Posted 8 hours, 46 minutes ago at 11:12 am. Comments
Coca-Cola is testing a new custom soda kiosk in Georgia, Utah, and Southern California that allows a customer to choose from 100 potential flavors, a 10X increase over current fountains. The Coca-Cola Freestyle allows the customer to select a base flavor like “Sprite” and have it infused with other flavors (grape, strawberry, etc), nutrients, or other additives. It is fun to see a revival of novel shopping experiences akin to the Mold-A-Rama and X-ray shoe fitting kiosks popular in the 1950’s applied to mass customization.
This is the highest profile mass customization project to be launched in recent memory and has a number of interesting angles:
Mass Customization Technology - The Freestyle uses an inkjet style system that “micro-applies” a dose of flavoring to the carbonated water. The technology was adapted from the medical field where it is currently used to administer drugs to cancer and dialysis patients. Highly concentrated, the 46-ounce cartridges can create as much soda as the 5 gallon bags of concentrate currently used in most restaurants. 3D printing and laser cutting get all the glory, but the key to mainstream customization may lie in more sedate technologies.
Selling Data - One of Coca-Cola’s primary motives with this new kiosk is to better understand regional tastes and purchasing behavior. This is a nice example of companies using what Tim O’Reilly calls “Data Exhaust” from relatively inexpensive sensors. If pineapple infused Coke was selling briskly in Honolulu, Coca-Cola could potentially bottle small batches and send it to stores. This is an exciting development in the world of retail channel which historically focused exclusively on transactions per minute or sales per foot. Apple uses retail to make money, but also to educate their customers on other (more profitable) sales channels. Other companies will be able to leverage IT and extract similar value from point of sale transactions.
Customization Penalty - The Freestyle takes 7-10 seconds longer to dispense a beverage and can only dispense one at a time. This may create a bottle neck in quick service restaurants. Also, the time someone may take exploring the user interface could become frustrating (just think about being behind the guy who hasn’t figured out how to tilt his cup while pouring). An iPhone app that allows you to browse the selections and even pre-order would be a big help.
Long Tail Drink mixing - A Bloomberg report on the Coca-Cola Freestyle yielded an interesting insight:
During the machine’s only public test, at a Willy’s Mexicana Grill in Atlanta, Coca-Cola discovered caffeine-free Diet Coke was popular late in the day. While sales didn’t justify its placement on an eight-tap fountain, the brand was easily included on the Jet, capturing potentially lost sales, Farrell said. Beverage revenue increased 10 percent to 20 percent, according to the restaurant.
History Repeats: Coca-Cola iFountain - The Freestyle is not Coca-Cola’s first foray into mass customization. The iFountain was launched in 2001 to great fanfare. However the machines were unreliable as documented by USA Today and Vending Market Watch:
Coke documents show the iFountain is beset with technical flaws from “phantom pours” to excessive foaming, overuse of syrup and — until the problem recently was solved — possible electrical shock hazards, the report noted.
The article goes on to describe the iFountain as Coca-Cola’s biggest bust since the “New” Coke debacle two decades earlier. The $50MM program was scuttled two years later in 2003. There are no details about how much this new incarnation cost, but it seems Coca-Cola has confidence in this program and technical overhaul assigning more than 50 people to the project. Hopefully, this reincarnation will prove itself and be rolled out nationwide in short order.
Posted 21 hours, 44 minutes ago at 10:14 pm. Comments
J.J. Abrams introduced the world to the Dharma Initiative, the Cloverfield monster, and Jennifer Garner, but underneath the movie mogul is a “maker” who would be equally at home at the Rhode Island School of Design as in the Hollywood hills. In his interviews and public appearances he spends nearly as much time talking about his hobbies (painting and laser cutting!), manufactured goods, and the process of creation as the hit TV shows he produces.
In this video Abrams talks about how far video production technology has progressed in the past 15 years and comments that there are almost no barriers for a passionate auteur to create professional grade films, independently.
He discusses his handiwork in an interview with Edward Lewine:
Hobbies: I have this laser cutter, and I can take sketches my kids made, scan them and use the cutter to make two-dimensional renderings.
Obsession: I think boxes are an amazing art form that no one really considers. It’s fascinating the way they are made. I have a bunch of books that I love on packaging and templates for boxes. Sometimes I use the laser cutter to make my own boxes.
Favorite item of clothing: I designed and made a T-shirt based on the distinctive 1940’s-style “Do Not Disturb” signs at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood. The hotel should really make those shirts themselves.
Best thing about robots: I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.
Best recent gift: My wife got me a certificate to get a suit custom made. That sounds beyond extravagant to me. I can’t wait to do that.
Procrastination technique: Because I love doing so much stuff — design, music, sculpting and painting — there’s always something I can do instead of work. Basically, I don’t write unless I’m on deadline.
How many Hollywood power brokers could drop such an impressive list of handy hobbies in such a short span?
Abrams further solidified his Maker cred in a slideshow of his favorite things on Wired’s website. Letterpress, fonts, and computer graphics training were a few of the things he held up as areas of interest, again unusual among titans of tinsel town.
M&H Type: The first time my pal Helen Bartlett showed me her beautiful turn-of-the-century letterpress, I was hooked. Choosing a font can require a lot more than a single click in a pulldown menu. Letterpress printing, a dying art, is kept on life support in part by the good people at San Francisco’s M&H. Cool stuff for font nerds.
Video Copilot and The Gnomon Workshop: In the category of Things I Wish I Had Access To as a Child, these spectacular Web sites (VideoCopilot.net, TheGnomonWorkshop.com) offer tutorials, advice, hints, and software for creating visual effects that are on a par with the pros’. Andrew Kramer’s Video Copilot work is so impressive we hired him to create the title animations for Fringe and Star Trek.
House Industries: If there were any place I wish I worked that I don’t, it’s House. These folks have an unparalleled aesthetic, brilliant font-design skills, killer musical acumen, and a kick-ass sense of humor. Look at their gorgeous and amusing book, which reveals the passion behind their process. Or even better, buy their beautifully packaged fonts.
J.J Abrams recently reimagined the Star Trek movie series to great reviews. Hopefully he will combine his producing power and passion for personal fabrication to make a sequel featuring the true hero of the series, the Replicator.
If you are a fan of Mass customization take a moment to check out Anita Windisman’s blog “Flexistuff” which highlights businesses using customization in their product offerings. Anita does a great job digging up companies that fly below the radar of most of the technology blogs. She has recently covered companies customizing products as diverse as: swimsuits, golf clubs, lip gloss, and candy packaging,
My only critique of the Flexistuff blog is that there isn’t much analysis of where customization is being used effectively (or not), macro trends shaping product offerings, and the social aspect of customization, but as a source for interesting companies her blog is a fantastic.
Any newly formed rock band will inevitably “cover” songs by more established artists. It is a natural phase of artistic development allowing the musician to concentrate on developing their formal skills without the additional burden of composing a high quality original song. Cover songs also provide a clear benchmark against which musicians can evaluate their technical development. Cover songs work for three reasons:
Shared Experiences
Music defines generations, is experienced socially to a great extent, and permeates the culture that adopts it. It is easy for listeners to compare a novice performance to a well known professional version and suggest improvements.
Emotional Resonance
Music makes a strong emotional impact on most people. Even if you are a poor musician people still appreciate the song.
Simple Structures
Rock music is famous for being “three chords and an attitude”. Learning a simple song creates building blocks upon which greater original works can be built.
Companies attempting to enable mass customization or personal fabrication should consider how they help their customers develop skills. Companies like Shapeways, Spreadshirt, Techshop, and Ponoko could provide offerings that help their customers grow as creators by utilizing the characteristics of cover songs.
In the Maker/physical hacking community you see this happening when artisans use a pop culture icon as the basis for their projects. The Pixar character WALL-E is a great embodiment of these principles. WALL-E was an extremely popular movie, with great emotional impact, and the central character is composed of geometric primitives: round eyes, a cube torso, and trianglar treads. A plethora of artists and designers have used WALL-E as a muse and based formal experiments on his iconic structure.
Companies offering customization services should think about providing “templates” that novice creators can use to:
Make “it” Perfect
A goal of many craftsman is to make something perfect, be it an Arts & Crafts style chair or an emotional trash compacting robot from the future. These WALL-E’s are embodiments of that goal meticulously created by artists with deep attachment to the medium. The culpture on the left was created by the editors of BrickJournal.com a leading lego fan publication and the model on the right was designed by Angus McLane, a Pixar animator who had worked on the film.
Help customers make a faithful representation
Make “it” Work
This artist was interested in how WALL-E was able to transform into a cube and sacrificed a perfect aesthetic match to make the mechanical elements work. The transformation is amazingly complex and it is remote controlled as well!
Help customers make something move/transform/react
Make “it” Big or Small
Often the goal of making a project based on a pop character has less to do with the character and more exploring the challenge of a new medium. A group of fabricators have formed a group dedicated to creating WALL-E sculptures at a large scale using plastic fabrication techniques.
A number of designers have used WALL-E as a jumping off point in minimalist design, simplifying the character to his essence and finding clever ways to represent the iconic character at a tiny scale.
Help customers introduce challenge by making things large or small
These food based WALL-E’s demonstrate that the creative impulse is not limited to long projects. These caloric creations reflect the spirit of the design while being prepared in minutes. A good benchmark for a well defined customization service would be the ability to create something out of stainless steel or hearty wheat.
Help customers introduce creating into their daily processes
Make “it” Fancy
Often makers will take something ephemeral like a scene from a film and use high end materials and processes to immortalize it in tangible form. This wooden WALL-E was a gift to Pixar creative leader John Lasseter. It is a great example of creating a novel utilizing exotic materials.
Help customers preserve a feeling in valuable form
This amazing steel sculpture is actually a fully functional PC made by a Russian WALL-E enthusiast. If you are at all interested in metal crafting check out the extraordinarily thorough “making of” blog post.
Turning Consumers Into Creators
Mass customization hasn’t had a home run company like Amazon or Zappos and a major reason why is that creating something new is hard. By providing a scaffold you enable individuals with taste and ideas to develop their skills and become creators as well as consumers.
A German startup has launched a service called MyMelade that manufactures customized marmalade. Food customization services like MyMelade, YouBars, or MixMyGranola are certainly cool, but it seems like it would make more sense to develop retail solutions if they want to go mainstream.
ZCorp has released a new composite material “zp150″ which increases the functional strength of their parts by 40% as well as improving color and removing the need for a chemical curing process. This is a big deal for ZCorp since the only real weakness in their printer line is the strength of materials. I haven’t played with the new part material yet, but this could make ZCorp 3D printers competitive with Stratasys and 3D Systems machines in the durable part market.
Ponoko has opened up a US headquarters in San Francisco making it possible to ship orders faster and less expensively.
Roque is a jewelry company that allows you to preview jewelry using augmented reality technology. It is a cute feature, but is somewhat limited to the “chunky” jewelry style they sell. It would probably be tough to get a Tiffany style setting to look right.
Holition is the company powering Roque and the demo video on their site shows the technology being used to greater effect with wrist watches. The renderings are very nice and move smoothly. This could be huge if Swatch ever wanted to make a comeback. The challenge is to hide the wristband that allows the rendering to be overlaid. Notice the black watch band under the projection of the silver watch in the picture above.
I was recently in a conversation about the scarcity of female CEO’s and the imbalance is staggering. At the start of 2009 there were only 13 women counted among the ranks of Fortune 500 CEO’s. However, in the world of mass customization women have founded and/or lead a much higher percentage of the market leading companies.
Maxine Clark has built the Build-A-Bear Workshop into a publicly traded fixture of malls around the world. It is an incredibly impressive business owning a third of the $1.5B plush toy market barely a decade after its introduction and is the most successful mass customization business since Dell.
Sharon Kan is the founder and CEO of Tikatok a company that lets children create stories online and then have them transformed into nice hardbound books.
Eileen Gittins is a founder and CEO of print on demand company Blurb which does the same thing as Tikatok for an older demographic.
The world of 3D printing has been shaped extensively by female leaders. Marina Hatsopoulos was the founding CEO of 3D printer manufacturer ZCorp. Cathy Lewis is the CEO of Desktop Factory and has done a great job getting the $5,000 3D printer close to production (hopefully the fundraising situation will be finalized soon). Adina Shorr was the CEO of Objet Geometries until April 2009 and oversaw the commercialization of the bulk of their portfolio.
I don’t know if there is any particular explanation for the relatively high number of women CEO’s in the customization market, but they are all doing an amazing job making mass customization a reality.
Desktop Factory, the company that has been promising a $5000 3D printer for the last two years just sent out an email newsletter alerting people that it is running out of funds. This is a disappointing development for 3D printer enthusiasts. Putting low cost 3D printers in the hands of students and serious hobbyists would be a great achievement.
Even if they do secure funding I think their fate will be much the same as the $100 Laptop/OLPC project. An audacious technological achievement that is tied to a specific dollar value, but ultimately ignored in favor of a slightly higher priced, technically superior offering.
Just like $200-400 netbooks took the steam out of the OLPC, ZCorp’s 3D printing technology could do the same to Desktop Factory. ZCorp utilizes an inkjet system that deposits a glue/ink mixture on a plaster base to create 3D models. They use print heads/ink cartridges manufactured by HP that are very similar to the ones used in millions of desktop printers. If Desktop Factory launches and validates the low cost market, ZCorp could likely engineer a lower cost printer that would possess a simpler mechanical technology, economies of scale in production, higher resolution, and can print larger and colored models. A decent HP printer, that isn’t mechanically very different from a ZCorp, costs ~$60. Even at 100X that cost a low end ZCorp would be extraordinarily competitive.
Desktop Factory would be squeezed from below too. Sub $1,000 3D printers are now a reality thanks to MakerBot. For $750 you can purchase a kit based, 3D printer, that is within reach of serious hobbyists, schools, and tech focused communities. Currently, the MakerBot is more of proof of concept than a pro grade 3D printer, but it is perfect for schools or individuals who just want to play with the technology.
I hope Desktop Factory is able to pull through. A lot of bright people have sacrificed a great deal to bring this project along and their device is a positive development for the mass customization community. Best of luck to the team.
Silicon Valley is the undisputed world center for tech start ups and Boston is a distant second, but in the world of mass customization there may not be a better place to be than New England. When people talk about productive eco-systems for start ups they often talk about the need for an enthusiastic talent base, world class educational institutions, and companies to productize the innovations of the other two groups. By any measure the Boston area is doing well on all three counts.
Customization Companies
ZCorp Develops the only 3D printers capable of printing in 4 colors In Burlington MA, while Harmonix developed RockBand’s avatar customization engine in Cambridge. Custom TShirt manufacturer Spreadshirt has their US HQ in Boston. MOO, the eclectic print on demand service established its US operations in Providence RI. Tabblo is now part of HP, but their talented team is still Boston(ish). Paragon Lake is using mass customization to disrupt the $60B jewelry industry in historic Lexington MA. Still in the early stages, OnLatte (custom coffee art) and Artaic (custom tile murals) are enabling on demand production in the Boston area.
Creative Communities
Willoughby & Baltic is a great boston based “Hacker Space” regularly running classes on machine tools and emerging platforms like Arduino. AS220 is a Providence RI based hacker space that offers a similar variety of classes and community. New England is also home to DorkBot, WebInno, a Pecha-Kucha group and a plethora of other tech events.
New England has not gone unchallenged. The bay area is home to an exciting maker community with Zazzle, CafePress, TechShop, Ponoko’s US operation, and the O’Reilly Make: empire and NYC has Bug Labs, Proper Cloth, NYC Resistor, and MakerBot. Still Boston seems to have more companies and a greater diversity than the other central hubs.
Even more interesting is how geographically disparate the world of customization is in the US alone. Toy customizers Build-A-Bear Workshop and Ride Makerz are based in St.Louis. ProvoCraft is a $250MM company that manufactues CNC tools for crafters is located in Utah. Amazingly, ShopBot, Spoonflower, and a TechShop franchise are all located in North Carolina. To borrow a line from Thomas Freidman, mass customizers can innovate without emigrating.
There aren’t many great blogs on mass customization and personal fabrication, but Twitter is a trasure trove for people interested in custom manufacturing, hardware hacking, and the combination of bits and atoms. I’ve compiled a list of people I follow who write frequently about the convergence of software with the physical world. If you know of others please let me know.
@Bre - Creator of the sub $1000 3D Printer (MakerBot) and general custom manufacturing impresario. Watch his business being built layer by layer @MakerBot. @Thingiverse - Chronicles the creation of new 3D models that you can fabricate on a 3D printer or laser cutter.
@ShopBot - Has carved out a niche for itself as manufacturers of a CNC router that helps people create amazing things. 3D printing gets all the glory, but subtractive fabrication is read for prime time now.
@TechShopJim@MarkHatch are both affiliated with TechShop, a club for personal fabrication enthusiasts where you can have access to 3D printers, plasma cutters, and other fun equipment for a monthly fee.
@MattLauzon - Founder of Paragon Lake a company combining web services and custom manufacturing processes in the fine jewelry market.
@DalePD - Dale Dougherty is the creator of Make: and Craft: magazines and one of the most influential and thoughtful people in this market. @TimOReilly is a another must follow, check out his talk on “Web Meets World” to hear his thoughts on the convergence of software and the real world. @Ptorrone - Phillip Torrone is the senior editor at Make: and Creative Director of AdaFruit Industries, a company that produces physical computing kits. @Make, @Craft, @Instructables are all also part of the O’Reilly family.
@EMSL - Evil Mad Scientist Labs is the creator of the CandyFab project which is a low cost 3D printer that uses sugar as a build material. If you would like insight into the mind of a mad scientist follow @1lenore.
@Jeggers - Jana Eggers is the CEO of SpreadShirt a Tshirt customization company and a vocal advocate for her company in social media.
@Bruces - Bruce Sterling coined of the term “Spime” refering to objects infused with connectivity and is an all around futurist guru with an eye for products. @ReBang - also falls into the wildly prolific futurist category, but writes about very practical aspects of mass customization.
@Fabbaloo - Reports on all the major happenings in the world of 3D printing and related technology.
@Jeffrey - Jeffrey Kalmikoffis a founder and chief creative officer at Threadless, the world’s leading purveyor of crowdsourced goods. More timely info about Threadless can be found @Threadless
@3d_printers - Objet 3D printers manufactures a stupendous product and frequently share info on their development. @ShapeWays - is building a community of 3D modelers who are bringing their creations to life via ShapeWays convenient 3D printing service. @RepRap - Is an open source 3D printer project helping democratize an amazing technology.
And if you find this blog to be a valuable resource, feel free to follow me: @JosephFlaherty.
The New York Times Magazine ran a great article called The Case For Working With Your Hands about the rewarding nature of manual labor in our modern, information-based economy. Having worked in the building trades I agree with much of it, though I think his account of manual labor is overly glamorized while knowledge work is given its darkest treatment outside a Douglas Coupland novel. This article is an analytical take on the subject specifically whether our societal focus on college degrees is healthy.
In the same vein, the Boston Globe has a short article on Boston area makers and the organizations that have grown up around them.
An Aesthetic Algorithm
I wrote yesterday about how lack of training is one of the reasons mass customization has yet to reach the mainstream. This brief article on color theory does a great job explaining why certain color combination works in entirely empirical and objective terms. More tutorials like this, packaged correctly, could do a great deal to help people feel comfortable designing.
Too often art and design are treated like mystical endeavors only open to those visited by the muse. In reality, the principles of aesthetics are as concrete as principles of computer programming or mathematics. They are largely based in biology, rule based, and teachable. As with anything the creative application of these frameworks is where the real magic happens.
XL 3D Printer
This is the largest thing I’ve ever seen made with a 3D printer and the scale is very impressive. Though, I don’t understand why you would spend that amount of time and money and not make something a little nicer looking? Or at least something that better accentuates the 3D printer’s capabilities? This just looks deformed. Photo Credit
Hacker Space
Fun documentary video of a Hacker space in Montreal. It does a good job of highlighting the kinds of people who are drawn to these spaces, the types of projects they work on, and the spirit that drives them.
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