Maxime Gravet - Mekanika - The business model that buries planned obsolescence

Maxime Gravet is building an industrial alternative to planned obsolescence.

Engineer, maker at heart and co-founder of Mekanika — a Belgian startup that is shaking up the codes of the industry with a vision: to produce local, sustainable, open source... without sacrificing design or cost-effectiveness.

With two childhood friends, Martin and Roldan, they set up a company that designs and sells open source machines to manufacture locally: cutting, engraving, drilling... in wood, metal, plastic. 

You get everything in a kit, you assemble yourself. And you understand what you're using.

But Mekanika is not just a box of machines. It's a social project. A response to planned obsolescence, mass production, objects designed to break quickly.

In this episode, Maxime recounts:

• how they went from a garage to an SME of 17 people and 3 million in turnover

• the hardships crossed (including one where there is 6000€ left in the account to pay 5 employees)

• What it means to create an industrial product, to make it sustainable, open source and repairable

• Why their vision is that a machine should last a lifetime

• and how a YouTube video launched their first screen printing sales

We also talk about resilience in the midst of a logistics crisis, short circuits, the maker movement and how to reconcile local manufacturing, ethics and profitability.

An episode that makes you want to build things, to focus on the useful rather than the disposable, and to rethink the way we produce.

It's clear, it's inspiring, it's Belgian.