Very Important

This is NOT a virtual tree.
It is a kit made of wood.

Get A Quote

Every tree is different because it has different number of leaves and branches.
But a family that has 3 married children, that each has 3 children (total=4 families and 17 persons) will cost $41.50 + (Shipping = $5.55)

To get a quote for your Family-Tree,
please visit our site http://www.my-family-3d-tree.com
Then click on the Get a Quote button on the top.

Important Notice

Currently I don't see a lot of excitement on this project as I expected.

Very few people have registered in the site.
So if you are interested in purchasing the tree (as a gift), please register in the site .
If I don't see enough registered users in the site, I will regretfully have to shut down this project (after I spent a lot of money in it).

The story behind this project

Five years ago, we celebrated my mother's birthday.

At the time she was 80 years old, and had 80 descendants
(children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren).
Now she has many more….

I knocked my head off thinking of what should I give her, 
and eventually I came out with the following idea.
I asked my five brothers and one sister to send me their family's pictures. 
I printed the pictures and built (out of sticks and old disks)  a  three-dimensional family tree.

It was a lot of work, very amateurish, and took a lot time.

But still it was the evening attraction (and I received a lot of complements for the idea). An interesting side effect was that now my mother's great-grandchildren loves to come to her and see themselves hanging on the tree (ha, ha, ha). 

Since then it was buzzing in my head, why shouldn't I create a simple kit that will enable everyone to build this family tree as a gift their parents, grand-parents (or even for themselves) and save them a lot of time.

I will even print the pictures and attach them to the frames.
Because it is a very personalized gift, I will leave them some room for "self touch" in building the tree structure, and choosing its colors (and accessories).

So about a half a year ago, I started rolling out my first  "low-tech" project.

First I gave the sketches to an engineer that designed it and solved some of the loopholes in the original design, and built the first model. Then I found someone that deals with manufacturers thta built the second model. I was not pleased with that model, so I had thim built a third and a fourth model.

Then I registered this as a "Design Patent" (model).

In the meantime, I had some programmers to build the first draft  of the site that will enable people to build the family-tree (names and pictures), and payment system.

An important aspect of the site is that it enables one to order even a single person-leaf (when a child is born), or add a new branch (when a child is married).
I had some problems with the site, so eventually I took it (programming the site) on myself, and added all the things that I wanted in it (affiliates, stores, explanations, birthday reminder…).

A suggestion

I think it is a very nice present to give to the grandparents (the root) for a birthday or grandparents day, or silver/gold wedding.

I can assure you, they will be very happy.

But it may cost too much for you, and it may be a challeging project to gather all the nephews' pictures.
Therefore, I suggest ito do it as a group project. Each of the brother and sisters (the second generation) will build his/her own family-tree (with his children pictures).

You only need to purchase one base with one branch for the grandparents, and then assemble all the families trees (of the brothers and sisters) on the base tree for the grandparents tree.

The sites enables you to purchase multiple trees, so you can keep one for yourself (if you want) and give the other to assemble the grandparents tree.

The project status

Now the site is ready, I paid the manufacturer an advance to start producing the first stock of trees, and I hired a designer to create the attached video.

The budget for the first Shipment is about $12,000. I am already putting $7,000 (not including all the payments for the models, the site, and the video), so I need another $5,000.

Risks & Challenges

This project has 4 basic components:

1.  The product – The kit is the size and shape of a flower pot.

Please note that I intend to add accessories (like flowers, leaves, leds…)
For more details on it, read the "Accessories" page (under the "Explanations").

The tree is composed of three basic components (base, branches leaves).
The biggest problem that I encountered was the connections between these components.
The way I designed it presented a problem to be overcome, in that the connections need to allow rotation of the branches and pictures. But in the previous models manufactured some connections were too loose, so that they either did not stay in the right angle, or even fell from the tree.
Eventually, I found a "pipe" with an inner rubber, and this solved this problem.
I am now waiting to get the last model that is built as I want it.
I also asked the manufacturer to drill the holes (in the balls) a little narrower than the sticks (so will need some force to squeeze it in).

2.  The site – Eventually the site took most of my time because I want it to be KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid), but I want it to enable many things (for example, add the pictures from a URL or from Facebook profile). 

I still need to invest a lot of time in it in the following areas:

2.1 Translating the site to many languages.
2.2 Enabling payments with other means (Gate2Shop).
2.3 Enabling users to cut the faces from a family picture and to enhance them.
2.4 I am using a PDF to print the pictures, but currently only works with English characters. I started to use a new class that I found (UFPDF) that works with utf8 characters ,but I still need to build the fonts for all the languages.

3. Pricing
I tried to set the price as reasonable as possible.
My goal was to make it less than $50, for grandparents with 3 children that each one has 3 children.
The main problem was (and still is) is the Fast" shipping rates.
Please read at the bottom "Other ways you can help".

4.  Marketing – the challenge is to get the "word" out.
4.1 Affiliates – Please read at the bottom "Other ways you can help".
4.2 I plan to interest sites like MyHeritage, family album sites and others (sites that are complementary to the Family-Tree) in becoming affiliates in this project (and maybe I will add links to their sites as well).

4.3 I will add a Facebook page and tries to attract Facebook users to it.

4.4 An important marketing channel will be "Stores".

A store can show a "demo" tree, and attract customers very easily.
A store also solves the "shipping" problem that is described above.
It will also solve the problem of customers that do not purchase goods online.
The problem is that a store cannot supply the pictures.
I am solving it by creating "coupons" for pictures that the store will give to the customers.
You can read more on this in the site (under "Stores").
The big question, that I really don't have an answer for is whether stores will be ready to adopt this method.

About Myself

I am a father of a five very special kids, the oldest is doing his postdoctoral fellow  in Stanford University, and the youngest is 16 years old. 

I am also a grandfather of 3  adorable grandchildren.
So now I am building my own Family-Tree.

I am a computer engineer, and I worked for several companies.
I am also entrepreneur, and I built my own software companies.
My biggest success was "LingoWare", a software product that translates the user-interface of other products from English to 13 other languages.
LingoWare was downloaded by 13,000,000 users and reached CNET top 5 software.

In the past few years I built several Apps, but they did not generate enough money to keep my family. Eventually I decided to start this "low-tech" project.
I really need all the help I can get to make it happen again.

Other Ways You Can Help

One of the most important ways you can help is by becoming an affiliate.

All you need to do is register, and then click on the "Affiliates" button.

Read all the details, and then click on the "register" link and check the " I want to become an affiliate." Checkbox.

The system will give you a link that you copy to your site, emails, Facebook, blog..

Every customer that enters the site from your links is registered under your id. If he buys anything (read the details in the site), you get 10%.

 want to cut down the "Fast" shipment cost.

I am looking for people that will accept large packages (with little boxes inside), and ship the small packages in their countries. So if you want to do it, or you know of a company that does it (in your country), please send me an email.