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Cutting-Edge Opportunities: Innovative Small Business Ideas Using Laser Cutting Technology

Manufacturing goods for sale used to require a large amount of initial capital for overhead costs, a workshop, and industrial machinery. It was such a large barrier to entry for potential entrepreneurs that it made breaking into the industry almost impossible. However, home fabrication tools have made tremendous leaps in both the size of the equipment and the affordability of these devices. Now, creative entrepreneurs from all corners of the world can use this laser cutting technology to create these goods, which used to require expensive and specialized machinery. The door has been opened wide for artists to take the first step to running their own business. 

Custom Signage

One of the simplest—and highest-profit—applications for home laser cutting technology would be creating signs for businesses, restaurants, and residential properties. This could include custom address plaques, table numbers, menu boards, accent pieces, simple text-based signs, and much, much more. 

Custom signage is incredibly versatile, and as such, there is a wide range of potential customers for you to target. A wedding planning business may want one-time-use custom table numbers with names for the guests. A boutique restaurant may want custom wooden menu boards with the menu items laser-engraved onto them. A homeowner could want address numbering for the front of their house in a very specific font that isn’t available at your typical large retail store. The possibilities are almost endless. 

Personalized Consumer Products

Photo by Opt Lasers on Unsplash

You can also charge a premium price for personalized products to people and businesses. Small businesses can offer their customers customized phone cases, laptop sleeves, or home decor items to promote their business and their logo. Pet owners will purchase personalized pet tags, custom feeding stations, and memorial plaques. The gaming community is willing to purchase custom dice, miniature game pieces, and storage devices for their various needs. 

These customers appreciate high-quality and custom craftsmanship for their respective passions. Anytime you sell these personalized items, you’ll find a customer base who is less price-sensitive than the mass-produced market customer would be. 

Educational and STEM Products

An increased emphasis on hands-on learning enables you to create a business that caters to educational products. You could make a laser-cut puzzle kit, 3D model components, or even STEM projects children can assemble themselves with the pieces you construct. 

One of the most successful business models across any industry is the subscription-based model. You can implement this in your educational and STEM products by offering a monthly box service that offers a new STEM project kit that a child can assemble or use in a home-based experiment. This recurring revenue provides you with predictable income and strong customer relationships. 

Desktop Fabrication Machines: The 3-in-1 Advantage

One of the newest and most exciting of these home manufacturing devices is desktop fabrication studios, which combine multiple capabilities into one machine. As the name suggests, these are similar to a home office printer by sitting on top of a desk in your home office—or wherever you decide to set up your production. Due to their small size, you’re able to have multiple of these fabrication studios in a relatively small area.

These home fabrication studios, often referred to as a desktop laser cutter, combine laser engraving, CNC routing, and 3D printing capabilities. These all-in-one workshops can handle almost any custom manufacturing request that you can dream up. 

You could use your desktop laser cutter’s 3D printer to print a custom phone stand, and then use the laser engraving feature to print a customized logo or text phrase onto it. Or, you could use CNC routing to create a precise wooden design and then add an intricate design onto the wood with laser engraving. 

This allows a one-person shop to create professional-quality products without a major capital investment up front. 

Scaling Your Business

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash 

Before getting too carried away and ordering a dozen of these machines, begin with a single machine and grow the business until your single machine can no longer handle the required output that you need to meet your orders. From there, reinvest some of the profits from previous sales into a second machine to spread out the workload. Once your two machines are at their respective workload limit, add in a third machine. Repeat this process to gradually scale up your business

For long-term success, you’ll want to maintain this continuous expansion while also adding new products to your catalog. To reach more potential customers, you’ll want to increase the marketplaces you list your products on. The easiest to begin with, and most popular, are Etsy and Amazon. Once you are established there, consider expanding to additional digital marketplaces. 

Conclusion

If you’re a creative type who wants to start your own small business, these laser cutting technology advances will help you to achieve that goal. They have become cheaper and smaller, making them perfect for the home-based workshop, and an easy way to slowly scale up your business as it grows. As long as you understand your target audience, create high-quality products, and explore more applications and products to add to your catalog, you’ll be well-positioned for this opportunity. 

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