Paul Krush

I added a model search page to the site. Just a different way to look at the models I have for free download. I’m not sure if I will add models to this database in the future. I think the most useful jewelry model database would just be elements of jewelry(or related items) that are very standardized.

In fact, I am actively working on some of the ideas outlined in this post from June 2007:
The merging of model sharing and jewelry design software.

Currently I am writing a plug-in for Rhino using C# & .NET. It’s my first venture into .NET. I know VB & some C++ so it’s pretty easy. As always I am working on jewelry software for the end user/consumer that they can use for free. It will be 5 years in October the I have been toying with ideas for this project. It’s frustrating because I have yet to release anything useful over the years.

I can’t wait till I have a useful product out there. I don’t think this will take too long. Well, at least a useful product for people that already know Rhino. To make it simple enough for non-CAD people will take much longer.

I am writing a jewelry design tool that non-CAD users can use for free. As a side effect this also can be used as a basic standalone jewelry design Rhino plug-in. It will also be a back end to a web based mass customization system.

There would be no cost to the non-CAD users. You can download and use Rhino for free permanently as a model viewer. My plug-in will be free as well. These users will be able to save parameters of a piece they designed using the plug-in. Jewelry manufactures can use these parameters(a file or link) to build the piece, or as a starting point to design what the non-CAD user wants.

I plan on releasing every Monday night for 8 weeks. Yesterday all I had was a ring rail tool. These releases will be in Alpha, as in buggy. Releasing unfinished software is a necessary evil as I need I to create a feedback loop with the users.

At some point I would like to write a front end so this can all be done over the web. One thing at a time. I feel a Rhino plug-in would be the most useful (and hence profitable) starting point.

I am building a group of designers out on oDesk.com that anyone can contact and use themselves. Why am I building this group, not under my control? It’s an itch that I want scratched. I need this service myself and I have people contacting me on both sides. There are jewelry businesses from around the work that need CAD work done and I also have jewelry designers contacting me looking for work. I see oDesk as model that both sides can get together and do business. I think my actions will be the catalyst to get a large number of people using oDesk for jewelry CAD work.

Why do I think oDesk.com is so different?

• It offers transparency to both buyers and service providers
• You can view feedback of both parties and drill into a lot of detail of the process.
• You can use it for very small projects.
• Lower cost and higher availability of skills.
• They handle all the paperwork and money transactions
• They only charge 10% of the fee.
• They offer guarantees to both parties.
• You can see random screen shots of the designers computers as they are working.
• It’s very easy for a designer to post a portfolio on their profile page.
• It lowers the cost entry of hiring world-wide remote workers
• It’s easy in general for both parties to use.

Mind you this is all in theory! There are a lot of pro’s and con’s to this method. This is why I want to test out these ideas.

Really what options do you buyers have right now? You have to relationship with someone already. Or you have to find designers around the world by their websites. That’s too big of a leap for most people.

I will be publishing these random screen shots of the jewelry model being developed. I find this interesting as heck. People will be able to see the work of the designer in action. For me this is additional content is what makes this project worth pursuing.

For now the best place you can find designers are the general 3D model sites such as TurboSquid and the Classifieds1000 pages. And of course if your willing to pay western rates there is the Gemvision Service Bureau List and the Rhino jewelry section. There are too many individual people offering services on their web site to mention.

You get an easy CAD like 3D engine in Flash and people will build mass customization tools with it. It’s a given. There will be a million micro-factories that will rise up in Asia making every custom product you can think of using these 3D tools to directly communicate to the world wide consumer. I see this growth of mass custom as inevitable and unstoppable.

So I’m glad to see things are moving along on the 3D Flash front. Adobe has released a beta version of Flash 10 with some native 3D support, including hardware rendering. Speed wise it’s getting comparable to a regular windows application.

A company out of Russia called Alternativa Game, Ltd. has released a 3D Flash engine based on the Flash 10 called Alternativa Platform. Neat stuff. It’s private competition to open source Papervision3D

Microsoft has to be cooking up support for 3D in Silverlight, but I have yet to see any news on this. I don’t see how they can get to critical mass with Silverlight, but you can’t take them off the table as a player.

I don’t plan on working with 3D for Flash for a long while, but it’s nice to see it’s evolving into something useful for 3D consumer jewelry design in the browser.

I have said this a 100 times, but I just have to repeat it. Flash is on more machines than Windows and growing. These tools are going to give you the ability to release 3D design tools on any screen. Consumers will be able to design products on their iPhones, smartphones, micro-laptops, whatever, with the same interface as their home computer. Yes, a lot of the tools will be impractical due to screen size, but a least they have the connection/portal to the mass custom tools, databases, and community.

I am now focused on learning formal project management skills and out-sourcing at the employee level.

I need to update everyone on where I am heading. I tried hard at being a corporate sales person. But after 8 months I think I don’t have the politically smooth to pull it off. I’m a pretty open and hate hiding details for ill gain. When do honest profits turn into ill gain; I don’t know. I know I spend too much time thinking about this stuff. Maybe I am an analyst at heart, and an outside sales career is not a fit. Maybe it’s just not my passion. I know I can learn to be more political savvy, but would I lose genuineness in doing so? I don’t know. I did learn a lot about myself, working at this for 8 months. I have added a new level of humility, and learned a lot more about sales.

I got into sales because I feel need to work with people more face to face. So now I am learning about project management (a people-facing role). I had no idea there was such a huge methodology to PM (project management). After years of doing projects (mostly alone) I wonder what I am going to find out. I am reading a few books on it, ask me how they turn out.

I am also reading the book “Producing Open Source Software” by Karl Fogel. It’s pretty dare interesting because it describes a successful model of creating software with people that remotely communicate over the Internet. It talks about having a website, mailing list/forum, a bug tracker, and version control. What is so interesting is how oDesk.com is promoting the same virtual PM environment. I have often thought about going open source with the mass custom tools. If you know me “free” software suits me well, but I am not sure about the profit model. I went looking for .NET C# people out on Linkedin.com for the Rhino Plug-in’s I want to write. I was surprised at the number of people that were interested in the project because of the shear coolness factor. This would be one key to attracting great volunteers. With my budget I am going to have to call them volunteers!

ODesk.com is an employee focused out-sourcing site. I like them a lot better then eLance.com, Guru.com, and RentaCoder.com in that they are focused on having the buyer develop long term relationships with the employee/freelancer. They only charge 10% and take care of all paperwork and paying the person. They have profiles, history/ feedback, and tests for people to demonstrate their skills. OK, I need to quit talking about it and use the site. I do have some pretty neat plans for it.

So what are all my plans? I don’t know. For the next two or three 3 months I am learning these two areas (PM and oDesk.com). I have a number of little projects I would like to try that I think would be profitable.

So in the next few months I want to:

1.) Create a bench of Jewelry modelers/designers on oDesk.com
Anybody could go out to oDesk.com and use these people I bring in.
2.) Create more free models for the site.
I like to showcase what you can (and can’t) be out-sourced.
3.) Do some CAD/CAM consulting in order to create a CAD/CAM for jewelry FAQ (and earn cash).
I have been doing this already. It’s nice to make money and keep my feet wet.
4.) Really get comfortable with using oDesk people for Web Development.
I have high hopes for this. I want to leverage time & skills. There are so many projects I want others working on, if oDesk.com works out.
5.) Learn a lot more about PHP tools such as Drupal or Joomla.
Neat stuff, I don’t know much at all about them.
6.) Create some basic 2D Flash consumer jewelry design tools (Mass Customization configurators).
These would output 2D curves to manually build models in Rhino. I will offer these for free download for jewelry manufactures large and small around the world so they can get started in mass custom for jewelry. If this works well I am thinking about a mass custom Flash builder builder. Meaning you can generate your own .SWF (Flash) files for your jewelry website. The .SWF files would be customized to your website & models you want to sell.
6.) Expose my jewelry model database so people can search my models by all different ways.
I have a really nice working model database that people can use to search my models. I am not sure what all to do with this beyond exposing it. I am not sure I want to get into the jewelry model business. Right now I am trying to use what I have to jump to mass custom. If models pay the bills to develop software, so be it.

I think these tasks will lead to a model that will start paying the bills. If not, I will work locally in web development.

So some of you out there think I am schizophrenic. I say I’m out of jewelry, then I’m in, and out again. Get use to it. Some people think I am a flake and others a visionary. I think to really be a great visionary you have to be a total flake!

Thanks for the comments over the years, Paul

From configurator-database.com the definition of a configurator:

“Simply put, a configurator is a software application for designing products exactly matching customers’ individual needs.”

They posted videos from the mass customization gurus:

YouTube.com/user/configuratordatabase

To me, a configurator is a jewelry design tool so easy that consumers can use it. The super easy tools will wind up as banner ads, harder tools will expand from the easier tools. I see a world in 5-10 years that there will be a full blend of jewelry design tools available from simple mass custom configurators to professional tools(training required) all available in a internet browser.

My idea of a configurator for mass custom jewelry is like the corny Flash games(advertisements) you see on websites. It must work in any browser without the permission of the user. It’s an advertisement that expands to become a jewelry design tool. I say it must be written in Flash because Flash is ubiquitous, and can do the job. It’s on more machines that Windows. For a long time I was held up on the idea that these tools had to be in 3D. 3D for flash is out there, but I think the smart companies will use 2D to start. It’s so much easier to write 2D tools.

Gemvision calls the configurators “builders” in their jewelry design software call Matrix. I call it a tool or builder, sometimes a configurator. My take on this, for many years, is the configurator needs to be run by the consumer. Even if it’s just to get their mouth wet so a professional can take over. People think I’m nuts when I say this, but I feel this mass custom jewelry market is going to be huge!

It may seem weird if you look back in time at this post, but the only way to present a great 3D tool for the consumer to design jewelry is an installed program, or browser plug-in. Both of these require permission from the user. You highly limit your customer base when you do this.

So here is my prediction: In five years 3D jewelry design tools for the browser written in Flash will be used in advertising on main stream websites. They will be viewable on mobile devices. Five years from now people are going to be in jewelry stores with jewelry design software on their phone playing with it like a video game.

I had this idea for years and realized it’s not on the website. Just as you can write software to render frames of a computer animated movie, you can script out Rhino 3D to render people’s names into a name ring or name pendant for a post card. Say a jewelry store has 5000 people in their database. You could build a system that renders 5000 pictures for 5000 post cards each using the persons first name. You could render all sorts of address information into a post card. I think this would be eye catching as heck. Every year when Mother’s day gets near I flirt with this one.

Just to review each post card would be different. It would have a 3D computer rendering of jewelry designs that contain the persons name.

The scripted name pendants you see can also be rendered in a mass customized way like this. This is more of a highly specialized 2D font creation. You can script in a name and create all sorts of 2D rules on how swoops and hearts are applied. You can add 2D symbols till the cows come how in an automated fashion. After the 2D curve is extruded into the 3D model. You can also add 2 ½D art work into this. 2 ½D art work is neat because it can be represented by a grayscale image.

I had JewelryPostCards.com registered for a while, but I never wanted to jump into the jewelry marketing business, so I  dumped the name. Dell color laser printers are high quality and cheap enough to do stuff like this. You can buy software that helps you automated the address information, bulk rate info, and barcodes.

I think the money is just not in jewelry to do this sort of stuff. My prediction is these ideas will be fleshed out in Asia. They can market and ship directly to the western world. This has been going on with colored stones from Thailand and cell phone accessories out of Hong Kong for a long time now.

I will send you all the models on this site, about 166 of them on a CD for $50. This would include free shipping worldwide. I have had requests for this, and I need the money!

Click here to Pay with PayPal.

Or send a check for $50 to:

Paul Krush
1039 Rockport Dr
Carol Stream, IL 60188

CD will Arrive in 1-3 weeks.

Thanks, Paul

I can help, $50 per hour, one hour minimum. I can help with 3D models, but keep in mind I do not consider myself a seasoned jewelry designer. I am not a bench person at all, but I can help in hard areas of modeling in Rhino.

I can also give advice on getting into CAD/CAM for jewelry.

If you read my blog you know I am a software developer and highly interested in jewelry design software. If you have something you would like to me to create let me know to see if it’s possible. Also feel free to ask if you need technical assistance related to these areas.

Click here to pay for the first hour ($50) via PayPal:

Or send a check for $50 * (Total number of hours you would like) to:

Paul Krush
1039 Rockport Dr
Carol Stream, IL 60188

My email address is paul@paulkrush.com

Thanks, Paul

I have been running diamond auctions on eBay for 5 ½ years continuously. Stopping these auctions is quite a big deal for me. It’s an emotional because there is still a little profit left, I have been doing it for so long, and I guess because it was my first profitable business. It’s hard to know when to pull the plug. Averaged out, I have broke even on too many months to care. My time has to be spent on my new career in executive search and IT talent. I want to move on and learn new things. Probably the biggest reason is I want to do business face to face. The jewelry industry has been in recession for years. I am not emotionally invested in jewelry, this would be a dumb industry to start a new business in where I am working face to face.

Financially it was a bigger deal when I pulled the plug on making jewelry. That was easier because it was basically bust all the way. Not listing on eBay any more is emotional. It’s not like I am selling my eBay ID. I think it will have substantial value one day. Started in Dec of 1998, it’s 9 years old. The ID GemHunt.com is Grandfathered in. eBay has not let people register domain names as eBay ID’s.

I am still going to sell diamonds, but I am not going to pay to advertise them. So for the past 5 ½ years I paid eBay $224K. It’s like I gave them a house. I sold $5.4M in diamonds, but many were repeat sales and referrals. So I paid them 4.1% of sales. Compared to a retail store this is not bad. It started out 1-2%, and is now up to 7-10%. The margins on the sale over the years have shrunk. It was easier when I was one of the first in the business. There is no room left to pay eBay. With no profit there is no business. I knew this in the beginning, and have spent the past 5 years fighting it. This is called the “evils of discounting”. I got into this business because information became available to consumers on how to buy diamonds at a wholesale price. I am one of the people that taught that information. But you never win at this game, there is always someone fighting harder for the last percentage point of margin. Diamonds have suffered because of this. Diamonds have valve because they were promoted. With less people promoting diamonds, their demand drops. The value stays the same because the dollar is dropping and demand is coming from outside of the US. People want stuff from Best Buy instead. Will the demand pick up like it did in the 1970’s because of inflation? I am not going to try to guess that. I can always get back in the business. This time I will have a network build out locally.

I did a search on LinkedIn.com of over 6700 people in the US. They had the key words “Technical Recruiter” or “IT Recruiter” in their profile. See more below about titles.

I have 3 months in this industry. I have to make guesses and I am trying to learn.

So to me this says IT staffing and recruitment firms provide a critical service that internal HR cannot do for whatever reason. I think this is proof that 20 years of online job boards will not replace IT staffing and recruitment firms.

Why are there not more real companies in this list? Are internal technical recruiters not motivated enough to use LinkedIn.com? I keep hearing that “HR sucks”, is this an example? (sorry HR)

OR, do these firms just do the work of many many companies, so they just employ more technical recruiters than the largest technical companies out there?

What does this data say to you?

Number
Of
People:    Company
——-    ————————–
242    TEKsystems
176    Apex Systems Inc.
147    Volt
102    Sapphire Technologies
84    Kforce
71    Spherion
71    Adecco Engineering & Technical
60    Google
45    Aerotek
39    Technisource
36    TAC Worldwide
35    SAIC
34    Kelly IT Resources
34    IBM
32    CDI Business Solutions
32    Princeton Information
32    Excell Data
31    Oxford International
29    Strategic Staffing Solutions
29    Northrop Grumman
29    Manpower Professional
29    Microsoft
29    Robert Half Technology
27    COMSYS
24    PDS Technical Services
23    Yahoo!
23    Hudson
22    Kelly Engineering Resources
21    Matrix Resources
20    Kelly Services
18    Harvey Nash
17    Analysts International
17    Veredus Corporation
16    The Judge Group
15    Eliassen Group
15    The Computer Merchant
14    Vmware
14    Raytheon
13    Starpoint Solutions
13    SolutionsIQ
12    Outsource Technical
12    Global Technical Talent
11    EdgeRock Technology Partners
10    Revolution Technologies

I searched for current job titles, but only counted the first job listed. So the words of the job title don’t always have “technical” or “IT”, but it’s very close.

Titles people used:

Total    Title
Times:    Used:
——    ————————-
3023    Technical Recruiter
721    Sr. Technical Recruiter
650    IT Recruiter
526    Senior Technical Recruiter
143    Sr Technical Recruiter
84    Sr. IT Recruiter
73    Senior IT Recruiter
52    Lead Technical Recruiter
41    Recruiter
28    Contract Technical Recruiter
23    Sr.Technical Recruiter
16    Sr IT Recruiter
14    Corporate Technical Recruiter
12    Corporate IT Recruiter
12    Executive IT Recruiter
12    IT Technical Recruiter
11    Executive Technical Recruiter
11    Technical Sourcer/Recruiter
11    Senior Recruiter

Thanks Much,
Paul Krush
www.PaulKrush.com