Silicon Valley romance is a 3D-printed rose hand-delivered by TaskRabbit

In high school, some student body group would inevitably decide to offer a Valentine’s Day delivery service. As you passed the printed signs, carefully designed in Publisher or QuarkXPress, you would mentally sift through potential combinations of flowers and candy like a tiny diplomat, attempting to strike a balance between frugality, friendship, and the burning desire to prove your love to someone you had exchanged perhaps five words with in the past month by attaching your name to a slightly dingy carnation. Then, the morning of February 14th, you would spend the morning in a state of careful nonchalance, pretending not to be disappointed by your lack of secret admirers.

If you’re in San Francisco, Taskrabbit and Brit + Co’s MakeShop store have stepped up to fill the post-graduation gap. For $25 ($15 of rose and $10 of shipping), you can get a single 3D-printed rose hand-delivered to the lover or friend of your choice. For $100, you’ll get a full dozen. You could skip the delivery, buy the roses at MakeShop, and deliver them yourself, but your Valentine will look at you with cautious distrust. If you can’t let the sharing economy into your life, their eyes will say, how will you find room for me?

Unless you’re still in the “first date” phase of your relationship, you’ve probably also talked about their preferences in 3D manufacturing. These roses look like they’re from a MakerBot-style FDM printer (note the hard plastic and ridges), but if the special man or woman in your life is more into smooth SLS printing and doesn’t care about actually getting the gift by Valentine’s Day, custom-made flower company Just Paper Roses will let you personalize a rose and print it through Shapeways. Unfortunately, after CES, there’s only one kind of 3D-printed Valentine’s Day token we really want, and nobody seems to be custom-printing and hand-delivering packages of Cubify candy.