Driving Our Economy Forward: STRACT
“Well, STRACT Corporation came to be in a very odd way I think. My business partner, Rick Harrison and I had been developing a doll that can be altered for whatever special needs a child has,” said Marsha Roberts, CEO of Marsha Roberts.
“One of the things about making this doll is the knowledge that I have, of mechanics. See the armed way it moves, comes into play with the people that have the 3D printing, prowess and the combination of the two. Really, works because you have to have the knowledge of how something actually is going to go together. How can it be manufactured and, not just how to make it,” said Rick Harrison, CDO of STRACT.
“We had gotten to the point to where all of his drawings and his sculpting things needed to be turned into CAD files for manufacturing. And so, we, by a miracle, found a gentleman by the name of Nick DeSomov, who is a former Disney Imagineer and who’s got mad CAD skills. And so, we all started working together to get this doll to come to life,” said Roberts.
“They introduced me to, Eddie, which was, Rick’s a little fabricated doll that he did by hand. And he did all the joints and everything, and, it was posed, and they put it on a little shelf and where we met, and, as soon as I saw the organic shapes, I knew that I could do it, because that’s something I kind of broke a barrier is converting organic into CAD elements. So, I was able to take his model piece by piece. I scanned all the parts individually and then reassemble them into my digital sculpting program. Re-sculpted them into, and so they looked really good and clean compared to his, you know, look like his model. And then I was able to convert that over to another program like Rhino and, start working on it, retopologizing it which giving it a solid surface instead of just a polygon surface. And we ended up with, with a 3D CAD model, which is very intricate. And the reason why we need to put it in CAD, because it has to be sliced up and boo leaned and cut and measured and everything to to scale for articulation. And that’s what makes this of a really difficult project,” said Nick DeSomov, CTO of STRACT.
“And in the process, we realized that we had discovered something that other entrepreneurs could use. The fact that easy prototyping and less expensive way of getting your product off the ground. And on top of that, small batch manufacturing. And so, another fella, Chantz, who I had met at 3686 in Nashville that launched Tennessee Puts on. We have been communicating for years. And when he found out what we were doing, he said, I really want to be a part of that,” said Roberts.
“Two of the most powerful resources that are unique specifically to Chattanooga, are freight alley and our public education system. Freight alley is powerful because a lot of our clients that we do, a lot of different products for that are in the e-commerce space, need rapid deployment of their product nationwide, and Chattanooga gives us a day lead time over practically any other location in the country. Our second most powerful resource is our public education system. We have the world’s largest collection of digital fabrication labs in the country. Think 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC mills. Our students are graduating high school with over a decade of experience in these spaces,” said Chantz Yanagida, CRO of STRACT.
“And so that’s how STRACT came to be. And now we’ve got our first doll in the first little girl’s hands a month ago. And so, we’re continuing that mission as well,” said Roberts.
