I think I get what you're saying but at the current cost of 3D printing does it really make sense that each object printed is in the end used as only one instance? Some of the people in the forums obviously have a background in crafts and intend to make a mold and then cast the printed prototype they order from you. Take the earrings you mention for example. Do you really think that people are going to be wearing plastic earrings? And if they cast them in metal, are there going to be only one pair made?

I do get the point that as it applies to you it still amounts to the same thing, a single unique print for a single customer. 3D printing will have to get a lot cheaper before it makes sense to produce multiples.

Your company does seem to me to fit the long tail model though. You aren't non-tail, so much as all tail. The nearest established industry or internet business model is probably vanity publishing or t-shirt printing, like spreadshirt or cafe press. Like them your website seems set up to produce zero, one or many products for each customer.

By zero I mean that on this site, as well as on spreadshirt I have uploaded a design that I intend to print, perhaps only once, for myself, but have do not yet have the extra cash to buy a print of that one design.

I guess what it comes down to is the question of whether vanity press, or custom t-shirts are a long tail business. I believe that they are.

In the meantime, to use the words of Strike from the Johnny Mnemonic movie: You are a hit waiting to happen.

I see what you mean. I've thought that one consequence of 3D printing would mean that the world could turn from being full of nearly identical, mass-produced objects to one that had many many more unique items. Perhaps we then begin to look more like the 19th than the 20'th century, where every object is more a form of artisan craft display of complexity and skill, objects are made more to be decorative and to have appeal to local cultures or internet subcultures and less utilitarian, to satisfy everyone's needs at the expense of their aesthetic sense.

What you suggest though, makes it seem as though your design library would have to become less a catalog of geometric shapes and more a set of programs or parameters. Designing every object individually might mean something like a shoe or lamp or cellphone case that is customizable in the same way some video game avatars are. In the case of clothing, it could conform to a scan of individual body proportions.

You are also right that people will wear plastic earrings. Though I hope not until you have the material safety issues ironed out. But I think you underestimate the natural attraction that people have to metals like gold, copper or bronze. Their shininess, tint and tint are attractive in themselves, and women use earrings precisely because they sparkle and draw a man's eye.