Cameron and Rebecca Stern, co-founders of Stern Design Works, are combining innovative traditional jewelry manufacturing methods with Ultimaker professional desktop 3D printers.
Every year, Stern Design Works ships thousands of original, fashionable jewelry pieces to online customers and local boutiques across North America, completely unfazed by the high demand from the retail jewelry boutique trade.
Stern Design Works is a multidisciplinary design studio that incorporates STEM principles to create fashion jewelry and accessories.
Their work uses various techniques, including traditional metal fabrication and 3D printing, to celebrate the intersection of science, technology, and art.
Their customers are not only impressed by the quality and complexity of the finished products but also by Cameron and Rebecca Stern's passion for science and natural history.
Their most popular collections are filled with clever and engaging themes and categories.
Fashion Jewelry Meets Science, Technology, and Art
"Our love of science and quirky history inspires and continues to grow our collection," says Cameron Stern.
In their design lab, they play with 3D prints and miniature nylon animals, magnifying proteins, HeLa cells, flea circus props, and other unique subjects to determine which new pieces will be added to the current seasonal collection or the studio's archive.
Ultimaker 3 printing at Stern Design Studio
Visitors to their retail stores, boutiques, and online shop quickly discover that if you love science, natural history, and imagination, Stern Design Works has something interesting for you.
One popular design originated from a custom project for an organic chemist – a 3D-printed molecular lattice structure necklace, made with diamond components to create "real diamonds" for his wife.
Other orders include anatomically (sweet) heart pendants and T-Rex brooches, sine wave curve rings, and thumb-sized giraffe dioramas housed in 20ml glass beakers.
"Our design themes range from protein folding, museum dioramas, architecture, industrial design, art history, chaos theory, and the universe that inspire us."
However, maintaining such a wide and diverse collection of works is a formidable challenge in itself. To ensure that distributors and retailers are sufficiently stocked to meet unpredictable customer demands, Stern Design Works had to commit to a production line so that the team could begin a new batch of hundreds of actively selling items at their production site.
Rebecca Stern working in their studio
Once produced, these parts must be shipped within days to locations far from the west coast of California, such as New York City, where its own high traffic might mean thousands of visitors daily during peak tourist seasons.
This inventory demand challenges many custom and handmade fashion jewelry businesses in the retail boutique market, and it has also proven to be an inspiration for the Stern Design team.
"We sell about 500 pieces of jewelry a month, but when it's our big wholesale season and we're dealing with our main clients, it can increase to over 2,000 pieces in a month," says Cameron.
Desktop 3D Printers: The Jewelry Designer's Secret Weapon
One of the key secrets to Stern Design Works' ability to maintain its diverse and rapidly expanding collection is a set of Ultimaker desktop 3D printers, used for producing fixtures, molds, and metal casting production advantages, as well as an increasing number of ready-to-wear 3D printed art pieces.
Rings created by Stern Design Works
Cameron and Rebecca have been experimenting with desktop 3D printers in their jewelry practice for some time, and they say Ultimaker printers became Stern Design Works' production solution years ago.
Every generation of Ultimaker printers they have tested has proven to be reliable, high-performance, and high-resolution FDM printers, perfect for every stage of their work and pipeline.
Ultimakers have started working for us because they reliably complete prints and are ready to use right out of the box.
Rebecca explains: "With 3D printing technology, you can make one or ten repetitive things, and you have ten times more time to try to get the perfect piece from the foundry.
Using 3D prints and wax patterns takes only a quarter of the time."
That time, Cameron adds, "is best spent by drawing models or getting orders to our wholesalers. This not only saves us time but also provides us with usable time, which is the biggest saving."
Stern Design Works with their Ultimaker 2 Extended + at an event
In addition to using them in their production studio, they have also found that using desktop 3D printers at large retail event venues can generate great conversation starters.
Thousands of visitors see their work and their workflow daily at their regular retail locations in New York City's Chelsea Market and the Artists & Fleas market in Williamsburg.
They even found they can produce parts directly at the retail point, making final products for sale on-site, or bringing them back to the studio for casting and post-processing.
Working with Manufacturing Partners
While many jewelry designers have struggled with experiments to make use of desktop 3D printers and replace prohibitively expensive traditional 3D wax printers, Stern Design Works has put in the research and testing necessary to master the process and production opportunity for their Ultimaker printers.They have done so by working closely with their foundries and casting partners, to educate them on approaches to working with desktop 3D printing-friendly print materials such as PLA.
Threading an astronaut necklace
3D printers do more than just produce metal parts. They not only optimize the steps for producing castings but also consider how to simplify the subsequent grinding, polishing, and refining processes for metal objects. As a result, they can fully utilize all the functions of desktop equipment, integrating new tools with traditional handmade jewelry methods to produce pieces that truly combine metalwork and metal casting technology.
Ultimaker 3: The Latest Tool in the Studio
Recently, the Stern Design Works team added an Ultimaker 3 to their studio to print with two materials.
Cameron says: "Adding PVA support has greatly enhanced our 3D printing capabilities."
"We are excited to see our designs now being produced by ourselves."
Original article link: https://ultimaker.com/en/stories/52477-3d-printing-and-the-jewelry-boutique-a-model-for-small-business-success