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Designers are rarely short for ideas.  In fact, the problem lies less often with coming up with an idea, but rather in taking it from the concept stage to a manufactured prototype or even a product.  Large manufacturing and fabrication plants tend not to want to have to deal with the amount of work that a small run of a new product can bring to them.  It simply doesn’t make best use of their time and manufacturing equipment to do small runs of production from a business standpoint.  It is far more economically sound to do large runs for clients that have tooling that does not need constant tweaking, but instead can be run around the clock relatively maintenance free.  So then, designers run into a problem when they are trying to initially get products into a prototype stage, or perhaps even beyond that, to a finished product stage with a small number of total products to be manufactured.  Rapid Prototyping has made it affordable for some studios to do such prototyping in house, but not all types, and not for all studios (and what of singular designers trying to get something fabricated?).

100k Garages is trying to bridge the gap between small, local fabrication shops and designers with ideas that want to see them turned into reality.  Much like Craigslist‘s start, 100k garages is trying to connect people locally using an almost newsletter like approach.  Fabricators can sign up on the website in order to let it be known to designers that they are willing to work with them to try and get their concept created and tweaked as best they can, and designers can post their concept information and fabricators can bid on the rights to manufacture them.  This presents options to a designer who has everything but the manufacturing capabilities on hand to turn their dream product into a reality.  Even those designers who aren’t quite at the stage of having manufacturing drawings in hand can benefit from 100k Garages, as they allow designers to connect and consult with fabrication shops earlier on in the process.  That alone is a supremely valuable tool available to a designer, as the transition from paper to 3D product will be much smoother if the design can be shaped and molded appropriately earlier on in the development cycle, as opposed to after manufacturing drawings and the like have been made.

100k Garages seems to be trying to fill a need created by the increasingly daunting requirements in order to get a product idea turned into a legitimate product by connecting designers with fabricators.  This really is a win-win scenario at it’s most logical.  The designer benefits from fabrication knowledge and ability, and the fabricator benefits from new revenue sources in an economy where any new sources of income are precious.  Such a service could be a nice shot in the arm for the industry, perhaps injecting more local products onto the retail scene in some capacity.  With such great potential to help designers and fabricators alike, it is hard to imagine why something like this hasn’t happened already.

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