If only they could print customers…
Amid rising costs and declining profits, 3D Systems has announced it will put an end to its once revered consumer printing division. Effective midnight tonight, the global leader in 3D-print technology will no longer operate its online hub providing customers with design ideas, do-it-yourself kits and other retail items. The company has also announced it will end production of its consumer-targeted, desktop printer – the Cube.
In a benign and perhaps overly optimistic statement released late last month, 3D System’s interim-CEO and chief legal officer Andrew Johnson, said the company intends to shift its focus away from consumer products, and toward a more business oriented strategy. “We believe that the most meaningful opportunities today are in professional and industrial settings, from the product design shop to the operating room to the factory floor.”
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What Johnson’s pillowy-soft statement fails to mention, however, is that the company has continually struggled to attract new customers – to put it mildly – and will likely continue to do so far into the foreseeable future.
According to its most recent financial reports, 3D Systems recorded a stunning US$32.4 million loss in the third quarter of 2015. This compares to a US$3.1 million net profit in the third quarter of 2014, and a US$17.6 million net profit in the third quarter a year earlier. Overall, profits at 3D Systems are down by an astounding 285 per cent over the past two years; while the company’s operating costs have risen by an equally impressive one and a half times – or roughly US$20 million a month.
In technical terms, the company is losing money faster than a 3D-printer can print it!
(Joking: 3D-printers are slow. That’s part of the problem.)
Misjudging the marketplace
Innovation specialist and head of entrepreneurship at the University of Ottawa, Luc Lalonde, believes companies such as 3D Systems may have overestimated public appetite for a machine that essentially does very little for the average consumer.
“They were probably just hopeful,” said Lalonde. “That somehow this would be just like personal computers were back in the 1980s. Where people were willing to put down two, or three or even four thousand dollars for a really crappy personal computer.”
But 3D-printers are nothing like personal computers, added Lalonde.
Sure, if you’re an expert in 3D-design, or stay up nights learning to use AutoCAD (whatever that is) then 3D-printing might be for you. But for us average folk, the technology offers next to nothing in terms of practical applications; and at US$999, the Cube was simply too costly.
“I just look around my own friends, and there’s no desire,” said Lalonde. “Why would you get a 3D printer?”
And many people aren’t.
Before the decision was made to cut consumer printing, inventories of unsold products at 3D Systems had risen to an all-time high of US$73 million – nearly double what it had been two years earlier.
Enter Geordi Laforge
Although the technology involved in 3D-printing is by no means comparable to that of Star Trek – where one could literally reproduce anything they so desired – 3D-printing does possess a particular, fantasy-like, attractiveness.
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For scientists, manufacturers and medical researchers, this means possibilities never before imagined – like printing ultra-strong materials, designing 3D-legs for dogs, or producing a real, fully-functioning, human heart.
For others, like Michael McLaren, a student of mechanical engineering at Carleton University, 3D-printing is a learning opportunity. A chance to develop skills and knowledge for the twenty-first century.
Even if that means designing a 3D-printed bicycle that collapses underneath your own weight.