Creative Design Platform Gantri Offers Free Resources and 3D Printing, So Designers Can Quickly Bring Products to Market

If you’re interested in designing unique products and easily selling them online, but aren’t sure where to start, look no further than Gantri, a new, free platform for designers to create and sell products. The mission of this new creative platform, run by designers, engineers, and design lovers, is to make it easy for designers to make quality products and sell them online to people around the world, in just three weeks and at no cost. Considering that most design products, even simple ones, can take over 18 months and thousands of dollars to fully develop and market, Gantri looks like a pretty good deal.

Ian Yang, the CEO of Gantri, told 3DPrint.com a little more about the “all-in-one platform that allows designers to easily create high-quality products and sell directly to consumers for free.”

“Bringing a product to market is too hard for individual designers, who have great ideas but lack the resources and know-how to turn them into things people can buy,” Yang explained to us.

“Rather than having to design each product from scratch, we provide all the standard components for a product such as electricals and screws, and designers only need to create the parts that would be 3D printed. To make the design process super simple, we offer an intuitive online interface that guides designers through the entire process step-by-step. We do the work behind the scenes such as reviewing and prototyping to ensure that designs are production-ready when they’re completed. Completed designs are sold directly on our online shop and made-to-order using our in-house 3D printing process. This system makes the design process faster, cheaper and simpler, while offering form flexibilities and guaranteed quality.”

Gantri was inspired by 3D printing, and how it has changed the overall process of prototyping. The company developed its own on-demand manufacturing process, which combines detailed hand-crafting and “quality-optimized 3D printing” to create a finished product for a much lower cost. Gantri built a 3D printing factory in its San Francisco studio to make this manufacturing accessible to its designers, and all of its products are manufactured, crafted, and put together here. This lets each individual designer develop and put together products without having to worry about minimum order requirements.

Yang told 3DPrint.com, “Traditionally, the biggest obstacle in bringing a product to market is manufacturing. Traditional manufacturing processes require high upfront cost in tooling and production runs. We knew that we need to eliminate those costs if we want to make manufacturing accessible to individuals. 3D printing has minimal setup cost and is capable of producing products on-demand, so it’s the process that’s most suited to our goals.”

“Traditional 3D printing processes do not meet our quality/cost goals. They’re either too expensive or too low quality. So we had to create our own process that combines quality-optimized 3D printing and hand-crafting to produce products that consumers like and can afford. We use Ultimakers for their reliability and quality, but add modifications and custom slicing to achieve a smooth finish directly out of the printer.”

The digital Gantri Product System makes the road from initial design idea to manufacturing a quality product seamless, by offering guidance to designers through an online interface and Gantri’s own in-house experts. The System offers product-specific, pre-engineered components, like fasteners and electrical sets, as well as design requirements, downloadable resources, and materials, so designers can save time and effort. The design process is all done remotely, as Gantri takes care of prototyping and quality assurance testing, so you know your completed designs are compliant with current regulations and completely ready for production.

The System is free, and Gantri says that the whole process doesn’t take any longer than three weeks; it may even take less time than that, depending on how efficiently you are able to develop your design.

1. Product parts are individually 3D printed.
2. Every part is hand-polished, painted and coated to achieve a luxurious, durable finish.
3. Standardized components and finished parts are professionally assembled.
4. Products are tested for quality and shipped out to customers.

Going beyond manufacturing, Gantri understands that selling your products can also be a difficult process, and has set up a consistent, easy experience. Completed designs are professionally photographed, and then directly listed on Gantri’s online store. Gantri differs from traditional e-commerce platforms in that it handles any digital post-processing, payments, deliveries, returns, and customer questions; however, designers are able to view all analytics from their personal Gantri dashboard. Gantri then uses its advanced 3D printing process to produce orders on-demand, and once a sale is complete, the designer will receive 5% royalty as a reward.

On-demand 3D printing can be helpful, as it means there aren’t a lot of extra parts or products sitting around taking up space until they’re ordered. But it only works if it’s cost-effective, which is why it’s smart that at the moment, Gantri is only introducing one product category – 3D printed lights, which we already know are a popular product.

“We’re currently in soft-launch phase with our first product category – Table Lights. We already offer an unique selection of designs by designers from SF, NY, Chicago and more, and have over 20 designs in the pipeline. Anyone can go to gantri.com to shop our designs or to create their own designs. In the future, we will expand our product categories to enable more great ideas to be brought to market,” Yang told 3DPrint.com.

Gantri has also launched its first Reference Product: the Model TL1 was designed in-house, and designers can download the 3D model and add their own twist to it for free. More Reference Products will soon be added, as the product categories continue to expand. Discuss in the Gantri forum at 3DPB.com.