Quickparts
“I’m far away from being bored,” Ziad Abou says as he sits in his company's booth on the Formnext show floor. He is 12 months into a new chapter of a story that now spans 30 years.
Quickparts, the company he now heads as CEO, was divested from 3D Systems in 2021, ten years after the company was acquired and more than 20 years after it was founded. Along with other service bureau purchases made by 3D Systems around that time, it helped form the OEM’s On Demand Manufacturing service, with Abou eventually stepping into a senior position after his own 3D printing service provider – founded in France in 1992 – was bought out by the additive manufacturing leader.
Abou’s business was the first acquisition 3D Systems made outside of Europe as it looked to broaden its repertoire and dominate the 3D printing market in 2010. He helped the company to acquire more companies on the European continent, with outfits from the UK, Netherlands and Italy joining the fold. Then, in late 2012, Abou was appointed as the SVP & GM of Global Quickparts Solutions, leading the Quickparts Business Units for 3D Systems worldwide and managing a division made up of 800 people from Brazil to China to Australia.
“I left 3D Systems in 2019,” Abou picks up the story, “and I had some years where I cannot do anything because of my non-compete contract. I was doing some consultancy work and in 2020, 3D Systems had a change in their global philosophy and wanted to divest parts of the business that they didn’t want to focus on; a distraction.”
3D Systems sold off its Cimatron CAD/CAM business in November 2020, Simbionix in July 2021, and in between divested its On Demand Manufacturing business for a sum of 82 million USD. When the decision was made to remove On Demand Manufacturing from its portfolio, Abou received a call. He was asked if he could help find a buyer. More than that, he was himself interested but wasn’t in a position to purchase an $80m+ business on his own. Which is where private equity firm Trilantic North America stepped in.
“What we acquired is assets of this business, because all the other functions were embedded into 3D Systems. We acquired the facilities, we acquired the customers, we acquired the sales team, but there was no marketing because it stayed in 3D Systems. No finance, no HR, nothing,” Abou explains. “We inherited [something akin to] a startup, but with 65 million USD revenue and 200 people. So, we need to stand up. That’s what we have done all last year, from 2021 September until September this year. We were standing up this business, we build our HR, we build our finance infrastructure, we build our marketing infrastructure, sales team, we build a strong base, so we can move forward with this base.”
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As it moves forward, the company has been quick to dip into the market to obtain new technologies beyond what 3D Systems offers. Quickparts maintains a good relationship with its former parent organisation – currently, 85% of its 3D printing technology is provided by 3D Systems – but at Formnext, the service bureau announced an expansion of its partnership with Nexa3D and the installation of an ARGO 500 machine as it joined Roboze’s 3D Parts Network.
After announcing its intention to install a QLS 820 powder bed fusion machine from Nexa at IMTS, Quickparts is now integrating the Californian company’s resin-based systems to power its Quickparts Express offering, which offers same-day deliveries of 3D printed parts. The Roboze technology has been brought in to provide metal replacement opportunities for users in aerospace, defence and oil & gas, while Quickparts is also surveying 3D printing technology at the likes of HP and Stratasys.
Quickparts’ rationale with technology purchases from here on out is two-fold.
“What drives those technology [purchases] is customer demand, but not only,” Abou says. “Take the Roboze technology, we know that there is some customer demand, but we are not sure because it’s a complete behavioural change for our customers who were doing metal parts for 10, 20, 50 years and ask them to change to plastic. So, we are trying to do both, between what we see as interesting on the market looking forward, not [only] looking to today.”
Abou sees this as one of 3D printing’s biggest hurdles. He sees a lot of development within the AM industry ongoing, across all pillars of the technology from hardware through software through post-processing, but believes behavioural shifts from the users are where adoption and applications slow down. Hence, the company is listening to its customers’ demands on the one hand, but on the other, it’s trusting its own expertise to spot the next opportunities.
“It’s going to be a mix between established technologies and new ones which can help us educate the market and educate our customers,” he explains of the Quickparts approach. “It’s long-term work. Some of the technologies we are acquiring, they’re not going to be profitable tomorrow. Some others, of course, we need to be profitable tomorrow. But for others, we need to educate the market, we need to go through a lot of testing and process qualification with our customers before being able to make money. Our investments will be combining innovation and mature technologies.”
This aligns with Abou’s vision for this next chapter in Quickparts’ journey. The aim is to be, as the name suggests, fast in getting parts out of the door, but also to harness innovation. Abou is keen to point out that the company was quick to provide online quoting capabilities back in its early days, helping to pioneer a more efficient way for manufacturers to buy printed parts. Now, he wants to see more.
“We want to go back to this innovation quality,” he says. “We want to, I would say, capitalise on the knowledge of our people, not only to do internally but also to use our network of partners where we can outsource too. We are a mix between in-house production and outsourcing, which gives us a bigger force than someone only outsourcing or someone only doing in-house, and we are able to do that because we have the knowledge in-house.”
It is this vision, and the prospective enacting of the principles set out upon the divestiture from 3D Systems last year, that maintain a thirst for Abou to continue in the 3D printing space. As of 2022, he marked three decades in the industry, with only a brief step to the side when a non-compete clause prevented him from engaging with his next challenge. As happenstance would have it, that next challenge would be in a familiar place with familiar people. Thirty years in, he’s as excited and as optimistic as he was when he started in 1992.
“It's funny because I don't have a feeling that I spent 30 years in the same industry. This industry keeps changing, keeps moving, keeps exciting, and I don't have the feeling that I am bored. And it's still the future. There was hype at a certain point, like ten years ago, and all the shares, stock rocket, we saw that ‘everyone will have a 3D printer in their house, printing everything.’ It could happen one day, manufacturing is changing. And sometimes, change is due to technology, but also, they are forced by other outside components. Today, supply chain issues, it started with COVID and it was the war in Ukraine, the relationship between countries, protectionism, things like that. So, manufacturing is changing, and 3D printing still has a great role to play in manufacturing. Perhaps, it's not going to be in every house, but it's going to be in every facility at some point.”
