We recently connected with Nick Conklin and have shared our conversation below.

Nick, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

I just got back from a 3 day ski vacation and have based my franchise territory around Colorado skiing specifically to work my hobbies into the schedule freedom that business ownership enables. Shrunk 3D is mostly weekend event work so I get to swim against the crowd and ski during weekdays while it is not as crowded.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Shrunk 3D is a franchise business with the slogan: “Photography meets 3D Printing” We operate out of a mobile, trailer based, 3D photo booth that has an array of cameras that takes hundreds of pictures in the blink of an eye. Shrunk 3D has a team of designers that take this imaging and perfect it for the 3D printing process, producing exact miniature replicas of people and pets, preserving memories in 3D.

Nick operates a Shrunk 3D franchise covering the western part of Denver, including Golden and Lakewood out to Glenwood Springs. North-South from Steamboat Springs to Gunnison. With extensive experience in 3D scanning and reverse engineering, Nick has earned accolades from the Air Force for his team leading robotic scanning innovations. As a Project Management Professional who recently completed the Chief Operating Officer Program from MIT, Nick sees this franchise as a way to capitalize on his career expertise and create a lucrative business in the heart of Colorado’s mountainous territory.

Nick used to manually scan pets and people, using hand held scanners, often spending hours on each scan. Shrunk 3D’s cutting-edge technology has increased the speed and ease of digitizing individuals and now makes these processes accessible without specialized knowledge. The technological advances in additive manufacturing that Shrunk 3D is offering are equally impressive, in the past full color additively manufactured products were delicate, heavy, and costly with unsatisfactory resolution. Shrunk 3D has solved these issues with robust, high-definition, lightweight, and affordably priced products that will last a lifetime.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

The foundation for meeting Shrunk 3D’s franchise net worth requirement of $200,000 was due to Nick’s success in his real estate investments. Nick purchased a home pre Covid and refinanced during to lock in a low rate and was able to use to rapidly appreciated value as collateral to secure a CDFI SBA loan from a local Colorado lender. He also lucked out in the purchase of a distressed property in the mountains that he got on a fire sale (pun intended, the land has burn debris that needs to be removed prior to building). The owner was having health issues and needed the property sold as is immediately, Nick 3X’ed his investment the day the deal closed. He spent four years on Zillow daily waiting for such an opportunity in ski country. In fact, at the time his cars engine was blown so in order to view the property he skate boarded to a UHaul rental and drove a van out to view the property since he recognized a deal like this would not last while his car was in the shop.

Now the hard part was the liquid requirements. This required forming a C-Corp and funding it with his 401K from his prior employment using a ROBS (Roll Over for Business Startup). This paid the franchise fee, securing his territory and buying time to complete the CDFI SBA loan, which was a VERY slow process.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Nick has been 3D printing and 3D scanning for 10 years and has seen the technology evolve over that timeframe. His first job in the industry was at a shop that produced these figurines on a now legacy color 3D printer. He saw the demand for people getting themselves and their pets 3D printed however the technology was not up to the task. The printer in question used gypsum (wallboard material) and a binder that was very fragile – if they got knocked over on your desk they would shatter. In addition to the fragility the prints lacked detail, the color was very dull, and they were incredibly heavy. The limitations were not just on the 3D printing side, the 3D scanning technology was also a barrier to mass adoption of bespoke figurines. Nick used to chase people around with hand-held 3D scanners and any movement (such as sneezing) would require him to start over – often taking multiple hours to complete at a sup-par, very expensive, digital file needed to print from. Nick discovered Shrunk 3D and was amazed at the quality from the combination of a custom-built scanner that is mobile (trailer based) and scans people in 2 seconds, eliminating the need to hold perfectly still for a long time. The 3D print advances off of HP’s color printers are equally as impressive. The material is now nylon and incredibly robust, vivid, and lightweight – we turn these into ornaments as a frame of reference. It was the confluence of the advancements in these two fields along with Nick’s experience producing these figures in the past and seeing the demand that led him to open a franchise territory of Shrunk 3D.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shrunk3d.com/denverwest
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shrunk3d_denverwest/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shrunk3DDenverWest/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoHY_0urW96webBeNc2WK3Q
• Other: https://www.thefranchiseconsultingcompany.com/nick-conklin