Hi Everyone!
As of this date, we currently have three Realborn kits in production, with many more coming in the pipeline. The three currently in production are: (1) Sleeping Presley, (2) Awake Presley, and (3) Sleeping Asher.
For those who do not yet know what a “Realborn” is, a Realborn is a kit produced through scanning a real live baby, and then 3D printing the scan for production into a vinyl kit. For some time now, Bountiful Baby has been quietly making a very large investment into some of the highest resolution and highest precision laser and photometric scanning and rapid prototyping equipment and computers in the world today, and many of the vinyl kits created from this investment will be based on actual reproductions of real babies.
For each Realborn baby, virtually every sweet baby fold, wrinkle and crease of the head, ears, eyes, nose, fingers, feet, and toes are captured with this technology. Then small details are carefully checked to assure the detail will transfer over beautifully into the vinyl. Then a 3D prototype print is created using one of the highest resolution 3D printers on the market today. From the 3D prototype print, the molds for the most perfect reborn artists’ canvas (the Realborn® vinyl doll parts) are created. .
For the three Reborn kits listed above, Presley is the son of one of our Bountiful Baby employees, and Asher is my grand-nephew. And, yep, those are the actual names of the real babies.
We announced Presley a few weeks ago, but have not yet announced Asher-- until now…
Since we have already shown Presley, pictures of Presley will not be shown again here. Instead, if you wish to see Presley, please go to this link:
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http://pictures.bountifulbaby.com/presley/presley.html
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For Asher, here is a picture showing the real live baby Asher compared to the 3D prototype parts:
http://pictures.bountifulbaby.com/asher/sleepingasher1.jpg
And to see more of Asher, please go to this link:
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http://pictures.bountifulbaby.com/asher/asher.html
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Even though these three are currently in production, please remember that it takes a few weeks for the manufacturer to produce the vinyl, and then it takes a full month to ship across the ocean. And then we need to inspect the shipment and put them in the warehouse for shipping to you. In other words, we are looking at somewhere between two and three more months before any of our Realborn kits can reach you (sometime from late August to late September). We wish it could be faster, but that is unfortunately how long it takes.
Our Reaborn kits are our “premium” line of what we call “time-limited” Limited Edition kits, and are each currently planned to carry a Certificate of Authenticity. Pricing has not yet been determined, but remember, this is our premium line, and will be time-limited editions rather than open editions like our other kits-- so yes, they will be a bit more exclusive. Our Realborns are also planned to be shipped in a very nice display box that can double as a shipping box for shipping a completed Realborn to your own customers-- so, no more wondering and worrying about how you will ship or display your completed baby!
To change the subject a bit, we are often asked how we determine which kits are going to go on sale. The process of which kits to put on sale is semi-automated, but with some manual intervention. For example, if you check our home page right now, you will find twelve different kits have been put on sale:
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I am the one that decided (just now) to have twelve kits on sale (it is normally fewer kits than that-- and it will change over time). But the website gave me the list of which of kits it recommends that we place on sale. The website recommendations are made by calculating how many “days of stock” we have remaining of each kit (based on the last three months sales data), and then suggesting that the sale kits be the ones with the highest days in stock calculation. In other words, if we bought more of a given kit than what we thought we would rapidly sell, it is more likely to go on sale. Similarly, if we underestimated demand, it might not ever go on sale. This calculation may or may not have anything to do with overall kit popularity-- in fact, some of our most popular kits have been on sale at times.
Another thing folks have occasionally asked about: how come some of our kits seem to be out-of-stock for so long? If it is a kit that has had an extended “out-of-stock” condition, it is likely because there is something wrong with the metal mold for that kit, and the mold needs to be recreated. In other words, we just haven’t gotten to it yet. And until we recreate the metal mold, the kit isn’t something that we can just order more of. It needs more than that. And quite frankly, we simply cannot get to everything as fast as we would like, and have to allocate our resources. And right now, our resources have been allocated to the Realborn line. But we will get back to the others as soon as we can.
We really wish we could do more, and do it faster. We will work on it.
Nevin Pratt
CEO, Bountiful Baby
2140 South 3600 West
Salt Lake City, Utah 84119
Customer Service: 435-257-6217