Fabsie dublin websummit-withnotes

James McBennettSPEAKER’S NOTES

fabsie

Hello. My name's James McBennett and I’m co-founding Fabsie.com. Ask me anything on my Twitter handle, @jamesmcbennett or @fabsie

James McBennett (Fabsie) Dublin Web Summit, 17/18th October 2012

MY NAME IS

@jamesmcbennett@fabsie

HELLO


Start a [R]Evolution of the furniture industry

Ava

ilabi

lity

Opu

lanc

e

Com

fort

Rev

ivia

l

Flat

pack

Dig

ital

16th

17th

18th

19th

20th

21st

Our aim is start a revolution or a rather an evolution within the furniture industry.

These evolutions are nothing new, constant since the 16th century.

The most profitable reinvention of furniture in the late 20th century was flatpack furniture by IKEA.

I believe digital manufacturing is the next opportunity.


OUR AIM


DesignersNowhere to monetise

digital design data

Need lower barriers to entry to launch their career

Customers

MakersThey have spare capacity

They have spare capacity

Flatpack is too difficult to assemble

Wish they could afford better

Being a designer, I know those who work on the cutting edge have nowhere to monetise their digital data and desire lower barriers of entry to launch their careers.

Customers find flatpack furniture difficult to assemble and dislike the bland and limited options in their budget.

Makers and small manufacturers across Europe and the United States have spare capacity on their machines. Their second biggest problem is they have spare capacity on their machines and no-one wants expensive machines sitting idle.



DOWNLOADPURCHASE

£DELIVERUPLOAD

Manufacturing

Collection/Delivery

Shipping Warehousing

Insurance Retailing

ManufacturingDigital

Collection/Delivery

Competitors An E-Commerce Platform

Fabsie

We would like to solve these problems with an consumer focused e-commerce platform.

- Designers upload and monetise, customers purchase, - we’ll have some machines of our own - but will mostly will email the data to local makers relative to the customer - the resulting product can be collected or delivered locally.

On the left you can see, we are shrinking the supply chain to emailing, making and delivery.



1980’s

Machine Cost Skills

Tim

ing

1990’s

2000’s

2010’s€20,000

€200,000

€2,000,000

I believe the timing is great, machines have plumeted in price coming down to 20,000 euro.

Digital skills emerged in the 1980’s at schools like ETH, MIT and the Architectural Association where I met my co-founders, They are now becoming widespread.



Scaling

We are

con

nect

ing

a ne

twork

of digital fabrication content to digital makers.

We are a physical products company that is completly digital. We scale to new cities as well as test new locations by simply sending an email with a file attachment.

The spare capacity of CNC wood routers is a resource available in every major city in the world.



€ DesignersCosts

Costs

Costs

fabsie

fabsie

We make money by selling products. For the files that designers upload, we give them a large chunk of the profit.

We complement those files with our own and being digital can apply long tail principals to gain market share, discounting the most popular and making money on niche products.


James McBennettSPEAKER’S NOTES100x

FasterAssembly

No Screws No Glue Proper Joints MUCH STRONGER

Pierre Escobar, BE

So, let me explain how we are better...

Firstly, digital wood routers are accurate to the millimeter. Without using screws or glue, we are reviving proper joints resulting in products that are much much stronger.

Assembly times are between 100 and 500 times faster. I can assemble this table designed by Pierre Escobar from Belgium in 11.5 seconds.



CraftsmanshipPhil Seaton, USA

However, speed is not for everyone, these tools are capable of incredible detail.

Students from MIT have uploaded with us of which Scissor Chair by Phil Seaton is one my personal favourites, his design file in the bottom left.



CNC5

LOCALROAD

SPARE CAPACITY

Furniture Company

when we say

we mean down the

RDSCrumlin, Co. Dublin Dublin Web Summit

devoy.ie websummit.net

KILOMETERS(3.1 Miles)

When we say local, we mean down the road. The closest machine selling spare capacity to the RDS is exactly 5km away.



FURNITURE STORE

fabsie

Range/Niche

Chris Jackson, NZ

Retailers like IKEA are limited by the number of products in their supply chain, currently 9500.

Fabsie is unlimited.

These are stools with personality from NZ of which I love the bowling bowl grip you can see in the bottom image.



CustomisationName/LogoDimensionsMaterialsFinishes James McBennett, IRL

This chair represented Ireland at the world design capital, Helsinki. I would like to highlight that I wasn’t involved in making this chair, I simply emailed my design and attached the design file.

Add name/logo to any piece, customise the dimensions of any table, bookshelf, choose the materials or the finishes such as this painted version.



€85BN€125BN€270BNUSEUWORLD

IKEA SOFA .COM FABSIE

€25BNWORLD

€1.2BNUK

€0.5M -2007

€10M2011 2013

Is furniture a big market?I think so!

IKEA has just under 10% market share with revenue of 25 billion euro, 1.2 in the UK alone.

Looking at the UK furniture startup scene, Sofa.com launched in 2006, had revenue of a half million in its first trading year and ten million last year.

Our direct competitors are various furniture retailers and potentially any 3D file platform such as a company like Shapeways.


James McBennettSPEAKER’S NOTESFREE

MACHINING MATERIALSPOP-UP SHOPLEGAL

OFFICE SPACEWEB

We are still at a friends, family and fools stage and therefore trying to get as much free stuff as we can. Free machining, the most expensive part as well as other freebies like Legal. I am currently trying to get free materials and a free pop-up shop in central London.

With a chicken and egg problem of getting designers or customers first. We hit our milestones of both our team working well together, picking up some awards along with cash and getting a few early designers that allows us to launch shortly in London and test fabsie with customers.



31st October 2012

DRL Pavilion2009

Launches

We would like to raise money to accelerate, not to start, so plan to use kickstarter that launches in the UK next week. As they are project focused, we’ll pitch a pavilion like this one for East London with various pieces of furniture as rewards.

This pavilion was made at the AA in London just before I started there and uses an identical process of a digital file and a digital machine to be made.



SAdam

TEAMJames

L

MKarleung

We are a team of three designers, Adam has worked as an architectural designer and also hacked hardware such as 3D printers and software such as this plugin ‘silkworm’ for 3D printing.

Karleung has various digital machines from CNC wood routers to 3D printers and laser cutters for the last few years for Lord Norman Foster and the more recently the AA.

In this last image, I invite you all to ski jump in Oslo, this is a project I worked on in 2007 with a team of two other under 30 year olds. Similar to Fabsie, I emailed off a digital file, only this time the manufacturer built a ski jump that was then used for the Nordic World Ski Championships last year.



“It is cheaper to ship recipes than cakes and biscuits.” John Maynard Keynes(Economist) Keynes said “It is cheaper to ship recipes

than cakes and biscuits.” We are shipping digital files, not physical products.

It’s not just cheaper, recipes or digital files are both faster to reach end-users and customisable to fit local tastes. New York is not the same market as Paris in food or furniture.



Check out fabsie.com, you’ll find a link to our blog for updates. As I said, we are preparing to launch shortly in London.



I am more than happy to chat about facebook’s first ad, why chairs are like facebook, do come find me.


Web: www.fabsie.com

Twitter: @jamesmcbennett

Blog: hellojam.es

fabsie

Thankyou, it has been a priviege to present to all of you.


Fabsie dublin websummit-withnotes

Design

dublin web

cnc wood routers

james mcbennett

supply chain

designers

lower barriers

ship recipes

launch shortly