Tropophilia

Those of you familiar with Internet lingo will no doubt know the meaning of RTFM. Well, forget that — now you can W[rite]TFM.

Let’s say you’re handy at designing things but unable to invest either time or capital into turning your talents into a profitable business. Well, allow me to introduce you to Ponoko. This California-based (aren’t they all?) start-up was profiled today by TechCrunch. I have to say, it’s real genius. In Ponoko’s own words:

Armed with nothing more than an idea, professional and hobbiest designers, crafters, hackers and artists can turn their ideas into real products - and new revenue streams - using our web commerce and digital make-on-demand services. No upfront costs. No minimum orders. No inventory. Simply click to design, make, sell and deliver your creativity to the world, at your own speed.

It’s simple: you create a design for a product made out of combinations of materials such as acrylic, wood, and whiteboard. It can be anything — a lamp, a table, a jigsaw puzzle, jewelry (see examples of products in the Ponoko Showroom). You upload the design to Ponoko. Ponoko constructs your product on-demand when it is ordered by you or a customer. Ponoko only takes 5% whenever a sale is made. No charge for supplies. Small delivery charge for your customer. Zero cost to you. Boom. Instant supply chain. Instant profit.

(If you prefer to make your sales face to face, you can simply order a shipment of your own product and sell it in person. The creator of the jewelry pictured above notes that before the Ponoko Showroom went live recently, she sold her creations at craft fairs or by direct e-mail order.)

Let’s say, though, that you’re a designer and not interested in selling the product yourself… but you still want to earn some cash. No problem: just sell your design in Ponoko’s marketplace to waiting buyers. What’s more, you are able to give your designs various licenses in order to preserve (or waive) your intellectual property rights. Suck at design, but think you can market someone else’s work? Buy a design in the marketplace, have Ponoko make it, and turn a nice little profit.

But wait, there’s more! Are you a design “hacker” that thinks you can take someone’s design and make it better? Or integrate it with your own work to improve your product? Or remix two designs together to create a megaproduct? Again — buy the design(s), hack away, and sell the new design or product!

Theoretically, you could take a handful of people — or hell, just one person — and run a whole company using Ponoko as a platform. A keen business mind paired with an eye for design could sustain a business, even if it was just on the side, with zero overhead and little investment requirements beyond time.

This seems to me to be quite a breakthrough concept. Sure, there have been companies like CaféPress that let you slap your own art and logos on t-shirts and mugs; and there are dozens of companies that sell print-to-order books by independent authors. But to my knowledge, this is the first company that offers to manufacture unique items that you have designed from the ground up. Ponoko takes care of all the brawn if you supply the brains. Further, the company was smart enough to create a marketplace with different categories of buyers and sellers — customers, designers, hackers, businessmen — in order to truly take it from a run-of-the-mill service to a dynamic platform for exchange.

What do you think? Can you think of other areas besides design and manufacture that this concept could be successfully supplied? Do you think Ponoko will catch on and turn a profit, or is it just a neat theory?

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user ellipse, who finds her self-designed, Pokono-produced jewelry to be “totally kick arse”.