Staples begins offering in-store 3D printing services in US, starting in LA and NY
Staples Wants to Bring 3D Printing to the Masses — Staples has been selling 3D printers for about a year. Now it wants to begin selling access to them. — The office supply retailer began offering …
Context & Ripple Effects
This has been a slow burn for Staples: it first announced an in-store 3-D printing service back in November 2012, spent the following year selling desktop 3D printers off its shelves, and only now is actually putting the service live in two US markets. The gap between announce and launch says something about how unproven walk-up demand was.
The demand-side signal came from the service-bureau side — Shapeways crossed its one-millionth printed object in mid-2012 and raised more financing on the back of it, evidence that people will pay for prints without owning hardware. The story also travelled unusually wide for a two-city retail pilot, picked up by VentureBeat, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Electronista and Ubergizmo on the same day.
First-order effects
- Consumers and small businesses in Los Angeles and New York can now buy prints per job at Staples instead of buying a printer, turning the retailer's existing printer-sales relationship into a service revenue line.
Second-order effects
- Other big-box and shipping-retail chains face pressure to match the access model or concede the walk-in print market, while online bureaus like Shapeways suddenly compete with physical storefronts that offer immediacy and no shipping wait.
Third-order effects
- If the two-city pilot holds, retail floors become distributed manufacturing access points — the structural shift being that mainstream retailers sell output rather than equipment, which would reshape how consumer 3D printing companies reach buyers.
The trend: Consumer 3D printing is moving from device ownership toward paid access sold through established retail channels, with big-box pilots deciding how fast the shift reaches ordinary customers.