Ponoko opens new service for custom on-demand crafts
Custom design is finally beginning to mean more than just cheesy screen-printed t-shirts and coffee mugs. With a little money, you can now order specially manufactured goods from a company called Ponoko, by tapping into a base of freelance designers who will bid to fulfill orders.
Ponoko is a startup that uses laser-cutters to create items from materials like wood and plastic. Designers send Ponoko files containing specs for items; the company then creates the item in a single piece, or separate pieces for assembly. Those items are sold through its website to customers. That basic idea is similar to Threadless, a well-known t-shirt company that sells shirts based on designs that artists dream up.
What Ponoko is adding today is very simple: It’s providing customers with a form and bidding process to have their own pipe dreams created. So if you want, for instance, a giant pink plastic elephant based on your own drawings, you can send a request to designers, then pick the lowest bid, or your favorite interpretation of the drawing. The service is called Ponoko ID.
Simple idea, it’s true, but it’s also an idea with plenty of potential. Designers and consumers rarely have any direct contact; by bringing them together, Ponoko is helping to create a market that could turn out to be very large.
That was certainly the case for CafePress, an web boom-and-bust era success based on the same custom t-shirt theme that later took Threadless to fame. With CafePress, the idea that sparked its success was simply letting customers have their own designs screen-printed onto shirts. The similarity between it and Ponoko makes it very fitting that the company is also adding Fred Durham, one of CafePress’s founders and its current CEO, to its board.
We also covered Ponoko back in May, when I did an audio interview with CSO Derek Elly in which he described the business model in more depth. Since then, the company’s user base has risen to about 10,000 people. It’s also about to add more materials to work with, so that more different sorts of items can be made, and is building tools and tutorials to make it easier to learn to design items.
The company, which was interested in taking a venture round, has decided to go after angel investment instead. It’s based in New Zealand, but has a US subsidiary.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.