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On the quest to find meaningful and fancy jewelry

What can be more personally touching than turning your own thoughts, wishes emotions or even your body into fancy stuff you can wear on your person?

Imprecious.com answers this question with delicate silver charms you give your own touch (in the true sense of the word): They craft pieces of custom jewelry out of your own or your special one’s fingerprint.

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How does it work?

Order a necklace, earrings or a bracelet in their online shop. Within 7 days they’ll send you their Print Capture Kit. Use the kit to make a copy of your fingerprint (that reminds me somehow of that James Bond thing, where they copy a key by pressing it into a block of soap). Send the kit back to Imprecious and they craft your custom piece of jewelry which makes a absolutely individual gift.

Print Capture Kit

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Ok, in general, I really like the idea of creating cool stuff out of my body. But there are some concerns worth to talk about:

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1. Fingerprints and privacy

I spoke to @s_t_e_p_h_e_n about the issue and he told me that the big problem with fingerprint-to-product approaches is that people don’t like to give their fingerprints to strangers (He must know because back in 2005 he and @hanneswalter published their fingerprint sculpture project).

This is how Imprecious handles the privacy question:

Imprints will be kept on file for 1 year from initial order, just in case you want to order more pieces, maybe as a gift for someone else! But if you prefer, we will send the imprints back to you along with your jewelry… just let us know.

Reading this I do not really know what happens with my data. Therefore I would like to read some privacy policy or things like that…

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2. Shipping

That’s actually my personal concern. The process involves a lot of shipping. The ship has to leave the harbor at least 3 times…

Is there a simpler/cheaper/sustainable yet reliable (digital) way? I imagine there are smart people out there (who have played detective as a child) with the necessary knowledge…

Imprecious, as far as I could read on their webpage, is willing to find solutions:

As we grow we intend to do so with responsibility for our “footprint” and our community. We make the commitment to reduce, recycle and reuse wherever possible.

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What do you think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Crowdsourcing, General Interest, Individual Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://www.leanderherzog.ch Leander Herzog

    beautiful idea anyway…
    interesting is the process of getting data from the customer, kinda slow, interactive experience there…
    the missing privacy policy is a fail. keepin it for a year, might help one out of 100 customers, but scares everybody. i’d make up some story that the data is lost or damaged in the process of creating the piece :)
    would be interesting to know how customers feel the difference between giving personal data and user co-creation. creation vs tracking, active vs passive …

  • http://www.leanderherzog.ch Leander Herzog

    beautiful idea anyway…
    interesting is the process of getting data from the customer, kinda slow, interactive experience there…
    the missing privacy policy is a fail. keepin it for a year, might help one out of 100 customers, but scares everybody. i’d make up some story that the data is lost or damaged in the process of creating the piece :)
    would be interesting to know how customers feel the difference between giving personal data and user co-creation. creation vs tracking, active vs passive …

  • http://www.imprecious.com Robin Foley

    THANK YOU!!! for doing a blog on Imprecious! I do so appreciate it. Very important concerns you have raised as well… Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of my website & product.
    Great suggestion for a privacy policy, I’ll get my crack team on that (that would be me and whoever’s brain I can pick about it)! Definitely want people to feel comfortable working with me.
    Also, I have the plan to expand the website to include information on the process of making the pieces & (in answer to Leander’s final comment) thinking of a system to update customers along the process, so they feel more involved. Could be as simple as using twitpic as I’m working daily.
    I have the vision of getting custom packaging made, something like the netflix envelopes that are made to be resent. When the growth of my company makes that feasible, of course. Currently, I keep and reuse my mailing envelopes.
    Interesting idea about a possible digital solution, getting a 2D print is easy, getting 3D out of it to keep with the organic nature of the pieces is the trick. I’m always on the lookout for cool new ideas.

  • http://www.imprecious.com Robin Foley

    THANK YOU!!! for doing a blog on Imprecious! I do so appreciate it. Very important concerns you have raised as well… Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of my website & product.
    Great suggestion for a privacy policy, I’ll get my crack team on that (that would be me and whoever’s brain I can pick about it)! Definitely want people to feel comfortable working with me.
    Also, I have the plan to expand the website to include information on the process of making the pieces & (in answer to Leander’s final comment) thinking of a system to update customers along the process, so they feel more involved. Could be as simple as using twitpic as I’m working daily.
    I have the vision of getting custom packaging made, something like the netflix envelopes that are made to be resent. When the growth of my company makes that feasible, of course. Currently, I keep and reuse my mailing envelopes.
    Interesting idea about a possible digital solution, getting a 2D print is easy, getting 3D out of it to keep with the organic nature of the pieces is the trick. I’m always on the lookout for cool new ideas.

  • Andreas

    You are welcome Robin! Many customers would love to see their own piece crafted. Perhaps with a webcam? The tricky part is to schedule the crafting process exactly… but I would love to get an e-mail which says:

    Dear Andy, you can watch your charms being crafted between 2 and 3 pm…

  • Andreas

    You are welcome Robin! Many customers would love to see their own piece crafted. Perhaps with a webcam? The tricky part is to schedule the crafting process exactly… but I would love to get an e-mail which says:

    Dear Andy, you can watch your charms being crafted between 2 and 3 pm…

  • http://fluidforms.at Stephen

    You could also sell fingerprint scanners. The don’t cost very much. Then you could provide software that takes the greyscale value of the image as the height.

    There is, however, a lot to be said for analogue in our digital time.

  • http://fluidforms.at Stephen

    You could also sell fingerprint scanners. The don’t cost very much. Then you could provide software that takes the greyscale value of the image as the height.

    There is, however, a lot to be said for analogue in our digital time.

  • http://www.titidirectonline.co.uk/menswear/jeans-trousers Jack & Jones

    nice