Amazon and Ebay Storefront for Shapeways?

Might Shapeways be persuaded to offer a storefront through Amazon marketplace and ebay?

Many customers begin product searches inside amazon or ebay so as to have controlled environments with trusted sellers and vetted reviews.

Getting started selling in those environments as an individual is daunting as you must manage setup, inventory, and then build credibility. Not the sort of undertaking that many in Shapeways want to get involved with- the whole advantage of Shapeways is that it lets you focus on design instead of production.

While I don't think Shapeways could or should offer the bulk of community designs in those environments, it seems you could offer the "best" designs there. The storefront would drive sales and would motivate your community to produce qualifying designs and the required marketing metadata. Kind of like the app store for Apple has "featured" apps in various categories.

On the face of it, it may seem like a good idea, but there's a few things to consider.

1. Shapeways is essentially a 'drop shipping' supplier.
2. Drop Shipping is frowned upon.
3. The product must exist.
4. The product does not come into existance until after the order is placed.
5. Fees would disproportionately high considering the exact same ordering/production/delivery chain already exists, meaning either the listed item is overpriced or the designer gets less markup.

I've based my response on my 8.75 year experience with ebay and have no experience with Amazon.

That said, a company offering consenting designers' wares via coporate listings would be good for both desingers and Shapeways... we've got "Friday Finds" on the blog... how about Monthly Featured (on Shapeways front page, eBay, Amazon or wherever)?

Thanks! You have a lot more experience than I do with this.

Concerns 1 through 4 can be met if Shapeways only offers up the top 100 to 1000 designs. They could then afford to pre-manufacture those items in very limited quantities, in anticipation of demand and to avoid the "drop shipping" issue.

Concern 5 could be met in a few ways. There could be a different pricing structure once you are promoted to "featured" status. There could also be some benefit to Shapeways in that they would have more bulk ordering, so maybe they could eat some of the extra costs imposed by those services.

My other concern is that until a change like this is made I don't see Shapeways making real money for its designer community. I see it as being limited to an audience that is interested in 3d printing first, not the wider audience that simply wants a particular type of consumer product.

Did not shapeways announce they have paid out over $100,000 in shop earnings? Yes that could be more but that is still a lot of money.

I don't think ebay is the way to go since it seems less and less people are using it and there costs are very high. Amazon seems like a great place to sell stuff. Buy your books and dice all at the same time(well I only buy ebooks so won't work for me). I do not know what the overhead is but shapeways could look at it as marketing expense.

Inventory does not need to exist in advance if they can just get a fast track program in place where they can ship it quickly. Amazon doesn't even keep an inventory of all there books. many publishers let amazon print and bind the books on order. Obviously you would only want to sell products that have printed before on Amazon so there is grantee it can be printed again. Maybe limit material choices to only materials then seldom fail like WSF.

I see where you're coming from.

Shapeways doesn't actually print much, most of the work is spread about various different companies, mostly in Europe, some in the US. If you like, Shapeways are a 'middle man' between designers and 3D printing services.

There are a good many designers using Shapeways for their final finished product, and there are others using other print services too. Have a google for FOC (Freedom of Creation), their setup is taking 3D printing and designer products, mixing them up and selling the result as an end user item, as mainstream designer products.

Consumer products have a purpose, they fulfil a need (not a want). Currently, with the certification that items 'made' by Shapeways have, limits the end use to a few niche markets - expanding sales to eBay would not change this, and from what I gather, products sold via Amazon would be even more limited as to their end use and how they are advertised. e.g. Silver items would need to comply with the Company's country's hallmarking laws.

Shapeways community members (designers, Shapies) command their own profit. With every model available for sale, designers are able to add a markup to the Shapewasy base price. The core Shapeways team (Duann, Bart, Ralph, Nancy & Ana - sorry if i missed anyone) are very proactive in promoting not only Shapeways, but individual designers work, expanding awareness about 3D printing, its uses and the community as a whole.

And as mctrivia points out... there's print failures to take into account too.

There would definitely need to be restrictions on the featured items. There would need to be a review process like there is for featured items in the Apple App store. Also, there might need to be a tick more packaging involved with a featured item, like the ability to include an instruction sheet, a warning sheet, and a listing for return policies.

Still, when I go to Amazon and search for Ipod cases, shouldn't the best few Shapeways versions be there? That seems to me to be the way to open the floodgates and turn that $100,000 into many millions.

I think the idea has merit, especially for items like specialty dice where the design can only be made by 3D printing.

Hey all,

Thanks for your thoughts, it is something we have discussed internally, how we can plug Shapeways into other sites.

Our first test of this is the Shapeways widget that lets you insert your shop into other web pages. We would love to see this used to it's full potential, we have seen a few of these widgets driving a fair amount of traffic and if there were more we would see it drive more traffic and sales for you.

We do work hard to promote your designs but we also need good photos at 450x324 or 700x519 so that we can embed them in the galleries, widgets and promote them on external sites.

We have seen some people being quite successful selling their items in Etsy, again it is up to you to open a shop and make it happen.

We will keep looking at ways to help you sell your items and will take under consideration outlets like Amazon, Ebay and Etsy.

Cheers

A quick question Duann, somewhat OT.

Why do you need those particular resolutions again? I don't see images of that size anywhere in the model page, front page, galleries, widgets, or blogs. The model page on my screen is 482x361, and 640x480 when expanded. If you are looking for more images at that resolution it would make sense to store the uploaded images at full-res and re-size them as needed. I always upload high-res JPGs for my model pages, and if you had those available you'd be all set for images.

I'm not clear why we should use these resolutions, since in my experience they will always be re-sized to 480px high regardless of the input. Also, the sizes you mention have different aspect ratios, which is also odd.

BTW, I do agree that it couldn't hurt to have a Shapeways feature page on dozens of other sites just to draw traffic, the same way that every company has a Facebook page just to pile on the bandwagon even though it doesn't make any actual sense in a social-networking context.

Hey aeron203

These sizes were given to me as sizes that work in the galleries, if there are other sizes and aspect ratios that work in this context I am happy to accept them, as long as they fill the thumbnail properly.

If you upload hi res images unfortunately I cannot access them hi res, I only can get to the ones that are on the site.

This is why I often ask for people to email me high res images which I can use for promotion. It also helps if hi res images are uploaded or linked to the It Arrived and Feature This page as I keep a fairly close eye on those.

As far as getting on more sites we need everyone's help to make this happen, Facebook has become huge for Shapeways, both as a driver of traffic from individuals referring to Shapeways, and a way for us to talk to both new and existing Shapeways users.

Thanks again for your input

I think our jewelry may be the first 3d-printed product sold by Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Nervous-System-Interstice-Bangle-Brace let/dp/B004N3BREI/ref=sr_1_21?s=jewelry&ie=UTF8&qid= 1308114104&sr=1-21

not made on demand though, the best solution for that would be if Amazon had their own printers

that almost seems like an inevitable next step for Amazon. Never thought of that before. I could see Amazon buying shapeways in about 2-3 yrs time...

Congrats Nervous !

Oh, please don't say that. That's all we need - some big faceless corporation ruining this company.

Glenn

I don't think Amazon will be interested until the market reaches a commercial tipping point, like happened with ebooks. That's a ways out I think- costs are too high by about a factor of 5.

DrScott from Shapeways- could you speak directly to the issue of establishing a Shapeways store on Amazon Marketplace? You say that Shapeways looked at the issue and is asking the community to take advantage of the widget, but I don't think the widget helps in terms of Amazon, just in terms of adding ecommerce to sites like Facebook. As you can see from the item sold by NervousSystem you need to separately enter the metadata in the Amazon system and then manage a storefront.

Can you share the cost / benefit analysis you did in terms of setting up a Shapeways storefront on Amazon? Is your ask for community support an ask for someone from the community to set up a general Shapeways storefront on Amazon?

Well I'm now re-selling my model train stuff on Ebay although I'm still in the very early stages of setting up my shop there, my first items went this week.

https://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&amp ;amp ;item=120735507498

But eBay is a very different market to the Shapeways shop. In that I can keep my mark-up low - most things I have at around the 20% level.

But to sell on eBay there are lots of other costs - off the top of my head you have the monthly cost of running an eBay shop, the listing fee, the final value fee, the Paypal charges. Then you have to add the cost of postage and packing, the cost of packing material and if my previous Ebay experience is anything to go by about 1 in 20 of your sales is going to go missing in the post so you either pay a small fortune for postal insurance or take the hit yourself and price it into your items.

Added to which I'm in Europe and over half my customers (that I know about) are in the US so I have to pay Vat on things which those who buy direct do not - and I'm having to pay the stuff first and with my current financial situation I'm struggling to get enough to sell - I'm only managing thanks to a $500 loan from my girlfriend

So by my reckoning my eBay prices are going to have to be about twice what the are in my Shapeways shop. You could say I'm selling stuff too cheap there but 'd like to keep it that way to make this wonderful tool as accessible as is possible.

So what I'm doing is trying to add value the stuff I'm selling on eBay. I'm doing my stuff finished and painted or with other non-Shapeways parts added to make more complete models. Other stuff I'm buying in bulk off Shapeways in WSF, dying it a rust color and selling in small packets..

I hope this will differentiate the two markets and bring 3-d printing more into the accepted methods of making model train stuff as more people get to see what I have produced.

Tom

Hey Death By Numbers

First and foremost we are working on we are focusing on making sure that our site, service and community is robust. When Etsy started for the first period it was makers selling to each other till the point where it tipped over to primarily being makers selling to buyers. We need to manage growth while maintaining or shortening our production time and ensuring quality control.

As far as Amazon is concerned, for now, we would prefer to make Shapeways easier to use for buyers. We are currently seeing massive growth in buyer numbers as the shops are being populated by more and more cool stuff.

We are working on making the shopping experience more pleasurable and easy to use. You may notice that you can now add items to your cart from the galleries rather than going to the item page. In the past month we have seen a tripling traffic to the shopping cart!

I am not proposing that a Shapeways community member sets up a 'Shapeways Store' in Amazon, but like Nervous System that designers take the initiative to set something up for themselves, or perhaps create a collective to share the load and build presence.

Perhaps Nervous System will be the perfect case study to compel us to move forwards in this direction?

The Widget is already driving a considerable amount of traffic and sales from a few sites

teBee that is the problem, it actually takes your time to sell on any other site.

Shapeways is unique in that it is a very digital model, where Shapeways handles everything from financial transaction, fabrication to distribution...

Perhaps if instead of spending time and money on external sites energy could be focused on improving and promoting items already listed on Shapeways.
We see a definite correlation between detailed descriptions, high quality photographs and sales.
We also only feature on the home page and promote items that have these elements.

If we were to open a Shapeways shop on Etsy, Ebay, Amazon, wherever, we could only promote previously printed, tested and photographed models. Ideally, would also like for this to be to some degree community curated to ensure it is scalable over time, we do spend a lot of time looking at your designs, but there is so much cool stuff we can easily miss a gem...,
To prove this community curation we need to establish this, first by seeing your favorites shared with the widget, we can then turn these into galleries, and then rotate these to the front page, then look at how we can feature this externally..

In short, let's make Shapeways the place to come for awesome stuff, then we can take the show on the road....

I'm in total agreement there. I've had many years experience selling on eBay and Etsy as well as on a well known micro-stock photography site. When things get busy selling online it becomes a real pain in the pixel to manage all those emails, shipping, payments, posting, feedback, and, as has been mentioned "lost" packages. Not to mention that ideally you should have the item ready to ship as soon as it's sold - you can't expect a buyer to wait while you make it.

The micro-stock photography site I liken to Shapeways; MUCH easier to manage. You simply upload your item and sit back for the sales. Yes, you can and should market yourself, but apart from that when another company shoulders the burden of fulfilling the sale it becomes a much nicer experience AND you get to focus more energy on producing new items.

Glenn

I typed out a lengthy reply yesterday, but it's AWOL

Short version;

Props to teebee on his eBay adventure.

I think the way forward (as Duann mentions) is promoting Shapeways and the Shapeways community. Shapeways already have an excellent ecommerce model set up, why add in extra cost and time selling elswhere, when driving traffic to your Shapeways shop can be free?

Well I for one would have much preferred to only sell my stuff through the Shapeways Shop as that would leave me much more time for designing and playing with the things I've designed.

But.......
It's become fairly obvious to me that I'm not going to be making a living from it anytime soon, though I can probably make about 25%-33% of what I need from it.

I've tried most things short of advertising( which means spending money I haven't got) to drive traffic to it and the page views are staying stubbornly low, though I have got some big boosts to my traffic when it has been mentioned on some foreign forums.

So in an attempt to work out where I get the missing 75% of my income from I've been reviewing what people have been saying about 3-d printed stuff on the various forums In my specialty, trying to work out what is stopping them buying it.

Well the first is it's a new technique and is going to take some time to get accepted. So what are the barriers to getting it accepted? Well the noticeable ridging that on curved surfaces was one stumbling block, similarly the rough surface of WSF put many off. It's OK for us to say "it's early days things will improve" but then we can't wonder why Joe public puts off buying our stuff until later when it has improved.

Another thing is the problems some people have had has disillusioned them Where as we as creators may be happy to buy stuff to experiment on your average person would really prefer to spend their hard earned cash on something they know is going to work. One of my good customers had this problem which has never really been solved - OK probably because no one really knows the solution but it still doesn't help the customer experience.

So my thoughts were to provide ready finished items to shop people what could be done and help overcome some of these reasons people had for not buying our stiff.

But this means moving away from the Shapeways shop model. It means I have to buy the stuff from Shapeways, work on it to finish or part finish it, then sell it on somewhere else.