It's no secret that some of today's largest and most successful businesses started out of small businesses, often in someone's home. In 1950, for example, Ewing Marion Kauffman started pharmaceutical maker Marion Laboratories in his basement with an investment of $5,000. In 1989, 39% of the company was sold to Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals for $2.2 billion. And both Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer started in garages -- the former in a Palo Alto, California garage rented by Bill Hewlett and David Packard (in the photo at the right), and the latter in Steve Jobs' parents' suburban Los Altos, California garage.
Garages are traditionally the place where inventors tinker. However, increasingly, garages are the place where manufacturers are manufacturing. But these aren't just any manufacturers -- these are a new breed of micromanufacturers, designing and manufacturing small batches of products in their home-based microfactories. And for those micromanufacturers who have dreams that are too large to fit within their garages, it's now easier than ever to create high-precision prototypes at home that can then be outsourced to regular factories in China or elsewhere for large-quantity production.
How is it now possible for microfactories to exist -- in a garage, of all places?
What's happened is that the tools needed to design products, create prototypes, and manufacture small batches have become far more affordable than ever before. 3-D digital models can now be created on Google SketchUp -- for free. Prototypes can be built using 3-D desktop printers (MakerBot, which costs less than $1,000, actually squirts out a 0.33 mm-thick thread of hot, molten plastic instead of ink). Desktop CNC routers or mills (which also cost less than $1,000 a copy) can then be used to produce molds used in the manufacturing process.
BrickArms is a successful micromanufacturer that builds Lego-compatible weapons that Lego would never dream of producing, including stun grenades, RPG missiles, AK-47s, and much more. The company has outgrown its garage origins and now works out of a modest industrial building in Redmond, Washington. Owner Will Chapman and his wife and three young sons are all involved in the business. Chapman designs his products using SolidWorks 3-D software, creating a reverse image which is sent to his desktop CNC router, which fabricates the aircraft-grade aluminum molds he uses for making his plastic products. Once he's happy with a prototype product, he ships the molds to a U.S.-based injection molder who makes a few thousand copies at a time. These are then retailed by BrickArms and its worldwide network of distributors. The company is so successful that Will Chapman was able to leave behind his career as a software engineer -- trading it in for life as a micromanufacturer.
What's in your garage? Instead of dusty bikes, lawn tools, and boxes full of who knows what, you might just have a gold mine waiting to be discovered.
