Memories are Made of This
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12.31.06
It is wonderful to see that the internet and blogosphere actually can work to help designers bring products to market. First Core 77 covered Guido Ooms' memory stick made out of, well, sticks, and Leonora picked it up for TreeHugger and it has been round the 'verse since. Now we learn from the New York Times that it has become a big success. "Mr. Ooms says he has been surprised by the popularity of the memory sticks, which are available at Oooms.nl. He estimates that he has sold 3,000, at prices ranging from about $59 for a 256-megabyte version to nearly $92 for the top-of-the-line, one-gigabyte model. The key to the product’s success, Mr. Ooms says, is the way it makes passers-by do a double take when they see the quintessential information-age accessory, a laptop, paired with the quintessential Stone Age utensil, a wooden stick. Sales have been so brisk that Mr. Ooms is considering hiring some outside production help. Under a program in the Netherlands, he said, prisoners can be hired to perform basic manufacturing tasks — in this case, that would involve drilling the holes and sanding the twigs." ::New York Times
