The Future of Retail has landed.
As co presenter of the ‘Future Matters’ series with the National Geographic Channel back in 2004, I discussed the idea of Rapid Prototyping or 3D Printing. At that stage, 3D printers were like very large office photocopiers and the better ones had starting prices of around $150,000. I stated that in the near future, people would be able to print out their own dinner sets in their own homes, by simply downloading a Computer Aided Design (CAD) program straight into their printer. A year or so later I presented to the Queensland Supply Chain & Logistics conference and showed them the new face of retail and manufacturing with a few examples. That face has arrived with the latest shift in 3D printing accessibility –
It would be fair to say that not everyone at the conference was pleased with what I said. I’d just shown them that manufacturing could be done in the home (examples were a vase, dinner plates, a high heeled shoe and some toys), that rather than shipping lots of good around, all that would be needed were standard plaster base or plastic base filaments which reduced the need for most retail stores and most trucking.
And then I offered them the out – because prices for units were still too high for most people to have one of their own, the INTERIM step would be 3D printer retail stores (like the photocopying place you go to now) that would have multiple machines in a retail setting, wherein the customer would browse a catalogue, select and pay for their chosen item and come back an hour or two later to pick it up. Minimal storage and warehousing needed; minimal shipping from overseas needed; few trucks on the road needed and almost NO retail shops needed.
And now the new phase of retail and manufacturing is here with the arrival of the Dreambox 3D vending machine. If you don’t think the face of retail is going to change, you’re simply not paying attention. 3D printing can now deal with multiple materials (fibre, plaster, plastics and metals – oh and of course human skin) and the machines are getting easier to use. The retail model means that manufacturers would only need to ‘manufacture’ 3D CAD programs. Yes they’d need to do a bit of testing but that’s pretty much all. The consumer would create the product at the consumer’s end.
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
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Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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