Formlabs announced a new 3D print service, Form Now.
This is, as far as I know, the first time the company has launched a print service for customers to directly access. Form Now’s tagline reads:
“From idea to part in less than a week. Order printed parts directly from Formlabs, delivered to your door.”
Formlabs CRO Nick Graham explains:
“With Form Now, we are taking accessibility to the next level. It is a low-friction, web-based print-on-demand service starting in the U.S. It will be a great way for customers to do one-off orders, try out new materials, and address spikes in demand.”
The service is seemingly in beta state, requiring users to apply to get on the wait list.
This is a good move by Formlabs, and one that’s been taken by several other 3D printer manufacturers. Many of the large players have associated print services, as they provide quite a few benefits:
Try it, you’ll like it: Some prospects are unsure of the value and quality of the manufacturer’s equipment, but with a print service, they can try it out without much cost or commitment. Over time, if they gradually increase their print requests, they will eventually get to the point where it makes sense to buy their own equipment.
Overflow for customers: Business can be bursty at times, and a Formlabs customer operating a large print farm might suddenly find themselves with an overflow of orders. Rather than turning away the business, they can instead use Form Now as a behind-the-scenes outsourcer to fill the capacity gap. This allows print farms to operate with fewer machines and still handle peak order periods.
Hands-on experience: Formlabs will operate the fleet of machines running Form Now, but this time with actual customer parts. This means they will gain significant knowledge of their own machines, how they operate, how they break, and how they are best fixed. This should over time allow them to make the next generation of equipment even better for customers — because they themselves are now a major customer.
Data: Formlabs will now see a stream of part requests coming from customers, and they will be able to detect trends in parts: what type of parts are being made these days? Formlabs will know this and be able to identify changes as they happen.
Additional revenue: Of course, Form Now will be run as a business, and that will provide the company with even more revenue.
Success area: Some of the most successful 3D print companies are actually print services (e.g. Proto Labs, Xometry, etc.). By launching Form Now, Formlabs puts a toe into that space in the market.
This is quite a good move by Formlabs.
Via LinkedIn
