The Kriebel Brothers at UCI's Student Center
It's me, Alec, writing this from Irvine, CA. I've decided to go ahead and centralize what has been happening in my life to a [blog] post that will be released on the first of every month that details some key events of the previous month. I am doing this because I am now in college at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). This blog post condenses my Summer into 3 key points.
Summer (June, July, August) 2015 - Protonico Printing (3D Printing Business) - During Spring Break this year, I came back to PA with knowledge of 3D Printing, since I had joined the 3D Printing Club at UCI the quarter before. My second brother, Wyatt, had some extra money during this Spring Break and I told him getting a 3D Printer would be a cool thing to have and a good investment. On March 26th, we had gotten a 3D printer and had made all sort of neat little things with it. Naturally I went back to school after Spring Break for Spring Quarter and of course, left Wyatt and the printer behind. When I came back to PA for Summer Break, Wyatt had told me about how he had been creating and 3D printing things for his friends and classmates, and had made some money from it. We both had the idea to open up the 3D printing business to the world by posting some items on online sites like Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods, and eBay, the well known bidding site. This is how Protonico Printing was created. I manage everything online and business-related including product listings, customer relations, promotions, etc. Wyatt, since he has it, manages all the 3D printing that is needed to be done whether it is to fulfill an order or make a custom product for a customer. Finally, we have brought our third and youngest brother, Griffin, on board to be our shipping manager that takes all of the 3D printed goods, purchases their shipping labels, packs them, and brings them to the mailbox for pickup. We had the shops up for the first month starting in July, and were pleasantly pleased at our double-digit order number and our triple-digit revenue. Since adding more items, getting more well-known, and promoting the business in various ways, in the next month of August, we have gotten over 3x as many product views online, and have made over 2.5x more revenue in August than July, which is really, really exciting to us, and great for only being 2 months old. In fact, we have so much demand that I have had to stop doing promotional stuff so Wyatt can keep up with the orders, however, we are at the point now where we will be getting a second 3D printer in the coming weeks to increase production. In all, Protonico Printing was a Summer project that is turning out to be a very fun, and profitable business between brothers. We're really excited to see where this venture goes especially in the coming months because of Halloween and Christmas. UAV Venture - The main thing I was excited for this Summer was to be able to have more free time to work on a project that I am turning into a business. Since November of last year I have been really interested in UAVs or 'drones' and have experimented with a few and have purchased and made multiple. Since the current market does not have the right tools to operate UAVs in a commercial setting, I am hoping to develop essential technologies that enable the commercial operation of UAVs in a civil setting. This was my Summer's main focus, and on the first technology that I set out to create, I was able to create a proof of concept prototype that successfully functions as I set out to do, which is very exciting for me. Coming back to UCI, I was able to finally get in touch with a friend of mine who is a Mechanical Engineering major and also the president of the 3D Printing club, to bring him on as a co-founder of the company. In the next month we will be incorporating as a Delaware C-Corporation in order to solidify our legal status and protect us if any UAVs accidently fall out of the sky, which is an unfortunate possibility... There will be much more on this company very shortly in the future; look out for it! Academics - June 2015 finished off my Spring Quarter and first year at UCI. It was a really great year for me, and really great academically for me as well since I finished the year with a 3.67 GPA. I'm now back at UCI, in a whole new apartment, taking Summer classes in order to get ahead and graduate early. They've been going very well and having 2 classes instead of 4 is much more relaxed allowing me to focus on other things beside school while I'm here. I'm also proud to say that I will be able to call myself a Junior at UCI once this next Fall Quarter is over moving me up into my upper-division classes.
This Summers's Playlists -
I hope this summer was one to remember, - Alec Kriebel