FabCafe Taipei

On average, 100 people a day step in Fabcafe Taipei. 90% of them are tourists and local workers who usually come to enjoy a simple cup of coffee or a meal as Fabcafé’s location is very touristic.

The remaining 10% are small businesses and students who want to benefit from the Fab Services but also design and creative industry people who desire to participate to an event or a workshop.

Most of those later discovered Fabcafé Taipei through facebook, very popular in Taiwan, or Fabcafé’s monthly e-mail magazine.

If you want to set up your own event or workshop in the Fabcafé, you just need to contact Yi-Pin who’ll be glad to help you through it.

To launch FabCafe Taipei in 2013, Tim Wong started with a 110 000 € investment budget to finance the rent, the 1st batch of machines, the material (food & beverage, fab tools, …) and of course the human resources.

3 years later, FabCafe Taipei was profitable with a 330K€ turnover.

In 2016, the main revenue streams were the following:

• Food & Beverage: 70% which comes from the events but also tourists and professionals who step in

• Fabrication services and workshop for companies: 15%

• Events and open-ended workshops: 10%

• External projects for organizations: 5%

The cost structure of the best-case scenario is roughly:

• 35% human resources

• 25 to 35% for stock and materials

• <20% for rent and utilities

• 10 to 20% for others

For FabCafes’ future, Tim thinks it’s important to slow down its growth and focus more on the global client network. The leading team is also looking at how blockchain could be used as a tracking, governance system.

At a Taiwanese scale, FabCafe Taipei will have to improve the quality of its content and increase its network of artists and designers to generate more local and global collaborations.

In terms of indicators, the team follows mainly the number of workshops, events, participants and the income.

With already 9 FabCafes in the world, the team exceeded the symbolic 100 number.

At FabCafe Taipei, 9 people work full time: Tim Wong, the founder, 4 deal with the fab services (prototyping, workshop and event organization) and 4 are in charge of the Café (coffee maker, waiter and cook).

The daily life of FabCafe Taipei is punctuated by all sorts of classes, workshops and events.

Every Saturday, basic 2-hour fab classes take place to teach how to use either the laser cutting machine either the 3D printer.

Then 2 to 4 open-ended workshops are organized monthly. After two occurrences, a same workshop will be improved. Currently, 2 main ones take place in the lab:

• The Kinetic illusion design workshop aimed to teach people how to combine design with mechanical and kinetic technics.

• The Zoetrope animation workshop , more dedicated to families, teaches the principles of the Zoetrope system.

Then, once a month, coffee tasting workshops are hosted by the coffee team.

Ideation workshops are also regularly provided for companies inside or outside the FabCafé.

In terms of events and projects, FabCafe Taipei sets up local meet-ups once or twice a month and co-organizes global programs for and with the Global FabCafe network.

The main ones are

• YouFab Awards: international maker challenge,

• Smart Craft Studio: intensive 3-week design prototyping exchange program that aims to integrate traditional making techniques with digital fabrication,

• “More than project”: project to help the Japanese government to promote its local industry.

Each week, a 1-hour global team meeting occurs to share with the whole FabCafe network what happened during the week: new workshop, event and product contents and key contacts are shared.

For every global weekly meeting, the team formalizes in a google document what happened during the FabCafe week.

Their main documentation tools are Google Drive, Flickr and FabCafe’s blog.

Yi-Pin and Paul from the Fab team draw most of their inspiration from both Instructables with its technical tutorials and Youtube with its raw content.