Re: On what the vendors MUST do!

From: cwho (cwho@mountainmax.net)
Date: Tue Nov 02 1999 - 04:56:30 EET


I'm going to go out on a limb here:

There is NO CURRENTLY VIABLE MARKET for 3d portraits, bronzed booties
etc, etc,, etc. and I doubt very much that there will be one in the
foreseeable future

I would rarely take such a stand on the list but I think that people are
getting a little dreamy and unrealistic - not about the technology -
but about what people really want in this sort of thing.

The custom products market for consumers is very difficult - scrap and
rework eat you alive. It relies on very low cost of production, FAST
turnarround, low skill input, Fast and repeatable deployment (franchise
operation and the like). Most of the margins are taken up in advertsing
to the buyer in a very competitve marketplace and in markups for whatever
distirbution chanel there may be (be it digital - e commerce, storefront
, mail in or whatever) To sell these items you have to be in th right
place at the right time which means being in a Lot lot lot of places all
the time - this is how kinkos and 1 hour labs work.

OK now look at RP - high skill, no ability to rework a small portion of
the job, high inital cost, high maintainance, fast obselescence and high
to very high material cost. We are costing machines and had a recent
quote of $75 per vertical inch from one vendor. Ok a small facial
relief or one pair of booties is $150 in MATERIALS before direct labor
costs, cost of selling, fixed overhead, maint - anything......Look at
the going rate - 600+ dollars direct IF you have a good file to work
from. That means even an order of magnitude cost increase isn't going to
get you close to viable you would need close to two orders of magnitude
to really make sense. (off the cuff look at industires like photos,
trophies, engraving etc.)

The technology to make this possible is not evolutionary but
revolutionary from current products. I do not think that even at the $8k
that the guy in Scandanavia is pushing will work here. Customer
attitudes will have to change - will that be market driven in which case
you have to educate your consumer which is expensive - or will it be
evolutionary. These markets are very different from making needed parts
from a design database or downloading and printing sculpture or other
make to demand type of applications.

As many of our artists may attest - what one thinks that they want in a
personal representation or personal artifact is actaully very often far
from reality - (do you model the hook nose, the scar, the zit? Do you
use skilled labor to retouch and send costs through the roof?)

There are many examples of entrepreneurs who tried to use high tech to
make personalized articles. There used to be machines in malls that
would do engraving based on greyscale photos - I think it was called the
Incredible Machine or something - I think they are gone - the rapid bust
people that has been discussed, I think went rapidly bust - I bought
three lasers from a company that went broke trying to make 2D stand up
photos (laminate photo to plexiglass and cut out the outline with a
laser) when they could not compete with scroll saw franchises . I
bellive even the scroll saw franchise is out of biz now too.

RP does have tremendous potential and applications will spread beyond the
current biz to biz to include more consumers. I think make on demand
applications will be the first consumer applications becase it eliminates
inventories, transport etc. A 3d Kinkos would work IF you just printed
what people brought in - but it took a while for Kinko's to get
computers - at first they just did copies - you brought it in and they
made a copy - simple biz model which might work for a 3d shop at a very
high cost.

  my point would be

BEWARE of the mass customization market - It needs to be cracked in the
virtual and advertsing before it can be cracked in the physical. For
custom consumer stuff you need a very high price point with good
potential for repeat buyers (which is why jewelry will work). You
really need to know your market.

Just my thoughts and observations.... and maybe a reality check - sorry
to be a buzz wrecker to anyone..

Charles

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