products.

First up we’ve got Robin’s hand drawn ferrets - you’ll notice they are not twins, but probably related:

And we’ve got the little son of Kyle - hand drawn love, he’ll be stoked with his dad!

You can also take a look inside of Geremy’s digitally drawn Ghead here:

And the smooth simplicity of Jessica’s digitally drawn fan:

Then Andrew has created some cool coasters, also digitally drawn:

Nice and easy huh!

We’ve also had some press praise about Photomake too. Thanks very much to the good jokers at the world’s:
1st most popular green blog
2nd most popular blog
10th most popular blog
14th most popular blog

… and so many more. We’re really buzzed – this is great exposure for Ponoko sellers!

[UPDATE] Thanks also to you beauties at the world’s:
1st most popular crafter’s blog
1st most popular designer’s site
1st most popular maker’s site
5th most popular blog
36th most popular blog
52nd most popular blog

Now this also means the small number of insane shipping deals we offered (like $7.60 anywhere in the US) are getting snatched up faster than we thought. So if you’re waiting, you might like to get a little shuffle along!

And if you’ve got a question or concern, we have listed the top 20 FAQs about Photomake. Chances are you’ll find an answer there, so check them out and make the dash to get a great shipping deal before they run out.

[UPDATE] As a final note to all of you getting products delivered, please feel free to leave a comment below including a link to photos you’ve uploaded to your Ponoko Showroom – perhaps get yourself a little bit of free exposure

For those of you unfamiliar with WGSN, Worth Global Style Network is the “leading global service providing online research, trend analysis and news to the fashion, design and style industries.”

Basically any large corporation at all concerned with style, trend, product or design subscribes to this behemoth of a trend source. And this morning, Ponoko got a little mention from the Think Tank team. For those of you without the $25k per year access, here’s the article via WGSN.

WGSN identifies a growing DIY approach to design and technology, from lo-fi, home-grown technology and design for community benefit, to personalising anonymous product and anti-corporate open-sourcing.

WGSN has been tracking a shift in the boundaries between consumer and creator for some time - whether it be consumer-generated content on the internet or the shunning of specialist skills and tools needed to create.

The focus for creation and consumerism is heading more and more towards an ‘integrated’ experience. Consumers will expect to make, create or be involved in the development of products, and will bypass - even ‘hack’ - traditional methods.

Maker culture

The digital world has a lot to answer for when it comes to DIY-ism, spawning a culture of people who can claim, “I make” rather than “I buy”.

Silicon valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture bemoans the user-generated nature of Web 2.0. Yet there is a new creativity developing that is moving beyond design dilettantism.

The Etsy crafts portal is one particular site that illustrates the trends for make-it-yourself and sell-it-yourself enterprise.

With its “Build, Craft, Hack, Play, Make” tagline, US-based Make magazine and its sister Maker Faire epitomise the trend.

Unashamedly geeky, it celebrates a “growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements and garages”, and it informs readers how to relate to technology on their own time.

Swedish design group Front’s Sketch Furniture concept also shows how technology can enable easy, instant design.

Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture. Watch the video here.

Other design innovations include Fab Labs, an MIT project offering facilities such as a laser-cutter and 3D printer to creators, while Ponoko offers users the chance to upload a 3D design and make use of professional tools to manufacture - and then sell it.

Meanwhile, design comes to your doorstep with the imminent launch of the Desktop Factory, a 3D printer that builds objects through layers of plastic.

Homemade technology, often trivial (see the internet-enabled coffee maker), is nevertheless throwing off its chemistry set image.

Tom Igoe’s book, Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects, relishes in connecting home-based devices to create a tech-geek’s ultimate domestic environment.

Everyday genius

The DIY trend has also spawned everyday scientists - proof that anyone can be a maker.

These everyday geniuses cobble together simple but effective machines and objects using the lumpen cast-offs of hi-tech Western products, such as Chinese farmer Mr Woo, who taught himself to build robots from junk.

The maker sphere was recently abuzz with news about a young man from Malawi who built a wind generator for his family’s home using instructions from a primary school textbook.

William Kamkwamba has even documented its construction in a blog.

A Nigerian college student also was recently reported to have crafted a helicopter from a Toyota and parts from a crashed Boeing 747, complete with push-button ignition and ground-vision camera.

This celebration of common sense design for social benefit is summed up by Yves Béhar’s design for the One Laptop Per Child scheme, which has just won the Brit Insurance Design Award for 2008 at London’s Design Museum.

Anti-corporate

There’s more than a hint of a corporate backlash in DIY culture. The internet is full of images of the inner workings of consumer products - or ‘teardowns’ - such as the naked mechanics under the shiny skin of an iMac.

George Holz, the 17-year-old teenager who became the first person to hack the much-hyped iPhone received international media attention - and a not so firm slap on the wrists; he traded in the hacked iPhone for a new car.

Speaking of the iPhone, we like the array of imitations on offer, such as the clay iPhone and even wooden iPhone cases (as seen at miniot.com), all of which are an attempt (consciously and unconsciously) to negate or individualise the iconic image of this mass consumer product.

There’s a tongue-in-cheek irony to this hack culture, whether its Republicraft’s Department of Homeland Security Blanket or the H3 toy hacking workshop.

Open-source

Open-source culture is moving into the mainstream and bringing with it an egalitarian mindset.

In a wiki culture, collaboration is key. Ubuntu, a community-developed, free Linux-based software, is now available on new Dell PCs and offers all the applications needed on a standard computer.

Open-source sewing is the latest online project for pattern-maker Burda, while Styleshake is a new site offering collaborative fashion and facilities that enable users to create their own clothes.

Threadbanger offers video content informing makers how to create their own fashion and even their own art collections. The recently launched MyDeco.com site meanwhile enables consumers to become their own interior designers, offering an easy-to-use 3D design facility.

We’ve decided to run an ongoing poll in regards to materials. We get quite a few suggestions on materials but we also know there are a lot more out there that people are interested in seeing. So if you have a moment vote below for your choice of the next material we should add to the catalog.

Over the very near future the Ponoko Blog will be introducing new bloggers to help add to the flavor and mix of our community. Today it’s with great pleasure that we welcome Industrial Designer, Duann Scott. Duann’s background (see below) is eclectic to say the least! And it’s for that reason that we think you’ll find his posts very interesting.

Greetings all.

I, Duann will be writing regular posts on the Ponoko blog to keep you all up to date with developments in the field of mass customisation, product personalisation, design software, rapid prototyping and digital manufacture techniques along with associated issues of copyright, I.P. and digital rights management.

I am an Industrial Designer based in Australia whose practice includes the design and development of one off projects for furniture, exhibitions, retail and exhibition environments as well as large scale public art projects. You can check out some of my recent cleared projects on my portfolio site.

Due to my interest in emerging design technologies and the democratisation of the design process I am currently undertaking a professional doctorate within The School of Communication at The University of South Australia. This position gives me the support and resources to investigate this exciting field at depth, information I hope to disseminate to the online community via Ponoko.

Prior to working in design my background is in music composition and performance. Excited by the DIY culture that underlies the independent music industry I had a couple of projects released on independent electronic music label Surgery Records. Modula was an experimental electronic outfit formed with Reece Schubert using entirely home made or modified analog musical instruments, all driven by an analogue sequencer constructed from sega games consoles found in the bottom of a pawnbroker’s dumpster. Toby-1 was another project signed to Surgery Records, this time using a laptop to collaborate with Ruth Wilson playing viola, flute, clarinet and voice.

Now you all know a little bit about my background I hope this develops into an informal and inspiring discussion so please feel free to post comments or links to any info you find relevant and subscribe to the feed to ensure you keep up to date with all Ponoko happenings.

The SHARE festival, based in Torino, is an international gathering for digital art and culture. SHARE exhibits electronic artworks, and awards a prize each year for advancing the state of digital art. This year Bruce Sterling is Curator and Ponoko is very excited to be presenting an exhibit there of creations by our amazing users. Photos below are from Bruce of the whole show but you can see some of the Ponoko facilitated creations early in the Slide Show.

The SHARE festival looks incredibly interesting. The full description of the speakers and conference schedule includes discussions on Robots, Digifab, Networked Objects, Digital Art and Dramatic Manufacturing. Conferences are being broadcasted live over Sharecast via the festival homepage.

Michael Berman, Senior VP/CTO of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena sent this in - a poster up on the wall of the Ponoko 10-Day Jewelry Design Challenge.

Art Center has been on the forefront of graphic design, industrial design and other creative arts for the past 75 years, generating some well known designers and artists in various industries - including product design, automobile design, film directing and popular music (here’s a list of notable graduates and teachers) which includes some personal favourites of mine like Chip Foose, Stan Sakai and Mike Shinoda. It’s pretty exciting for all of us at Ponoko to see a poster up there, so thanks a lot to Michael and Bruce Dominguez. We’re really looking forward to seeing what Art Center can come up with in the challenge.

If you feel like sharing the news about our Jewelry Design Challenge at your school, local art center, library, workplace or anywhere; you can download your own copy of our Jewelry Design Challenge poster to distribute.

NZ Herald: NZ entrepreneurs going to town on web

(photo by Mark Mitchell via NZ Herald)

Well here we are already a couple of weeks into 2008! Last year was a crazy busy time for all of us at Ponoko and we are expecting even more of the same this year - it’s certainly started that way. Yesterday we were lucky enough to be featured in the NZ Herald (one of NZ’s largest newspapers). We were in great company in 2007 as fellow Kiwis innovated on the web and created startups that generated buzz online throughout the world.

Some of the companies include PlanHQ, Xero, Eurekster, Sonar6, and Madeit.com. A very diverse group of start-ups. I’ve personally had a chance to meet some of the employees and founders at a couple of these companies and I can tell you they are all really committed to one thing - helping people achieve goals that matter to them. Whether that means making accounting easy, helping you grow your business, or making your first robot. Keep up the good work everyone, hope you have a great 2008.

8 important consumer trends for 2008 – No 7: MIY – Make It Yourself

(from trendwatching.com December 2007 Monthly Trend Briefing)

There really has been an impetus towards MIY and DIY this year. A few months ago Forbes listed the Ten Industrial Design Trends You Can’t Ignore - among them the DIY/MIY movement, and loosely related “personalization” where consumers are “involved” in the design process. Trendwatching.com made their list of 8 important consumer trends to watch for next year, and again, MIY is on it. They talk about “Generation C”, which means Content created digitally. Now mainstream in the form of music, movies, blogs, etc., it’s moving towards designs and physical goods.

From Trendwatching.com:

So what’s next for GENERATION C? With (in particular younger) consumers having come to expect to be able to create anything they want as long as it is digital, and to customize and personalize many physical goods, the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well. In fact, expect MIY | MAKE IT YOURSELF (and then SIY | SELL IT YOURSELF) ventures to become increasingly sophisticated in the next 12 months.

As part of this MIY movement, we don’t see this as a fleeting trend, but as a fundamental paradigm shift to how we make, use and buy things. I think the Make-It-Yourself movement is very much linked with other shifts towards sustainable design and consumption, a return to crafts and appreciation for uniqueness and individualization, and filling the needs of many long-tail consumers. I think this trend will most definitely prevail beyond 2008 and become a major part of the status quo.

One of the more interesting points for me is how younger consumers find this so natural. Their upbringing means that they don’t see this as “craft”. They expect to be able to customize their clothes and make their own digital content. They believe they should be able to do it with products as well. Many of these younger consumers are also very entrepreneurial minded. The popular media has idolized entrepreneurs in the last ten years, and in particular “style entrepreneurs”, people like P Diddy, Snoop Dog, 50 Cent, Beyonce and Jay Z, who have built empires based on their personal style. Young consumers have quickly grasped that the Internet can provide a platform for them to spread their personal style and uniqueness for fun and profit. With the move to products I really don’t see this trend going away because of the combination of fun, accessibility and entrepreneurial activity makes it such a potent mix.