What is the pocket factory?
We are Bilal Ghalib and Alex Hornstein, and we’re driving around the country with a Prius filled with cheap 3D printers. With the Pocket Factory project, we’re starting a business designing, producing and selling products made on these printers. We’re documenting our successes and failures as we go, with the intention of making it easy for others to replicate our efforts. In our dream world, the only barrier between a desire to make a living off of creative design and doing so is just a click of the “print” button. We hope this project helps bring that dream closer to a reality.
Products! Products! Products! Such is the thought flooding my head as we move into our fourth hour at the Victoria flea market without selling a gosh-darn thing. Our printers are cranking away merrily, we’ve got a crowd hovering around, captivated, and Bilal, Ilan, and I are chatting up the crowd with our charming selves. Lots of looking, but no buying.
Read full article on Makezine.com
What inspired us to start the journey?
Read the full interview here
We were on a mountain top in Hong Kong, both of us had just quit our jobs. Alex was working with these low cost 3D printers for his last project and I had just brought a Makerbot to Egypt for their new hackerspace. We saw their prices dropping and quality improving and started wondering why no one else saw these as a 2000$ investment in a new company. So we decided to experiment to see if it’s possible, so we could tell the story and be a part of the conversation around 3D printing happening right now. This is exciting stuff and it’s empowering! Maybe it’s going to change the way people look at manufacturing and entrepreneurship and we just want to start that side of the conversation early on.