Why old-school 3D printer resellers are doomed to fail

AM Survivor #26

Everyone wants to sell Bambu Lab 3D printers. Everyone wants to become a reseller. But not everyone should. And the Bambu Lab brand has nothing to do with it…

Today’s 3D printing market is simply completely different from what it was just a few years ago. Today, economies of scale are what matter.

During last week’s Formnext trade show in Frankfurt am Main, I met with several dozen reseller candidates from a dozen Central European countries. Apart from literally a few, the vast majority were small companies with only a few employees. Each of them hoped to establish contact and cooperation - and, implicitly, to transform their business and take it to a much higher level thanks to Bambu Lab.

Unfortunately, talking to me was like a bucket of cold water poured over a head full of dreams.

And again - this wasn’t about Bambu Lab. It was about their approach to running an AM business, which was still based on the same philosophy as years ago.

Back in the day - when Ultimaker, Raise3D, Zortrax or BCN3D dominated the market - a business built around selling desktop 3D printers was simple. Maybe not super profitable, but simple.

3D printers cost 2000-3000-5000 EUR. Sales commissions were 20-30%. Which meant that the profit from selling a lower-priced 3D printer was at minimum 400 EUR. A company sold 15-25 units per month, added 100–200 spools of filament priced 20-30 EUR each, occasionally ran 2–3 training sessions at 500-1000 EUR. Add in some spare parts, paid 3D printer servicing, some half-capacity 3D printing services and… life was good!

With this model, a 3-4-person company could easily generate even 10,000 EUR of gross profit from sales, which was enough for modest but solid salaries.

When cheap 3D printers from brands like XYZPrinting, Creality3D or Anet began to appear on the market, nobody took them seriously. Their quality was terrible - both in terms of machine reliability and print quality.

Even when Creality3D eventually started to gain a dominant market position, it was still the domain of hobbyists and amateurs. No reseller company treated it seriously - and if they added it to their portfolio, it was only as a curiosity or experiment. An experiment that usually ended in failure because the margins on those printers were tiny and customers extremely demanding.

And then came 2022, when the Bambu Lab X1 hit the market, followed by the P1P in early 2023. And everything turned upside down.

Suddenly it turned out that a 3D printer costing less than 1000 EUR was better, faster, more efficient, and easier to use than equipment costing 2-3-5 times more!

Worse yet, customers quickly realized this and started buying them en masse. Some directly from Bambu Lab’s store, others through a rapidly growing reseller network.

This expanding reseller network consisted of two types of companies: the old ones, which added Bambu Lab alongside Ultimaker and Raise3D (and often also Formlabs or Phrozen), and completely new ones focused on mass sales, for which Bambu Lab was just another product next to microcontrollers, Arduino boards, or other hobbyist electronics.

The first type of companies sold Bambu Lab printers the same way they sold all other 3D printers - via email, through customer meetings, trade shows, and conferences.

The second type had perfectly digitalized e-commerce channels, where customer contact was reduced to a minimum.

The first spent the usual 3-4 weeks to sell one 3D printer. The second sold 300-400 printers in 3-4 weeks.

The first group also sold more over time, but earned less and less… Bambu Lab (and the wave of clones from Creality, Elegoo, and Anycubic that followed) were inexpensive and had much lower margins - both percentage-wise and in absolute numbers. Suddenly, selling 15–25 printers a month no longer covered the salary of even one employee! In fact - to cover the company’s existing costs, they would need to sell 50-70 printers per month!

Meanwhile, the old-type companies were not prepared for this. Their business model, sales procedures, and infrastructure simply didn’t allow it. Their warehouse could store maybe 20 boxes at most.

And regardless of all that - no one in those companies had any idea how to sell 50 or 100 printers a month!

Over time, the market split. Large trading companies - with excellent IT systems, large warehouses, and strong online presence - took the lead. Sales grew from hundreds to thousands of units per month. Today, selling 100 printers a month is not an achievement - it’s essentially the entry level.

A company selling below 100 or even 50 printers a month is not a sustainable business. It is fighting for survival. It’s starving.

What we’re witnessing is the economy of scale. To make real money in 3D printing today, you need to operate with very large volumes - and very large capital.

You need the right infrastructure - both IT and physical (a warehouse of at least a few hundred square meters), the right team, well-developed sales channels (with other products), and above all, a vision for growth and scalability - from 100 to 1000 printers per month.

A two- or three-person company simply doesn’t make sense in today’s market. It’s fine for a consulting office, but not for a trading company.

This is why my conversations at Formnext went the way they did. It wasn’t about rejecting new partners for the reseller network. These companies just weren’t ready.

In a way, I was saving them from inevitable failure...