[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,
nicki@nrml.com, and thanks for including me in your course. >> Thank you for your time. [MUSIC] [SOUND]