Today, I’ve got a really interesting conversation to share with you that I had recently with Arden Rosenblatt of PieceMaker.com. This is a company that has really dealt with how to bring 3D printing to mass market retail. They’ve dealt with all of the systems involved in that. It’s really fascinating. I’ve often talked with a lot of different people that are working on different pieces of the puzzle. This is a company that really has had to create an end-to-end solution, dealing with content to how would people interface and interact with it then actually having it printed right there for them at a physical location in a museum gift shop or retail store. They’ve also gone on to do other kinds of solutions, a little more business to business, but it’s really all centered around the same thing. How to help companies, especially big brands, take advantage of the opportunities that additive manufacturing, in particular 3D printing, offers. I hope you really will enjoy it. Let’s go to the interview with Arden and then I’ll talk to you a little bit more on the other side.
Listen to the podcast here:
3D Print Ecosystems, End To End, with Arden Rosenblatt of Peacemaker Technologies
Arden, thank you so much for joining me today on WTFFF. It’s great to have you on the show.
Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
I’m really interested to hear the details about PieceMaker. In general, I understand it’s really a business-to-business business model, is that right?
Yes.
Can you explain a little bit for our audience what PieceMaker is all about?

3D Print Ecosystems: The big goal at PieceMaker has been to really build out the 3D print ecosystems that drives additive manufacturing at a larger scale.
The big goal at PieceMaker has been to really build out the 3D print ecosystems, really the platform, that drives additive manufacturing at a larger scale. How do we build the systems that not just engineers and makers use 3D printing, but shoppers and stores, departments within companies, people at home, how do we make something robust enough so they don’t feel like they’re one of the early programmers on the first computers, but create something like a Windows so everyone could come together and focus not so much on the hardware but all the software that enables everyone to use it meaningfully. We’re getting on almost five years of our company. We started by actually building all in one kiosk where you can go from picking a model, to customizing, designing the model, making it one of a kind, to having it print onsite, right in the store. We did lots of greats pilots and installations, bringing 3D printing to stores. We’re in Toys R Us in Time Square before they closed their flagship store, the Pittsburg Zoo, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, the National Building Museum in Washington DC. All essentially these pop-up 3D printing gift stores really. That was a first of its kind system.
Really the core there was a lot of technology that lets us build catalogues, layer on customization tools, and then deploy it to an interface that anyone, kids really ages three and up, can use meaningfully, can interact with and can create custom products there. More recently, we have seen an exciting shift in the industry. A lot of bigger companies, big product companies, industrial companies, really all over the map are starting to develop a much more nuanced and I think mature view of additive manufacturing. They’re looking to really start incorporating these supply chains into what they do. It’s everything from design custom jewelry and they’ll make it on demand for you. We’re doing some work in the beauty care industry doing really cool in-store samples of beauty care products. I’m sure one day it will design your own Nike shoes or design an outfit in the mirror and they’ll print it on demand for you. All these use case where essentially anyone can not just pick an item off the shelf but really create the perfect product for them and then have it made.
What we’ve been doing these days is bringing a lot of technology we’ve built both the backend systems that make it all work, make it all viable and robust as well as that product and consumer experience. We’re working with some of the best product companies we can find to use their market reach and experience combined with our technology and our many years in the trenches with the consumers and families and all sorts of people. I’m putting it together to really try and bring these interactive, on-demand customization experiences to scale.
It sounds like a challenging task. Definitely, I love where you’re going with this and what you’ve been doing. To try to bring this to consumers in a way that’s easy for them to understand and achieve getting a result. Also dealing with the businesses and trying to show them that this is the future and they need to get into it. I imagine that’s been quite challenging.
Just on the 3D printing side to start there, it was a very long learning curve. That’s why we very purposely have always been quick to launch, quick to put out products. Basically, just trying to get every iteration possible in stores, in front of people and learn what works and what doesn’t. It’s been a whole process. To begin, we really had the first retail 3D printing kiosk that I’ve ever heard of that I know of in existence. That meant actually placing kiosk in retail stores taking payment, printing on site, building a back end that non-technical retail staff could use. In other words, take a normal employee at your local Toys ‘R Us who’s never usually even seen a 3D printer and within 30 minutes, they’re up and running these things consistently and reliably. What goes into that is all sorts of areas. We have to make printers that are safe, that are fast, that are good quality. Any order we had done in stores would come out in 30 minutes of else.
It becomes really a design question. As you know, we could make almost anything. It’s a question of fast technology and time. We had actually decided to make printers that could show off this technology. The printers would lock when they were hot. They were OSHA safe, child safe and we actually were the first company to get the core models that people are building off of. We had all them tested the child safety standards. It actually became the first product line of 3D printed toys legal for sale to children that I know of.
That’s actually an issue we’ve talked about on our show off and on is the safety issue of the designs and the execution of the prints to make sure they are safe. What standards did you really test that to? Was it from the Consumer Product Safety Commission or was it UL? What did you build to?
The printers are built towards UL, that’s mostly for employee and in-store safety. There’s really two standards for kids three and up. Under three, you get into choking hazards and it’s just not an area we dealt with especially because children under three, the customization is just not as meaningful at that young age. What it breaks down to is making sure the materials are safe materials. When we were in stores, we’d use ABS plastic, same thing as LEGOs. We make sure the material certified is not containing heavy metals or phthalates or additives that are unsafe. On the other side, it involves testing the actual products. There’s basic toy safety standards. Most of them refer to ASTM specifications. Essentially, we were able to work with a testing group. It wasn’t UL, but a similar laboratory, and create this platonic archetypes of each piece that was going to go into the system and they break it, they smash it, they do all these stuff. Basically, we were able to get certified that any variation our system is going to spit out is going to meet those standards.
That’s really impressive. I’ve never heard of another company manufacturing 3D printed products who actually has gone to that extent to make sure their products are safe. I actually applaud you for that.
Thank you. Especially in the earlier days, we started to develop a reputation for doing this right. Getting into the second part of your question, how do we get big companies on board? That was really a first step. The products have to safe. The channels have to be secure and the IP has to be very well protected. For instance, we put these in Toys R Us. As far as I know industry first, licensed customizable gifts and toys from Ford and Nickelodeon are officially licensed. The way we were able to get them on board is exactly by hitting those showing that our prints would be reliable, that they’d be true to the brand. Not just to look right but be exciting and something their customers want and fit that experience they are trying to build. Our whole content system is ran by our backend platform, really an enterprise level platform. They knew their files are secure. They’re not going to end up on Thingiverse. Especially in worse cases, someone pulls it, puts it on Thingiverse and adds a SpongeBob giving a middle finger. That would become a real problem for these guys. By checking all those boxes and just proving it on the ground, and this is about two to three years ago, started bridging that gap and bringing companies on board even before they really had a corporate mandate to do so.
Five years in existence for your company, I didn’t realize you’ve been around that long. Really, you must be doing it right if you’re still around today and doing this. Because those are complex issues both systems and legal and I would say bureaucratic within big companies that you’ve got to deal with. It’s been an impediment to a lot of other companies jumping into that space.
The reality is additive manufacturing is in a lot of ways really just a novel supply chain for products. The problem traditionally I think in the 3D printing industry especially what got me into it is there is all these great new hardware and everyone is trying to make the next best printer. A very few people are spending on the actual use cases, that what are you going to make with it. The running joke was you’d go to 3D Systems booth back in the day and say, “This is cool. What can I make with this printer?” The answer was always the same. They’d say, “You can make anything.” There really wasn’t a great answer.

3D Print Ecosystems: As we evolve from building our own standalone kiosk, building the products, we found this really good fit of becoming more of a technology provider.
The missing link there is to have these market leaders involved. To understand their consumers, understand the products, understand the markets. Really, as we evolve from building our own standalone kiosk, building the products, owning the whole experience, we found this really good fit of becoming more of a technology provider. What we can do in that partnership is we find these great product companies top of their game who are at this point, over the last couple of years are now much more focused on getting into additive manufacturing. It’s a more mature market. They are starting to see not just, “This would be cool,” but really clear value cases, ways they see can impact the economics of their business. They come to someone like PieceMaker who knows how to build the experiences, knows how to build the backend, who can help them create the products, knows what’s too much customization, what’s not enough, etc. What it does do is focus on the technology while they focus on the products. With that fit together, we help them understand the boundaries of the design they create, usually a lot of the graphics, the products, really the branded pieces of it. We can focus moving full speed ahead both on the product front and the technology interactive front. That’s been just a really good combination for it.
I think you’re right on to go after some kind of licensed content that’s recognizable for people. I think the Nickelodeon one made obviously a lot of sense. There are some pictures on your website of SpongeBob and Ninja Turtles and stuff like that. That is a draw and going to be a reason people are going to want to get this product made for them at that kiosk. I see some images of your kiosk especially the Nickelodeon one where clearly, it’s like you said, ABS is a filament 3D printer. I’m just a little curious about that system. Did you create this customized 3D printer or is it really something adapted that’s off the shelf from another company?
No, we had to build that from scratch. We have always been a software company that because of the time and place in the market, have not been able to get away from the hardware. We would have loved to have bought someone else’s printer and just plugged it in. Unfortunately, if you think about all the controls we need to do from managing prints to the safety protocols, to the employee dashboard that lets many times a teenager on a summer part time gig learn this thing and get right up to speed. All those things to make it safe and reliable and controllable and really ready for retail, there was nothing out there. There is really still nothing out there that I’ve seen so we had to go build our own.
I don’t know of anything else out there either. I saw maybe two years ago, XYZ was putting a printer in every Barnes and Noble store and they did this what they called mini Maker Faire thing. I have some Barnes and Nobles near me so I went in and checked one out. The printer was sitting there on the information booth station and there was one guy in the store that knew how to run it, but it was not very well detailed out and planned out as to what people could make. You can see the difference between your kiosks where an end consumer is invited to engage and participate with it versus something that’s more of just a novelty demonstration.
The good news is we have seen people evolve out of that. Two years ago, that’s really what it was. You’d go to Home Depot, same thing, there’ll be a Bosch printer just sitting there doing nothing, no one knows how to use it. There are all these efforts to put these things in schools but again, they’re not really building the use cases. They’re not really providing the software in 3D print ecosystems. You have one teacher who’s probably overworked as it is who is now supposed to become this maker tinker. It’s just an absurd expectation.
That’s been tough. There are some examples of schools that are having a lot of success with it and others that I think are having less success with it. It depends on the situation. You make a great point. I think to have the best success, you really have to have an end-to-end solution. Instead of just giving a teacher a 3D printer and saying, “Here, figure it out.”
It’s like any other product. You need a clear use case. I’m not a computer guy so I wouldn’t just go into an old 80s computer and start hacking away. That’s not what makes those things useful to me. Just like I use Skype and Facebook and all these great tools, it’s exactly what 3D printing needs. If you’re a teacher, your goal is not to be a 3D printing expert. Your goal is to teach design or whatever it is. The kids need applications that teach design. It’s really that simple. That’s been our approach in every market. If you’re an industrial company, your goal is not to teach people to become 3D printers. Your goal is to give them an easy way to order new parts or try new demos or whatever it is. If you’re a retail store, your goal is not to show off some new technology. Your goal is to sell products in a new way that’s more valuable. That’s really what the focus is got to be the 3D printer is just an enabling piece of the equation. It’s necessary but not sufficient in most cases.
I’m curious about the jewelry examples that are on your website. What material is that jewelry made of?
A range of them: steel, silver, gold. It could really be anything. That was a very cool pilot we did here in Pittsburg. The core experiment there from a corporate point of view was designing store and then having things made offsite. Some of those pieces of jewelry would be printed maybe by Shapeways or ExOne or something. A lot of them, they would actually print the mold and just cast metal into it. Some of it wasn’t 3D printed at all. Really, it’s about digital file production more than specifically 3D printed. Especially the steel, a lot of that the file was sent to a CNC and milled right there. One piece is let’s print in store, let’s print on-demand. It’s very cool. There’s no shipping. There’s no supply chain. Just 30 minutes later, you walk out with a part. At the same time, some of these high value materials and technologies are not always going to be affordable to place in a store. How do we create that side of the supply chain where you can design finer parts and different materials, more complex things, have that made offsite and shipped direct?
In that sense, that’s really the example that you said the foundation of your company is a software company. Really about the interface with the customer and the customization, and then depending on what the result of the end products needs to be. You determine for that customer, whether you can have a kiosk and having this experience right in your store, or it’s going to be shipped to you almost like Amazon type of situation where you’re going to order online and have it sent to you but the difference is you get it your way.
Exactly. We really focus on two things at the end of the day. We focus on interactive customization experiences. Interactive software that people who at this stage more likely than not, don’t know the technology, don’t know what it’s capable of, really have to go through this whole learning curve very quick in a matter of seconds or minutes and give them meaningful design tools. The other side that plugs into that is essentially content management systems for additive manufacturing. How do you build catalogues? How do you distribute them? How do you manage track them? Once purchases go through, how do you get that end file where it needs to go? How do you make sure the proper level of information is there because you’re not just sending 3D CAD file. You’re not just sending an image or a catalogue number. There’s actually more data that goes into that typically. Those are the two pieces of the puzzle. The technology to distribute and manage and make sense of all these content. Then the actual tools that interface with the user that make it fun, rewarding, meaningful, quick, efficient, whatever the end goal is there.
You’re finding increased adoption at actual physical brick and mortar retail. Do you see that increasing? It makes sense to me that you have museum gift shops and science museums, history museums, whatever. I could see dinosaur bones being pumped out and different customized keepsakes. It’s like when you go to Disneyland or Disney World and they always have these machines where you can put a penny in it and it will smash it and emboss it with a certain character or something so you can walk away with something pretty quick. That seems to make sense to me about souvenir type of things. What about retail? Do you see it increasing or is that a struggle with brick and mortar retail?

3D Print Ecosystems: Many retailers are trying to get a little bit of the risk out of their business.
Brick and mortar retail has been a little tough for a lot of reasons. One is I think a lot of brick and mortars retailers are having a tough time these days especially with Amazon. The unfortunate symptom is as revenue tightens up, they’re less willing to try new things and it becomes this cycle. Retail is actually a little bit tough. It’s really fun working with Toys R Us, but they’re reorganizing now. The good news though is we’re seeing the brands actually take the charge. I have a surprising amount of brands really all over the spectrum. I’m purposely trying to stay a little broad but we’re seeing these product companies start to take over. I think the idea in retail is at least many retailers are trying to get a little bit of the risk out of their business. They just don’t have the traffic, they once did so a lot of retailers are renting space rather than buying and reselling products. Where that’s evolved into is you again see these brands that now are taking more ownership of the in-store experience as it relates to their products. They are the ones that have really been coming to us more and more and saying, “We want to create this new retail experience. We want to do this custom products,” this and that. The retailers are going with the flow and letting them do what they want to do in their space.
We have seen that shift, which I will say makes sense in some ways. It’s really the brands and the product companies that push the demand. At the same time, I do think the smart retailers are going to start investing in this one day. You mentioned I believe this guys is competing with Amazon and trying to get people into their store. The reality is customization. It’s fun and it’s a cool experience you can do with your friends but really it’s very personal and interactive. It’s very hard to recreate that online. What you’re seeing is a new way of shopping. If you put a little bit of thought into it, it really could be a tremendous advantage for physical retail. To give you one example, I always thought this was a cool one. I tell you it’s not something I’ve ever worked on but I’d love to. Really, the beauty of retail is they can buy equipment that doesn’t make sense to get in the home. I’m confident one day when we go clothes shopping, it’s going to be in some magical digital mirror and we’re going to try out and design all the clothes in virtual reality. Some machine is going to pop out the suit with three buttons and two pockets or a weird patch you just designed.
I agree, I think that’s going to happen at some point. I don’t know how far in the future it is. There are lots of people working on that one right now. While there are issues holding it back of materials and the amount of time it takes and all that, I think technology will improve that and it will come to pass. That will be a very exciting time when that happens. There’s going to be a lot of companies that are invested in a lot of traditional manufacturing equipment that are going to be in trouble when this happens.
I think it’s a good example of that phenomena. We all know it’s exciting, everyone sees the value there. There’s lots of startups making the hardware. I’m sure there’s people making the software. My software would fill some of the gaps in the equation. If you think about it, at least my opinion is it’s not really going to hit scale until you get someone like Nike who says, “This is the future. We’re going to invest in making this happen.” It’s not going to be the footlocker of the world. I don’t think some San Francisco startups saying, “Here’s the future,” and everyone adapts it. I really think it’s going to be when the actual product company is driving the market come out and say, “This is the future here.” That’s when things are going to take off very quickly. There are smart companies that have been doing this for a while. They don’t want to wait until guys like us develop the ground work first to do it. I do think that’s starting to shift as this market matures, and in growing number of cases, the economics are finally starting to take a turn for the better and starting to work out.
I think if the technology improves and the speed with which these objects can be made at the local level on site increases, then I think a lot more possibilities open up. I think that brick and mortar retail absolutely needs ways to stay more relevant because they are an endangered species. Otherwise, they’re just offering the same things people go online and get at Amazon or chains that are just reselling things they’re buying from others. If they could each have their own unique product line you can only get from their store, there’s a reason for people to go there.
That’s the idea that to me is they’re saving grace over the next coming decades. Once something is commoditized, Amazon is only going to get better and better at getting it to you, the next day a penny over cost. When something is unique and interactive, it’s just a whole new ballgame. It’s not just shopping, it’s an experience. I hate to think of the world where everyone is just staring into a screen all day even more than we already do. It’s good to get out and interact and be a human for a while instead of just tapping things on the screen. I really am hesitant to believe that that’s our future. I think that’s a hazy projection of the future. I think it’s going to be more interesting than that.
Hopefully enhanced by the different products that can be brought to them instead of them having to go just search on Amazon. The tough thing about that, and it’s another interesting dynamic is when you go shop online, you have to have something in mind that you’re looking for, or else the website, the algorithms don’t have any idea what to serve up to you. That idea of shopping and browsing and discovering and finding things is lost. What you’re doing, especially at different kinds of stores or other experience venues, offers that kind of interactive surprise and fund elements of something, an experience they really can’t get elsewhere.
Maybe most exciting, it gets lost sometimes because it’s real big picture stuff. I think it’s a great potential American manufacturing movement. When you think about what additive manufacturing does, it really localizes much of the value creation, much of the labor, the manufacturing. I think pretty soon, some of these million dollar machines in a decade will be $10,000 or $20,000, whatever it is. At that point, instead of opening a mom-and-pop pizza shop, maybe you go open a mom-and-pop manufacturing center. It just becomes a very powerful tool where, for one, we’re not destroying the planet shipping things around the country or the world. You think about a stupid plastic party favor like the stuff you buy at a party store, that’s crazy. They make millions in China. They ship them around the world. They go to their distribution centers. This just becomes monster process where really, hopefully soon in the future, you can go to your local mom-and-pop shop, design it, tell them how much you need and they’ll go make it in the back. That’s really a powerful thing especially in this time where we’re trying to figure out what to do with our labor force. I am optimistic. I guess people worry about robots taking jobs and I think that’s a very fair concern especially for people who’ve been displaced by it. I do see a bit of a pendulum there where the prices come down enough that enables everyday people, small businesses, entrepreneurs, hobbyists and crafts people. They can start to reclaim that and it will actually I hope will become very empowering force in our economy.
I agree with you, I think it will. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for that especially because I have just in my town here, I live in Southern California and it’s a very populated areas. There’s certainly plenty of population to support retail still, whatever retail industries exist. I can’t tell you how many restaurants that I have seen go into an actual strip mall space that has plenty of traffic like the most recent one I could think of was a crepe shop or restaurant. They spend a ton of money on the interior outfitting of this place with all sorts of equipment that had to be very, very expensive. They easily spent probably $150,000 to $200,000 that minimum outfitting the space. Then the place only lasted less than 90 days and it was gone. Talk about a huge investment in a bet that entrepreneurs, business people make on thinking that there’s a market for it. People are going to come here and buy enough of these items to support that investment, and obviously, they were wrong. If we can get this to the point where you can invest a lower five-figure number in equipment and in an experience that people can get something of value at a local level, then maybe that is the recipe for success going forward.
I don’t have to see a world where GE or ExOne or Arconic or any of these guys will even lease it to you. Wouldn’t that be great, you give them $1,000 a month and you’re up and running.
I’m sure that can happen. There’s got to be leasing companies, maybe they’re not the manufacturer themselves leasing it, but there probably are leasing companies that you can lease that equipment from and not have to buy it. There’s also a certain level of those types of business owners that want to purchase a franchise, which is a proven model of doing business. This is decidedly unproven what we’re talking about. It may still take some more time before it gets there and a combination of events need to converge in order for it to happen. I’m optimistic about it as well. I see it happening. I’m very happy to see what your company has been doing and that you exist and you’re growing. You can’t be in five years in business doing this and still be existing if you aren’t having a certain amount of success, so I applaud you for that.
Thank you. I love this space. It’s a very interesting dynamic. Just as I said earlier. We work with big companies. We leverage their brands. We really are able to do things we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. The flipside of it is we can’t get away from the core benefit of additive manufacturing or digital manufacturing or whatever it is. It’s essentially a decentralizing technology to have giant manufacturing labs in China filled with printers is not the best way to do it anymore. The dichotomy is that these giant product companies that it’s not what they’re good at. They’re made from mass scale, mass distribution, filling 80% of the need and leaving 20% to everyone else. It’s not the way they have been operating for the last hundred years. That’s where we come in. That’s the benefit we provide. We’ve done this, we can take a lot of the risk out. We can get them to market it quickly and efficiently and profitably.
Bigger picture, I don’t think they’ll be the leader in that gap forever. I think once this really starts taking off, it’s going to be these small businesses, these designers, really people on the bleeding edge of it that are going to find the coolest applications. At the end of the day, additive manufacturing decentralizes and it gives people opportunities to get into an industry that they probably could not have got into 10 years ago. This is about more than just hardware, once the 3D print ecosystems are there and the tools are there and just like I can go learn how to build a website and do it, these guys can learn how to open a storefront and launch it. I think that’s when it’s going to be really the most exciting in a place we haven’t quite seen it yet.
Hopefully it is the leading edge and not the bleeding edge. The bleeding edge I find often is referring things that didn’t succeed. I’m sure there’s going to be a little of each. Arden, thank you so much for joining me today in WTFFF. It’s been a great discussion. Our listeners have gotten a lot of it. We look forward to seeing the continued advancements that your company makes going forward.
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
3D Print Ecosystems, End To End – Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed the interview and I hope you did too. I really was impressed with how much of really the all-encompassing details that there are to deal with from a complete end-to-end solution that this company has dealt with. The fact that they’ve been around for five years is very impressive. I don’t think you can survive. There isn’t enough investment capital or investments that are willing to keep pouring more and more money into a potential solution for something to last five years. They have to be having some success. It’s great to see that obviously, they’ve found an opportunity with big brands who are trying to find ways to be more relevant to consumers and find new ways to reach consumers and provide them products that are adventurous to them and are going to benefit them. That really is the big issue especially as brick and mortar retail does continue to struggle in the United States at least. I’m not going to speak for other countries because I don’t have much experience there.
As retail continues to struggle, to try to remain relevant in an Amazon world, which United States is certainly becoming dominated by Amazon. They’ve also figured out a model that provides a good consumer experience. The big difference is Amazon is offering things and selling things that really are not entirely unique to Amazon. Their distribution model may be unique and how quickly they can get it to you and maybe they’ve got the best price. Still, it’s the same products for the most part that are sold at other retailers and other distribution methods. How can we use as an industry and obviously PieceMaker as a company and different brands they’re working with? How can they control their brand content, have consumers have a great experience with it and how can they distribute it to them and how can they remain more relevant as a brand to consumers?

3D Print Ecosystems: We’re talking about physical products that may be related to things that consumers are having an experience with.
I deal with a lot of companies in our consulting business that are selling products on Amazon. What they’re all trying to do to remain relevant and to grow and hopefully become acquirable at some point is building a brand because that’s where they see the real value is. Being a distributor of products is not really near as valuable and is not as interesting to people because there’s always someone that is executing on distribution better than you are even if you’re very, very good at it. How are you going to remain relevant? How are you going to continue to grow? A lot of times, this is about building a brand and of course, that brand has to be offering some unique value proposition. In this case, we’re talking about physical products that may be related to television shows or movies or games and other things that consumers are having an experience with. I found the jewelry fascinating. I remember in high school, you get your class ring or in college you get your class ring and these companies like Herff Jones had really mastered how to make mass customized rings but in very traditional processes. Still, you had to have an entire school full of people with a graduating class of 250 or 500 or more people that each are going to order one of these rings in order for them to justify making the molds and being able to make the rings.
Now, with this kind of on-demand additive manufacturing integrated into retail jewelry stores, you can get a customized ring for any aspect that you want with a company like PieceMaker involved helping that jewelry store provide that customer interphase solution to then deliver a product that’s going to be relevant and a value to consumers. It’s very exciting for me to see that and see it coming and having success with it because that’s really where things need to continue to move going forward. Brick and mortar retail, I don’t see how they’re going to survive except for obviously distributing food and restaurants because we all need to eat, but physical product stores, there’s got to be something unique if you’re going to continue to go there.
You can reach out to us anywhere on social media @3DStartPoint. Thanks very much. I’ll talk to you next time. This has been Tom on the WTFFF 3D Printing Podcast.
Important Links
About Arden Rosenblatt
Arden Rosenblatt is the CEO of PieceMaker Technologies Inc. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara in 2010, and is enrolled in a dual‐MS program at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in Mechanical Engineering and Innovation Management.
Arden’s prior speaking engagements:
- Shoptalk Nextgen Commerce Expo 2016
- Digital Kids Conference 2016
- 3D Prinng & Addive Manufacturing Expo 2014
- Select events at University and local organizations
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