Many early adopters of desktop/personal 3D printers believe there will come a day when all manufacturing will be done locally, in homes, throughout the world. Until that day, which may still be fairly far away, early distributed manufacturing will take place through a “democratization of multinational corporate business models”. To establish an international manufacturing and commercial presence on three different continents right now, all it takes is… three 3D printers. That’s what Kobrin, a start-up founded by a team of young italian entrepreneurs, intends to do by 3D printing and selling sunglasses in Europe as well as South and North America.
“We are a small company that is trying to establish a global presence,” says Davide Nastasi, who is in charge of building the commercial and communication structure. “We began with a model market place then we came to the realization that the market is not ready and that, in the beginning, we would have to base our business on the sale of physical 3D printed objects, rather than virtual 3D printable ones.”
So the first physical item they have embraced is sunglasses, using Italian designs made in ABS (but more materials are now being considered, including wood and biodegradable plastics) with two MakerBot Replicator 2X’s. The design and manufacture of sunglasses is rapidly becoming an Italian tradition, with the giant Luxottica group and other interesting 3D printed projects such as SodaConcepts, on which I reported for 3DPI a few weeks ago.
For Kobrin, sunglasses have been a point of entry to define their business a vertically as possible, more 3D printed products, however, are already on the way. A model for 3D printed acoustic speakers is already available on the website and a larger one is being developed as we speak. “We have also introduced a line of t-shirts to characterize our brand with a clear reference to 3D printed designs.”
To take their business international, since the Italian situation, with a contracting economy and no turnaround in sight, the Kobrin team applied to a seed incubator in Brazil, a program aimed at attracting young innovative start-ups from all over the world. “We were selected and we moved to the Belo Horizonte last January,” says Nastasi, “in the beginning we were worried because the image many people have of Brazil is that of beaches and partying while the reality is very different. The truth is that Brazilians are very open to innovation and there is an entire generation of young professionals with an elevated purchasing power and a deep interest for products coming from abroad.”
Through the incubator program Davide and the rest of the Kobrin team may be able to obtain permanent visas in Brazil, where they would like to establish a direct manufacturing and commercial base. Along with all that comes localized production, this would allow them to be able to commercialize Italian designed sunglasses in Brazil without incurring the 60% duties on imports. The next step is to localize another manufacturing base in the US to be able to take advantage of Kickstarter crowd-funding.
“Italy is really full of ideas and creativity, local 3D printing is finally taking hold as a mean of production and giving everyone more ways to express their ideas,” Davide says. “Unfortunately there is no internal demand, so many Italians have to target the global marketplace to succeed while italian start-up companies have to be able to expand outside the borders from the onset. Desktop 3D printing has made this possible for us: not just de-localizing but re-localizing production where demand and opportunities are highest.”
