Shapeways EOS leaders of the new school
50% of Shapeways’ products are printed with EOS selective laser sintering.
When TCT last visited Shapeways in 2014, The Netherlands-founded company had recently set up its North American facility in Long Island City, amassed over 15,000 store owners on its platform, and had dreams of creating the first Shapeways’ millionaire. A lot has changed since then, the company has a new CEO, the number of businesses run through Shapeways has tripled, and several of those are making millions of dollars of revenue, some even setting up their own teams.
Now over a decade into the game, the feel as you walk into Shapeways Factory is still very much that of a start-up – you’re unlikely to find machines named after Marvel characters and pop divas at a big corporate – but the company’s CEO Gregory Kress, who joined the company just 12 months ago following the departure of Co-Founder and CEO Peter Weijmarshausen, embraces that.
“We're a start-up, we're still young and we're still growing and still figuring things out,” he tells me on a recent tour of the facility.
The Long Island factory houses four primary 3D printing technologies but its versatile plastic is its most popular offering with around 50% of parts being produced on its arsenal of 11 EOS selective laser sintering systems. Its R&D department is home to some newer installations including Formlabs’ Form Cell, Stratasys’ J750 full colour multi-material printer, currently in beta testing, and Carbon’s CLIP technology, which was still in the process of being setup during our visit. Meanwhile, over in the original Eindhoven factory, HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology has really hit its stride. Files come in and are assigned in a sort of “3D Tetris” style to maximise build platform capacity. They’re then printed and any required post processing such as polishing or dying is carried out before they’re passed on to the distribution centre for shipping.
"If we change all of our processes tomorrow, I don't care, we'll figure it out, whatever is best for our customers."
In the past, Shapeways may have been considered more of a marketplace for 3D content (it was once described as the “Etsy of 3D printing”) than a manufacturing service provider, but now with a fresh rebrand and focus on “design, make, sell” functionality, it positions itself as “a silent partner behind the scenes” helping small businesses to get their products delivered to customers.
“Our customers have a deep understanding of their market fit and what their customers need - we're just enabling that process,” Kress explained. “Most of them have design issues, most of them want mass customisation, most of them need more than just 3D printing, they're not asking for prototypes. What we're trying to do now is remove as much friction from that process as we can and really just help them be more successful.”
With most creators choosing to set up individual stores on other platforms, Shapeways has developed integrations with the likes of Shopify and Etsy, enabling customers to order products directly from other webstores, have them sent straight to the Shapeways factory and delivered to their door, often with the store’s own branding stamped on the box.
“We don't ever want to say that we take a file and turn it into a product, there's so much more complexity in this process and the real value that we can create is helping our creatives today,” Kress said.
Last year, Shapeways announced 30 million USD in new funding to facilitate its expansion and celebrated its 10 millionth printed part. It continues to partner with OEMs to prove out new technologies and Kress isn’t resting on any laurels when looking to the future.
“Even in the last year we've made so many changes to things we've been doing for a long time. I’m trying to be as agile as possible,” Kress added. “We're a start-up – if we change all of our processes tomorrow, I don't care, we'll figure it out, whatever is best for our customers.”
This article was first published in TCT Magazine Europe Edition Volume 27 Issue 1 as part of a wider feature titled 'Leaders of the New School: Where are they now?' which documented the journeys and development of a host of the most renowned figures and companies in the industry.
You can click through to the other interview pieces that completed this series below:
