What happened to Grace Choi of Mink?
Remember Grace Choi from TechCrunch Disrupt making our jaws drop by demoing a 3D Printer that can print makeup? This idea of anyone being able to print any color makeup with a $300 printer would revolutionize the makeup industry. We hope she is making great progress on her work, but she has been MIA.
Her website gracemink.com‘s twitter / facebook / linkedin links do not exist.
What you didn’t see during the mink demo
The actual printer in action.
She goes through the motion of picking a color then magically pulls out a Bareminerals eyeshadow.
Watch the demonstration that Grace Choi gave at TechCrunch Disrupt again until the end and you will realize something about Mink. It does not yet exist. She came up with an idea. A very difficult to achieve idea technically. There is no invention or prototype.
Watch the Q&A carefully. After congratulating Grace on a “successful” demo, very important questions were not answered. When asked about how the printer works, Grace answers that the demo is basically a “hack.” She prints a pink sheet of paper on stage then opens the lid of the printer and picks up a block of eye shadow. It’s an ordinary inkjet printer with a mink logo pasted on the side.
Judge dug deeper on how it got from being a printed pink sheet of paper into eye-shadow and at that point she admits it is in her words “hack to show the concept.” She plans to leave the technical details to a company she plans to partner with.
Mink appears on CNN, but no live demo
The reporter asks “how long does it generally take?” meaning it wasn’t a real demonstration again. It’s strange that Grace claims it takes less than a few seconds. Why didn’t she just run the printer in that case?
Mink to be released later of 2014
We hope Grace succeeds and it would be a Christmas miracle to go from an idea to a shelf product in half a year.
If the printer ends up being $300, the 3D ink or the makeup powder will most likely cost more than the “bulls**t” makeup people buy at CVS.