Starting a Business

Dear Shapeways Community,

I'm starting a business. My ultimate goal is to have a physical location store that sells a variety of 3d printers, 3d scanners, and 3d printed merchandise in a place customers can touch, see working, ask questions and take home products with out paying and waiting for shipping. That being said I'm starting small, first attending cons, then getting a Kiosk in a mall, then eventually a full store.

Already Acuity Designs wants us to re-sell their Helix printer and I'm in talks with 2 other companies. This venture has also already had a news story written about it by a 3d printing news group. Along with Ben Malouf I even have artist lined up waiting for me to sell for them. So why do I need your help?

Well to be completely honest it's all about the start up capitol. I've looked into getting a business credit card but it's very risky, and I looked into getting an investor but doing that means I have to have a partner and that doesn't sound good ether. I did try crowd funding but that didn't work out, not sure if it was timing or just not enough people knew about it. So I've set up a donate button on my website.

If you donate I'll place your name (or company name if you prefer) on my website thanking you and I'll add your products (if you have any) to my catalog. (except for copyrighted stuff, kinda want to stay away from that). If you don't have any 3d printable products I'll give you an employee discount for a year. Essentially the same things I was offering on my crowd funding campaign.

Please check out my website and let me know what you think. I have many plans for the future and I can't wait for them to get started.

Thank You Shapeways Community,
Dusty Santos
http://dustysantos.wix.com/3dprintit

UPDATE:

I talked to an interested investor with a lot of money yesterday and it went really well. If everything continues to go well I won't have to ask for donations at all. I will need merchandise though. Contact me and I'll give you a contract that says I can sell your models and I have to give you money every time it sells. I'm looking forward to hearing from you all!

Can't you simply purchase select product directly from Shapeways and then retail those items at your store?

One certainly could - but depending on the artistic value of the product and the temper of the unsuspecting designer one might face an injuction or cease-and-desist order pretty soon.
So thanks to dustysantos for doing it correctly, and good luck with your business.

Ummmmm no. That would be incredibly expensive. If I did that I would have to pay shapeway's cut, and artist cut, and shipping. Instead of only paying the artist. My overhead would be so much that nobody would buy anything from my cart.

Not only that but one of the major draws to my store will be the ability to print anything for the customer that day, in any color the customer wants. If I tell the customer that they will have to wait a week or more for the product to arrive I'll be no different than all the other retail vendors out there.

I also want to have a catalog so the customer can order what ever they want. If I get a customer that likes a certain piece of art and I go online and the artist has taken it down, I'm screwed.

So to answer your question, no it wouldn't work.

If any of you are unsure about letting me print your files, don't. I'll have a contract that insures I won't give your work away and that I must pay you if your product gets sold.

Thank You! That's a good point also!

So you are actually trying to build a local competitor to shapeways, not a shop that sells shapeways-printed models ? Not sure how
shapeways "feels" about your advertising it here then. Also, you will probably have considered that not all models are equally well
printable with different techniques and materials, printing "on demand" may take hours and your pricing may end up much more like
that of "traditional" rapid prototyping businesses.

I'm not fully versed in the areas of intellectual property, but it seems to me that once a third party purchases something from Shapeways that they would be free to resell those items in any way they chose, for any amount. The designer already got their cut and if they feel cheated they could simply raise their royalty fee to reduce third party competition. How would reselling items be any different than reselling old albums, CD's, DVD's, etc at a second hand store?

True that I may not be able to print everything on this site right away but that doesn't stop me from starting the business. I already have 3 companies ether on board or in talks and that's before I even open the door. With that going from me plus metal printers coming out next year I'lll get the infrastructure to print anything and everything. You got to start somewhere and I'm starting with the amazing artist here.

As far as shapeways is concerned, I'm starting with a little kiosk in a mall. My online presence is and will be nothing compared to shapeways. I believe they will always be king in that regard. So why wouldn't I go to where the best artist are? I appreciate you asking the hard questions, it keeps me on my toes.

I'm reminded of the old Mold-A-Rama machines still functioning at many museums and zoos. I wonder what happened to my bust of Lincoln "printed" at the Museum of Science and Industry in the last century.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKkQfbt4G7g

I remember those. I remember they could draw a big crowd. Imagine how big a crowd a running 3d printer could make. Get's me excited.

Believe me, the crowd walks away when the realize it takes 6 hours to print a two-inch figurine.
At first, the swishing of the printhead back and forth is fun to watch, but that fades fast.

Fine with me, as long as they stay long enough to buy something.

Listen, I understand that printers themselves won't fly off the shelves. Most of my sales will be the 3d printable merchandise, at first. The idea is to already be establish when the metal printers come out, and when the price of printers goes down. Since I'll already be running I will be ahead of the competition. The fact that it takes 6 hours to print will make customers appreciate my wares more and they will pay a little more for said object.

Thanks for bringing it up!

Which geographic location are you planning on opening this store in?

You might want to have enough inventory on hand of previously printed items and just show the printers running as an attraction. Very few people will hang around these days or come back for custom/personalized prints on the same day. Attention spans are now down to fractions of a minute at best, particularly for impulse purchases. Maybe if they show up with a file to be printed because they need it now they will show up when the part is ready and pick it up. And unless you're using large scale machines that can print multiple items at a time the lead times get worse and worse. You'll probably need to ship items to the customers, and you'll need to charge in-store pick-up people before they get their parts to protect against the no-shows.

Not a bad idea overall but much more practical when the Star Trek grade replicators can pop out things in a few minutes. Maybe you can make small metal charms and bobbles in under an hour or two (when those machines are available)? And what happens when a print batch has a complete melt down? You probably want a lot of imagery and museum style demonstration objects that make the 3D printing process understandable and show how cool it is. You need to convince people that $20 spent at a kiosk is somehow just as valuable as $10 spent at Hobby Lobby on a jewelry bobble that may have additional post-processing decoration such as painting, patina, chains, etc.

Last year I saw a kiosk at the mall that made 3D head images to make custom ornaments and stuff. They didn't do real 3D printing but instead took a specialized photo or two or three and rammed them into molds to shape them. The poor guy at the kiosk was very lonely. I don't see general 3D printing having a bigger hook to attract people. Perhaps done in conjunction with an established mall jewelry store it would work better, but then there's nothing preventing jewelry stores from quickly adding 3D printing as an in-store option on their own. Not to sound like a Debbie Downer but I'd recommend being very careful. Maybe you could get on Shark Tank and see what they have to say about this concept.

I agree it does take a while to print things, longer than most would like to wait. I'll probably have to have multiple printers just to keep up with the inventory. That's a good point about the shipping. I didn't think about that but it's definitely do-able.

It's funny you should mention working with a jewelry store. My investor's family owns several jewelry stores. I'm sure if it means money he would put my jewelry stores jewelry in those stores. Plus his brother goes to lots of stores and gets their stuff sold in them so I have some connections in that regard if it all works out with him.

Sorry, just realized I didn't answer you. I plan to open in the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua NH. It's right on the border of Massachusetts and has been recently renovated. It's always busy.

This just in, I got in contact with the client at http://www.maker6.com/browse/products and they are on board with me selling all of there client's products. I'm so excited!

Wix is good, I love Wix! However, for business stuff a better option is Yola. They are very similar to Wix in the way their WYSIWYG editor works, but not heavily into flash and more robust for ecommerces endeavors. Also, when you create a free site, their ad linking back to their sight is less invasive than Wix. Wix is best for artists who want to make a really cool flash based portfolio, for example.

Thanks I'll check them out. I do need a good eCommerce site.