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[MUSIC] Hi, we're in the Chelsea section of | |
New York City, in downtown Manhattan. And I'm standing in an incredible | |
new store called normal. And what is Normal? Well, this is Normal. You see behind me, | |
this is Normal's current product line. They use 3D printed technology | |
to make custom made earbuds. Made just for your individual ear. So we're going to be talking with | |
Nikki Kaufman, Nikki is the founder and CEO of Normal. Talk about 3D printing, talk about Normal, | |
how it got started, and actually do a demonstration | |
in which a normal play will hopefully scan my ear and work on | |
making me some custom-made earbuds. So come on back. Let's talk to Nikki. Hi, Nikki. >> Hi, how are you? >> Good. | |
Thanks for meeting with us today. >> Thank you for having me here. >> Can we begin by having you | |
tell us your 3D printing story? >> I've been an athlete all my life and | |
I've never had earphones that fit. It's a normal problem that | |
many of us experience, and I was a founding team member at | |
the consumer products company, Quirky, where I was exposed to manufacturing and | |
production and 3D printing. And during my time there, | |
I got to thinking, can we solve this issue of ill fitting | |
earphones in an accessible way? Because the process before Normal, | |
actually you could get custom earphones, but the way you would have to do it was | |
a very cumbersome, inaccessible process. But I got to thinking, can we do this | |
in a more scalable way via 3D printing? And I started prototyping it in my | |
apartment at the time, on a maker bot, and realized very quickly that I | |
could go from just a photo to a customer fitting product. And that is when I launched Normal. [SOUND] 3D printing allows us to make | |
a custom fitting product very quickly and very accessibly for | |
both the consumer and the business. In other words, we can make Normals in | |
under three hours at a price point, again, that makes sense for the consumer. They're $199. It's a premium product. But also something where it makes | |
sense for us as a scalable business. In fact, | |
it really is true mass customization. [SOUND] Mass customization actually has | |
been around for quite some time, but it's traditionally very slow, | |
expensive and near impossible to scale. So we're super proud of creating | |
mass customization at scale in an accessible way. So we are actually the only company that's mass producing a consumer | |
good via 3D printing. You can actually order Normals from | |
anywhere in the world, anywhere, by downloading the mobile app, or you can come here to our factory, that's | |
also our store, and also our headquarters. But no matter where in the world you | |
place your order we make it here, and again we can make them | |
in under three hours. [SOUND] You download the mobile app and | |
it prompts you to grab a quarter or any coin because all we need is | |
a reference object for scale. So you hold the coin here, | |
you put your phone in front of you, and it talks you through taking | |
a couple of ear selfies. So you tilt your head and the camera | |
takes a few photos of your ear, and then you get to customize your Normals. So you choose one of seven different | |
colors for the 3D printed part, as well as one of two colors for | |
the custom carrying case. In fact, it's not just the head phones | |
that are customized for you but the cases, as well. So we laser etch your name or | |
your nickname onto the case and then it actually pops up for | |
easy cable management. And we laser cut the negative | |
of your Normals. So only your normals will fit | |
in your ears or in your case. Basically you submit your order | |
through the app or in our store. It pings our backend, and we basically | |
do a little manipulation of that photo to turn it into the 3D | |
file that then gets printed. So it takes a couple of minutes. It's mostly automated. There's a little bit of | |
engineering work on our end. It gets sent to one of the printers, | |
depending on where in the world it's going, when the customer needs it by, | |
what color it is. We built this whole backend factory | |
that dispatches it appropriately. It gets printed, | |
which takes about an hour. And then, after it's printed, | |
there's a little bit of post-processing. We clean it. So we remove the support material. We sand it down, and what I mean by that | |
is we actually sand down the B-side, the part that goes in your ear. But we leave the stepping from 3D print on the A-side because we like to | |
celebrate the fact that it's 3D printed. But the part that touches you, | |
we want to be super, super smooth. So after we sand it down, | |
we give it a coat of soft touch paint. So it doesn't change the color, but | |
it just makes it soft to the touch. That dries. We audio test it, we put it in its | |
carrying case, and put it in this box and then we ship it out to you. So that whole thing end to end | |
again the hour for 3D printing and then about two hours or | |
just there under for some post processing. [SOUND] So right now the printers | |
that line the perimeter of our store are Stratasys machines, | |
it's the Fortus 250 we have 10 of them. The reason why we print in | |
the Fortus 250 is a few things. Number one, they print in AVS which we | |
know how plastic interacts with the skin. A lot of earphones are actually AVS. And they print at factory quality, | |
premium quality scale. They're super easy to operate. You don't see failures, | |
they'll run overnight. They literally, with the price | |
of a it's super, super simple. And again, when you're running a product | |
that's using 3D printing at scale, these are absolutely | |
the right printers for us. My hope really that someone soon | |
could come into this store and for one is, it's 3D printed and | |
then theres no post processing. So you could do it in an hour. Or it's 3D printed and takes 10 minutes | |
and then they walk out the door with it. So we're not there yet but I hope to be. [SOUND] I like to describe | |
Normal as a consumer brand. A lot of people mention the word | |
Omnichannel when they talk about what we do because there is a physical component, | |
there's also a mobile commerce component. The part that I think is | |
super interesting and compelling is the fact that | |
you can do the whole thing. End to end, one to one right here. because I think part of | |
what makes Normal so powerful is that it's all in one location. And that was really important for | |
me when we were launching Normal, to do everything all at once. I hope there's lots of other people | |
working on 3D printing of consumer goods. I can tell you that at Normal, | |
we are working on other things. We believe Normal to be a platform for | |
customization. Customers and consumers, we want | |
things that are built for us and for our bodies, and there's a lot of areas of the body that we could imagine | |
could benefit from a custom fit. When we launched Normal, | |
we called it Normal. And we don't mention | |
headphones in the title. We're leaving it open to | |
further product development. [SOUND] I cannot share what's next. Though I can tell you that | |
we just launched today, two limited edition holiday partnerships. One with Rebecca Menkoff where we're | |
making, actually, rose gold normals. And the way that works is that we 3D print | |
in castable resin rather than the ABS and then we cast that out in | |
actually 14 carat rose gold. And we're launching | |
another limited edition version of Normals with Nike that's | |
a custom color way for their Runner. [SOUND] I think they'll | |
definitely be different machines. I hope again that it's a point where | |
you can walk into a factory and walk out with a product. I hope that's far sooner than five years. In the last six months, I've realized something quite | |
interesting about the product. I don't think that people necessarily | |
buy it because it's 3D printed. I think people buy Normals because | |
they're the best-fitting and best-sounding headphones. So it's very cool and | |
it's very cool technology and it's fascinating to be able to educate. But at least right now, and it might be | |
because not many people are using it for mass, I don't know that it | |
hasn't gotten there yet. Like a lot of consumers they | |
don't even know what that means. So it's a bit interesting, I think. I hope that there's more brands | |
that are using 3D printing so that that does become a very | |
important conversation. [SOUND] It's a super | |
important piece of the story. When you walk in here the fact | |
is that 30% of the people buy. And that's really, really high, | |
given that we sell one item. And I do truly believe | |
it's because we show them. We show them the process. We show them, we let them in. They understand it. A large majority of the folks that have | |
walked in here have never seen a 3D printer before. We do a lot of events at night, | |
both to get in athletes and do 3D printing meetups and everything, retail everything to get folks into | |
the space, to get them expose what we do. [SOUND] So our website is nrml.com. So it's normal without the vowels. You can follow us on social | |
media we're @normalears. And then, again, you can download | |
the apps in the iTunes store or the Google Play Store. Just search for normal and | |
it will pop right up, and lastly, if you're ever in Manhattan, | |
please come visit us in Chelsea. It's 22nd Street between 6th and 7th and we'd love to have you at our factory and | |
store. [SOUND] Keep making and stay in touch. I'm happy to be a resource to all of you. You can contact me directly, | |
[email protected], and thanks for including me in your course. >> Thank you for your time. [MUSIC] [SOUND] |