Fabbed.com prototype: designer consumer products made digitally, through distributed manufacturing

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Fabbed.com aims to build a global online marketplace for digitally fabricated products,initially focused on furniture and furnishings. We intend to transform the choice available toconsumers and provide a viable alternative to mass produced products that dominate themarket today. Our vision is to give the consumer access to hundreds of high quality designsby talented designers worldwide for any product category. Moreover, consumers cancustomise any of these items by choosing materials, finishes and functionality.Fabbed.com leverages a new generation of computer controlled manufacturing technologies,which includes 3D printing and laser cutting. Such new technologies are transforming theeconomics of manufacturing by reducing labour to a smaller percentage of the cost ofmanufacture. Another disruptive aspect is that the products are manufactured locally (therebyreducing transport cost) to the consumer by a network of SME ‘makers’ using this new digitalfabrication technology.To make Fabbed.com scalable we need to build an innovative technical platform protocol andcommercial process that bridges the divide between the software used by designers and themanufacturing equipment/data required by the makers to produce them.The team at Fabbed Limited have extensive prior experience in digital fabrication. They builttwo websites that have helped to inform and evolve the concept of a global marketplace fordigitally fabricated products.- Fabhub.io: This directory website helped us to establish the viability of the fabricatornetwork that lies at the heart of the Fabbed marketplace.- OpenDesk.cc: This site is a proof of concept for the Fabbed.com marketplace and provesdemand and commercial viability of selling digitally made, designer wooden furniture onlineand manufacturing them on demand via a distributed maker network.The Fabbed.com marketplace will ultimately address a wide range of product categories madefrom many different materials.