In order to bring a new product to the marketplace, you used to need plenty of money for research, design, development and manufacturing. The turnaround time from new product idea, to new product hitting the market place could be as long as two years. But the digital age, and the increasing dominance of the Internet in the business world is changing everything.
New manufacturing companies such as Ponoko, a New Zealand upstart, allow users to upload blueprints of their product and have them custom created “on-demand.” Ponoko deals with furniture of mostly wood and plastic design, but other web sites are making it possible to manufacture nearly anything you can think of “on-demand,” eliminating the need for inventory, while making it possible to bring a new product into the marketplace in a matter of days, instead of months or years.
Other on-demand companies manufacture jewelry, clothing, books, calendars, CDs and CD-ROMs, and many other types of consumer items. By simply uploading a finished design, anyone can become a jewelry manufacturer, for example. Want to be an author? Simply upload your book in Word or text file format to one of many “print on demand” Web services. There are no minimum orders, and you never need keep stock on hand in a warehouse or other facility.
The real joy of this type of instant manufacturing is that you can literally have an idea Friday afternoon, and have the new product for sale online the following Monday– all with no money down, and no prototype or manufacturing investment required.
CaféPress is one popular “on-demand” manufacturer of clothing, books, CDs and other items. Zazzle, a California start up, takes things even further, offering custom manufactured sneakers, posters and a wide range of art related products. Thousands of individuals are creating “instant businesses” using Web services like these, and the most savvy of them are making a very nice living doing so.
One of the most exciting things about the age of instant manufacturing is that it levels the playing field, allowing anyone with a good idea to bring it to the marketplace, and potentially build up a very profitable brand, without having to have a lot of cash upfront.
Even mom-and-pop online stores selling T-shirts, mugs or bumper stickers can find a niche and produce a significant income. CaféPress, for example, routinely pays out over $100,000 annually to quite a few of its members. And with very little or no money needed upfront to develop and design product, most of those earnings will be pure profit.
The other exciting point about instant manufacturing is that it allows people to take a chance on a new product. In the old days, you would have to spend thousands upfront in order to design and develop and manufacture any product. Therefore, companies tended to play it very conservative, producing only products they were absolutely certain they could sell.
But with the new “on-demand” model of manufacturing, individuals and companies are freed up to try new things. And even if that product idea doesn’t turn out to be a big hit, at least they can be sure they’re not going to lose money on the deal — something that was very common back in the “industrial age” of manufacturing.
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