3D printing, the Maker movement, digital manufacturing — all those faces of basically the same coin so well depicted by Chris Anderson on his Makers book — promise to be the start of a profound change in the way we create physical products. Profound to the point of being called an industrial revolution.

The backbone of such change are three main shifts — one in the tools of creation, one in the manufacturing process itself and one in distribution — all of which are already happening to some extent.

Creation tools are increasingly accessible to everyone

What used to require expensive machines and decades of experience has now been mostly replaced by easy-to-use software. And software has the amazing property of being extremely cheap to distribute so, as a result, we already live in a world in which anyone from a multinational corporation to the average western citizen has access to basically the same creation tools (design software, prototyping with 3d printing, etc).

Manufacturing tools are becoming multi-purpose

It used to be that before you could mass manufacture anything you had to first build a machine for that purpose. This hasn’t changed much in the last century, which is why it’s expensive to start producing a new product and, as a consequence, why it gets significantly cheaper to produce a unit of something if you produce more and more units. This seems to start shifting now: as robotics evolves and makes it’s way into the factory, changing what’s being produced is becoming more and more a matter of changing the (digital) instructions and less and less about building a new robot.

Distribution is increasingly losing its single focus on mainstream products

Limited shelf space used to mean that only products with general appeal would be worth carrying by a retailer — there was no room for the niche within the niche. Now, with the rise of e-commerce there’s suddenly room for everything and, because the web is global, even the most exclusive products can easily find thousands of customers world-wide.

The logical next step

All this seems to lead to a future in which everything we use, from our toothbrushes to our cars and cashmere shirts, will be either fabricated on a one-off basis or picked from an unseen variety of alternatives, to ensure we get that perfect fit to our personal features, tastes and needs. On top of that, it also seems to imply that most of us, perhaps all of us, will be involved in the manufacturing process in pretty much the same way we’re involved in the construction of the digital world.

Future retail will have more in common with 20th century tailors than with today’s everything-shops. It will not be about putting the right product in front of the right person but rather about figuring out what the right product for each person is and either fabricate it or find it through the noise, like a needle in a haystack. The one-size-fits-all will fade away and the long tail will get longer.

Want some new socks? Just 3D scan your feet. Can’t find the watch you like? Have a look at these 1,296,926 independent watch designers. Or perhaps look only at these 132 that seem to be your taste.

The diversity of products and makers alike will resemble that of today’s digital web.

The more likely next step

I don’t disagree that, to a certain extent, the future looks exactly as described above — which sounds really cool. I’m just not convinced that this will be such an all-encompassing shift as one could imagine. At least not in the foreseeable future. And that is due to the very simple fact that all of us humans, with all our differences and nuances, are still fundamentally very similar. That fact alone means that sometimes personalised is not better and more choice is not desired.

What I mean is that there are several moments in which we’re not primarily interested in the product that’s best suited to us. I can think of a couple of (bad) examples: maybe it just doesn’t matter — because a certain product can be improved for everyone but it doesn’t seem to get better if personalised (like your garden hose, the tyres in your car, you get my point) — or maybe the immediacy of the need is more important than anything else (like an umbrella on a rainy day or a pain killer if acute pain strikes).

In those cases, when the main driver is not how well tailored the product is, most people are not willing to pay a single cent more for it. So, until digital manufacturing doesn’t reach the price levels of current production methods and the availability of a product on a shelf, the revolution will not happen in those categories. And at the pace we’re moving such intersection is not in the horizon yet — no one knows if or when it will happen because major technological breakthroughs must happen to enable it.

That leaves us with two (not mutually exclusive) groups of products that are ready to embrace the new age of creating, manufacturing and distributing:

Products that gain significant functional value through personalisation Products that we use to define our identity and express ourselves

Examples of the first group are the skiing boots that won’t hurt your feet, the mattress that’s tailored to your weight and body shape, or the 23.5inch bicycle you always wanted because that’s actually the right size for you.

In the second group fall all those products we use to define and communicate who we are and, therefore, intrinsically benefit from this diversity of products and makers. These are the fashion items, the design furniture pieces, the sports cars, the fancy watches, you name it.

No one has to explain why a custom-shaped ski boot is good — everyone knows they hurt your feet and everyone knows that’s because they’re not made for you. In a similar way, it’s clear why owning a t-shirt from that little fashion brand in Brooklyn is cooler (for some people) than owning an H&M model — seems logical that if we bought this product to tell who we are, then the more specific, the better.

These are indeed exciting times and only time will tell how the revolution will pan out, how broad and how deep. But more striking is the fact that it’s already here for categories 1 and 2. For those products the time is now. It’s on us to invent the businesses that will lead the way. The world is ready.

Thanks for reading!