Ponoko is an online marketplace for everyone to click to make real things.

It’s where creators, digital fabricators, materials suppliers and buyers meet to make (almost) anything.

Creators can ‘click to make’ and sell their product designs online. Digital fabricators and materials suppliers can win and manage pre-paid jobs online. DIYers and buyers can submit requests to get things made for them, and click to make designs from the creative community.

With thousands of user-generated products made each month, their vision is to reinvent how goods are designed, made and distributed worldwide.

The core of this vision is the trade in product designs – a natural extension of the trade in music (iTunes), photos (Flickr), movies (YouTube) and apps (iPhone).

Using their digital making system these product designs can be priced instantly online and made locally, as close to the point of consumption as possible.

This means goods are made in the greenest way … making on demand reduces warehousing and wastage, and making locally emphasizes digital transportation of product designs rather than the traditional shipping of physical products.