Selling wholesale

Hi all,
I've recently started pursuing selling some of my jewelry designs wholesale. Most of these designs I wouldn't sell directly through Shapeways; instead I'd order the 3D-printed components and clean them up and add components (earwires to earrings, cords to pendants, beads, etc.) before delivering.

It might be wishful thinking on my part, but if I have success selling wholesale I'll have to place rather larger orders for myself than I have done so far. Does Shapeways impose a maximum order size, above which the usual delivery times don't hold (or above which they won't sell at all)? Those of you who have placed large orders like this, what has your experience been?

On the other hand, is there ever a possibility of quantity discount for large orders of the same item? (Or do I just accomplish this myself, by putting multiple items in a single .stl when possible? I realize the same amount of printer time and touch labor goes into each piece no matter how many are ordered, but at some point I'd think there would be labor savings on the front end, when models are checked and arranged in the print volume.)

Those of you who do this sort of selling, what sort of pitfalls have you run into? Do you have any wisdom you'd care to pass on?

Thanks!
Matt

No Minimum Order, No Maximum Order.
I mean.. if you were to order 10,000 of a unit then they might need to have a talk with you about the $6.50 shipping, but any reasonable number of units and they've already factored that into their shipping costs.

As to the number of items in a single STL, there are a couple of factors to it.
First, you can only have one million triangles in each STL. Reasonably sized smooth curved objects are going to be say ~100,000 triangles per object. That means that you will only be able to get 10 of them into a single STL. If your objects are flat or angular, you obviously can put many more of them within that million triangle limit.

The real catch about loading a large number of objects in a STL is that Shapeways has computed their labor costs based on "most" of a file being a single object that has to be handled only once. If we as designers keep pushing that curve, loading 20-100 items in a STL that must each be handled independently then Shapeways will be forced to clamp down on "Parts per File" - at this time they aren't holding us to any limits, but we Designers need to be reasonable with them so that they aren't backed into a corner.

The best thing to do would be - if you have a large-ish number of items to put in a single STL, then either sprue the items together, put them in a bounding cage, or figure out some kind of way to keep the items held together so that they can be handled as a single part.

Like this: 50 barrels that are barely 2mm in diameter, 3mm tall, but one part for the cleaning/packing/shipping crew: (click image to go to model page)


I realize that jewelry may be a problem. You can't have floating parts in any of the metals.

And wouldn't that be a lovely problem to have! (Well, maybe not, if it means I have to assemble 10,000 of something too ...) I doubt that I'm really going to have any massive orders to place, but it is nice to know that there isn't a limit to worry about.

Yeah, most of what I would be concerned about are metal designs, so there's not much opportunity to add multiple parts unless I sprue them together. I already do something like that with a fine metal earring design that is meant to be separate parts, but doing it on a large scale or with steel is another matter.

That's a good reminder that pushing the limits of the rules can just invite the rules to be changed, though. It's something to keep in mind. I do appreciate that with all materials I can put a pair of earrings into a single file.

Thanks for the information!

Another 3D printing service offer a 'volume discount' of sorts for plastics, however you need to orient the parts and fill out the build volume footprint to achieve the maximum discount. If done correctly with sprues, Shapeways is still cheaper.

Paul