Time to read: 3 min
A Look Back at 2015
This has been a year of incredible growth here at China Manufacturing parts, one we’re proud to share with all of you.
In the past year, we’ve printed over 10,000 parts, continued to build out the platform, written a ton of content, and so much more — none of which could have been possible without the support of our community.
As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to work with some of the best hardware engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs in the ecosystem and speak with them about their learnings, challenges, insights, and processes.
We believe sharing this knowledge is the first step to democratizing hardware development.
So over the past year, we’ve written over 80 articles, including teardowns like the BB-8 Sphero, Hardware Spotlights where we’ve learned from companies like Nomiku and Nebia, and technical how-to’s like our popular Ultimate Guide to Finishing 3D Printed Parts.
And as we expanded our content, we needed an easier way to navigate it. So just this past week we launched the China Manufacturing parts blog, the source for all our collective knowledge around how to build better hardware.
Offline, we’ve been committed to fostering the local hardware ecosystem. In the Spring, we hosted our very first event, Defining Lean Hardware at Highway1, with the founders of Soundfocus, Luna, Boombotix, and PetCube. Since then we’ve put on 5 other events, with our most recent on Industrial Design vs. Mechanical Engineering packing the house at over 100 people to hear from experts at Whipsaw, Mindtribe, and Synapse.
We’ve also forged valuable partnerships to continue to best serve our growing customer base. Our manufacturing partners are an invaluable part of our community, and this year we’ve had some exemplary partners, including John and his team from Moddler, Ali and Evan from Ryt Industries, and Madon Snell. These folks have continued to uphold the highest qualities of speed and service, and we’re excited to grow with them in the upcoming year.
We’ve also worked with other equally passionate companies in the hardware ecosystem: in the Spring we became a manufacturing partner for Y Combinator, and have had the pleasure of helping their hardware portfolio companies achieve faster iteration. We’ve also worked closely with the teams at TechShop to quickly print parts for their members, and look forward to further collaborations in the upcoming year.
Our team has also grown! We moved to a great new office in May, and since then we’ve added 8 new team members (and one canine), each bringing invaluable skills and expertise.
As we’ve grown in numbers, we’ve worked collaboratively and intentionally to build a culture of respect, empathy, and transparency. These values have manifested in a variety of ways, including our first company offsite at Dillon Beach, increased healthcare and benefits, catered lunches, and monthly chair massages.
And did we mention, we’re still hiring?
What’s Ahead
Thanks to the feedback of our customers, we’ve set some ambitious goals for ourselves in the upcoming year. We realize the importance of providing a full suite of prototyping capabilities, so expect to hear more from us on that soon.
Community will continue to be a huge part of our business, and we’ll be asking for your feedback as we launch new features and capabilities. In addition, while we’ve been quietly exploring growth into new cities, we’ve got big plans to expand our service offerings to other locals in the upcoming year.
We can’t wait to see what 2016 has in store and share it with all of you. Stay up to date with the latest through our blog and if you have questions, comments, or feedback, you can always shoot us an email.
Happy holidays and see you in the new year!
The China Manufacturing parts, Inc. Team
