Why SandboxRanch.com Exists?
I’m entirely self-taught and back in 1996, I began my 3D animation business i3DS International Corporation that was making promotional videos that were focused on explaining how something worked for companies to gain attention at their trade shows and sales meetings. It was TOUGH, nobody knew what 3D animation was back then and I basically told people to go see Toy Story to get an idea of our capabilities.
A few years later, a site called WoodMarvels.com came into being that was focused on my love of woodworking but haven moved to South Korea to teach English (I was slammed hard by the .com bust doing 3D animations for marketing departments which were the first to be cut), the only thing I can think about was maybe making virtual wooden projects and selling those online.
The business was later rebranded a few years later to CNCKing.com to take advantage of metal and 3d printed design files not made for wood, I wanted to bring a little custom to people’s lives and it BOOMED!
Back then, CNCKing.com was selling digital CNC files to companies that had CNC machines which they then used to make projects for their customers, it worked great for almost a decade until I disabled the purchasing option on the website to focus entirely on the physical world, rather than the digital with CNCROi.com.
I lived through the beginning of consumers getting CNC machines and within a few years, there was a fundamental shift of customers who now needed full time technical support for machines that were junk and my files were being blamed for their lack of understanding or education.
The digital realm is great fun, but with rampant file piracy and endless digital file charge backs by CNC operators who didn’t know what they were doing (at best), the pain got too much and I moved-on.
The CNC market has changed drastically from those early beginnings, CNCs were very expensive, hard to get, hard to set-up and very hard to design for… I didn’t know ANYTHING about this, I just taught myself and assumed everything was the way things are today, 20 years ago.
The biggest challenge with CNC products is their cost, each product has to be designed, customized, materials sourced and the list goes on, it isn’t a simple “buy online”, which is something that has been nagging me for almost two decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfqtPZITAWU/
As a result, I began SandboxRanch.com is fall of 2021 to try to bring affordable mass customization to the world, I LOVE custom, the more unique the project, the better… and this has served my CNCROi.com clients extremely well though the past 10 years and will continue to do so well into the future.
There are projects that I tend to do repeatedly, with a little further tweaking, design through materials, be made so that something that’s “wow, never seen that before” is now possible at a cost that doesn’t require the sacrifice of your first born and yet, can still be customized.
For the past few years, my other business TeaLightBox.com has brought joys to people around the world but with SandboxRanch.com, I can focus on a wider variety of products, still made at my shop, that offer a little more range of utility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQiP7x45kSU/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e2AELTMboM/
TeaLightBox.com grew nicely but I wanted something MORE, something that had more presence to it, more customization options and something that, as a child, I enjoyed very much having and that was a custom coin bank.
You may think there are A LOT of options available for these custom banks and other items on SandboxRanch.com and you would be right, but this is in order to make sure you have something unique and just to your desire for yourself and your child to cherish for a very long time.
It has been a very enjoyable journey in the world of custom, from digital to physical and now affordable, I look forward to bringing a little custom into your life.
