The Grommet loves watching the innovation pouring out of crowdfunding and we follow the crowdfunding space very closely. In fact, as a company we actually invest in ideas that we think have real, long-term potential.

Crowdfunding platforms can be a great feedback mechanism for consumer demand. The feedback product creators receive from the community is so valuable as they iterate their concepts and designs. Five of our Product Pitch participants launched Indiegogo campaigns after their big day at Fenway last month (quick, check them out, funding deadlines closing soon!) and they have received great feedback from the community.

Once crowdfunded products are ready for retail launch, we love introducing their story to the world and actually helping them to sell on our site and off-site through our retail placement partners.

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In some ways, walking the floors of the New York International Gift Fair (or NYIGF) feels familiar, like home. Perhaps because it's been a place we've gone to for years in search of great new products with compelling stories. Maybe the welcoming feeling comes from the many familiar faces of Grommet Partners who we've launched and now work with daily who we are spotting in booth after booth. It could simply be that  when we are surrounded by  innovation, exceptional design and good packaging, we are in "our element."

Joanne catching up with Grommet partner Haim Shahar, founder of Trades of the East.

We stopped for a little playtime with our friends Cate & Levi. We just launched their wool animal puppets on Grommet last week!

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Our Grommets are showing up all over Pinterest, and it's no wonder. Pinterest is a great place to capture creativity, inspiration and innovation. Here's a look at our most recent top-pinned Grommets:

Above: Cuppow, ThredUp, Yogibo, Neatnix, On The Hook

If you're pinning, we'd love for you to follow us. Plus, if you spot a product that you think would make a great Grommet,  let us know! We'd love for you to join our group Pinterest board and help us discover the next Grommet idea.

Also, be sure to leave a link to YOUR Pinterest profile in a comment below so we can follow your pins!

Our relationships with our Grommet partners lasts well beyond launch day. We want to see their businesses expand, grow and thrive and are eager to help them succeed. We've recently learned that several of our Grommet partners have entered in Mission: Small Business -- a program sponsored by Chase and LivingSocial to help small businesses across the US by awarding up to 12 individual $250,000 Grants. Now THAT sounds like an opportunity for growth!

To become a finalist, each business will need to gain 250 votes  before June 30th -- no simple feat. We'd love to help them boost up their numbers, so what do you say Grommet community? Can we take a couple minutes and vote for these guys?

To help support our Grommet partners:

1. Visit Mission Small Business

2. Log in with Facebook

3. Search for business names: Malpaca, Allurements, Jon Wye, Back to the Roots, YAK Apparel and Bottlehood (then just click support)

Are you a small business who has also entered this contest? Feel free to leave your business name below and let others know you'd love a vote.

Good luck to all of the participants!

You can learn more about the  Grommets mentioned above by visiting our original feature of Malpaca, Allurements, Jon Wye, Back to the Roots, YAK Apparel and BottleHood on Daily Grommet.

Recently,  Peter Davison shared with us a speech he gave, during which he discussed the current state of crowdsourcing. We were honored to hear Daily Grommet mentioned (at around 10:06 of video) and to be included in Peter's TEDx speech.

As Peter points out, some of the early iterations of crowdsourcing, like getting a graphic design project created at 99Designs, are just  scratching the surface of this cultural and technical advance.  He recognized that at Grommet we are building a powerful crowdsourced platform for deeply impacting the most central of all business activities:  discovering and launching products.  Until we pulled various technologies and media together, most new products were left to the wild to survive.  They would often die before getting discovered.  It was just plain unfair and wasteful that the playing field for innovation was not level.

Now that we have built a way for an entire global crowdsourcing community to surface viable and inspiring products and even whole new companies.  Once launched on Daily Grommet they have a great fighting chance and are achieving great success.
We are grateful that Peter Davison, as a domain expert, recognized the impact of what we are building, via crowdsourcing.

Daily Grommet is mentioned at 10:06

"I never pay retail."

"You wouldn't believe what a deal I got on this."

"I'll wait until it goes on sale."

If you are talking about last season's clothes, or giant boxes of Cheerios, or a car, or a great product in an unpopular color, or a laptop model that is about to be upgraded, these are reasonable positions.  There are huge categories of products that have margin structures and lifecycles that support deep and regular discounts.  You ARE a sap if you don't get the best price you can.

But if you are also the kind of person who loves new technology, or getting your hands on the latest clever invention, or you want to support sustainable products or entrepreneurs just getting started, or you appreciate having vibrant local (and even big chain) stores in your town or city, discounts become a much more complicated conversation.  Why?

Mainly because new products and/or young companies have not reached a scale or efficiency to immediately begin discounting.  If anything, at Grommet, we see too many entrepreneurs underpricing their products.  This has two effects.  Either they can't cover their costs.  Or, if they are selling direct, they are setting a market price that does not allow for scaling via other retailers who need to make their own margin.  Either outcome spells death.

When it comes to online discounts, there's another level of complication.  Namely, "showrooming."

The television industry is recently fighting the pervasive discounts threatening both the manufacturers and retailers like Best Buy and Target.  Last week Sony and Samsung announced unprecedented new pricing policies--taking a page out of the Apple playbook.  "If you want to carry our product, you have to respect our prices." The Wall Street Journal did a nice job covering this news.  Here's an excerpt that pretty much covers it:

"This allows us to make a reasonable profit," says Billy Abt, co-president of Abt Electronics, one of the country's largest independent consumer electronics retailers. "It got to the point where we were selling $2,000 TVs and making $10."

Even a fourth-grader can do the math on that one.  Now it's time for the adults who control our economy (you and me) to stop deluding ourselves that someone else is paying for these unsustainable discounts.  We are all paying when we kill whole industries and our local retail.

What are your thoughts on the topic?

...

The just-released Mojo professional grade 3-D printer by Stratsys. It’s available for $9,999, or by lease for $189/mo.The just-released Mojo professional grade 3-D printer by Stratsys. It’s available for $9,999, or by lease for $189/mo.

Ever since I saw a 3-D printer available for a $15/hour at a college design lab, I've been convinced of its eventual ubiquity.  Remember when only universities and large companies had mainframe computers?  Remember when you went to a professional shop to get something printed?  3-D printing is on the same trajectory--but for physical products.

Right now, 80% of the materials consumed for 3-D printing are being used for prototyping.  In other words, it's still in the land of universities, big companies, hackers, and the military.  (And, coincidentally, Jay Leno has one in his garage for fabricating parts for his classic car collection.)

But I predict that by 2020 we will be downloading products to home printers as easily as we print out emails or buy a song on i-Tunes.

I've been writing about this for a long time.  Notably, so has been the normally unexcitable Economist.  (Here's my summary of one of the best Economist pieces.) The press corps is getting on the bandwagon.  VC's are funding upstarts in the space.  Daily Grommet is creating a business model that gives all this upcoming innovative product supply a place to get launched.

But it's also interesting to see how the Motley Fool outlines the investment opportunity being created by 3-D printing.  They equate investing in the space now to investing in Apple in 1980 or Microsoft in 1986. I know they are selling a publication that pushes stocks...but their investment thesis for the 3-D printing space strikes me as solid and perfectly understandable.

Here's a fast-paced, but extended, Motley Fool video on the topic.

And here is a transcript of the same video.

If you can't be Daily Grommet and build a whole business around this new industrial revolution, an investment in the 3-D Printing space seems like a pretty good idea to me.

Today's Grommet, SpiritHoods, began with this curious photo we posted on our Facebook wall ...

Jules snapped the photo while she was walking the streets of NY during a recent business trip. The animal hat caught her eye and its wearer happily agreed to being in the spotlight.

So along with the photo, here's what she asked our Facebook community:

Would you wear this? I saw so many versions of this "giant animal head" hat all over New York this week. Both on men and women. >Jules

Within instants, we'd received over 100 responses (you can read them all here on our Facebook page). It was obvious we'd hit a nerve. Our Discovery Team began to dig deeper into this idea, vowing to give the people what they wanted: animal-inspired hats.

SpiritHoods is perhaps the most "socially sourced" Grommet to date (how's that for Citizen Commerce in action?). And that makes today a particularly special day for me as the Community Manager here at Daily Grommet. So speak up folks ... we hear you!

Now,  let's keep doing it. Have another Grommet idea? Submit it to our Citizens' Gallery or tell us about it on Facebook or Twitter.

On an otherwise unremarkable January morning, the US Government recently made my day. Specifically, a public servant named David J. Kappos.  He's Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. His organization surprised me with the unexpected delivery of a very official-looking Trademark certificate for:

Citizen Commerce

We had applied for this a year ago, but hadn't heard any updates in months.  The trademark just showed up.  Shiny gold seal and all.

I'm delighted for Daily Grommet to be the cheerleader and guiding hand for Citizen Commerce.  It's a movement that represents the following thoughts:

• Individual people have great power to shape the world we live in, through the most ordinary of behaviors: sharing, writing, talking, buying.
• We control 65% of the US economy via these actions.
• Every decision to buy (or not buy) a product or service is a "vote" for something.  A vote for a company and people who do business in a way that supports your values
• Because the tools to create products are so much more accessible than ever, there is a new Industrial Revolution happening all around us.   Big companies with scale no longer control the tools of production and distribution.
• With social media sharing tools, technologies, and behaviors (and the engagement of highly accessible video) we can finally have the information to act on our values.
• We can efficiently organize to support (or expose) companies, people, and products that deserve our time, attention, money and resources

THOSE are the reasons I'm grinning ear to ear holding the Trademark certificate.  Let the Revolution begin.

We’re on a mission to find the most special (and tasty!) local food treasures, but we can’t possibly make it to every corner of the country to find them. That’s where YOU come in!

Now you can be an official Grommet Scout: Tell us about a special treat or food you can’t live without. We’ll do all the legwork and testing. If your idea is selected as a Grommet, we’ll give you a $100 gift card plus a free sample of the product you recommended. Hope you’re up for the challenge – can’t wait to taste all your great ideas!

For more info and to enter, please visit our Facebook contest page here.

Submit your local foodie find between January 10, 2011 and January 30, 2011.