An interesting online battle is being fought these days on the productdesign2.0 scene.
Ponoko just launched (I first heard about them back in May). Part online gallery, part market, part distributed manufacturing, they are catering to the creative industries to provide their catalogue. Think of is as a mash-up between Etsy and Amazon’s business model.
On the other side we have Crowdspirit which relies on people giving ideas about new products, the community votes and most popular ideas get manufactured. Slower pace, smaller slice of the pie (it’s only for electronic products) and reliant on the quality of the community’s ideas.
Who will win?