Sculpteo, one of the original internet 3D printing service providers, has opened a gallery within Amazon’s jewellery section offering dozens of designs from some of their best studios.
Featuring designers like Nervous System,Monomer, Sweet Glucose Design, Dyvsign and Ricapuli, the pieces that are being sold on Amazon are unique, eye-catching and affordable. Of course it makes sense to use designs that will get as much attention as possible because it shows consumers unfamiliar with 3D printing exactly what the technology is capable of. These jewellery pieces will probably be the largest direct access that the concept of 3D printing has ever had into the mainstream retail market. A lot of people visit Amazon, and a lot of people buy jewellery from the site. The jewellery section on Amazon.com sells over 57,000 items directly from the site, and almost two million if you factor in third party sellers and affiliates.
The nations largest e-commerce retailer by design is rarely a trend-setter. When they do create trends it’s either by mistake, or when they are in complete control and don’t have to share the market with anyone else. They fuel existing trends, they don’t seem especially interested in creating them. Amazon’s business model is based entirely on selling everything that can be sold at better prices than anyone else with faster shipping than anyone else can manage. They’ve always taken the shotgun approach to business; shoot as many targets as you can with as little effort as possible. Offering literally millions of products because they believe in them or think each one of them will become massively profitable would be, at best, a naive business plan. But offering millions of products because they know that if you come to them for one thing, there is a very good chance that you will just stay on their website and purchase whatever else you need at the same time is a little less naive.
Amazon started selling 3D printing supplies last summer, it wasn’t a vote of confidence in the industry or anything, it was because the 3D printing industry had become a large enough business to warrant trying to get a share of the profits. When you sell items like a book on bombproofing your horse, a horrifying device that allows you to practice your circumcision skills, or a bottle opener shaped like a woodland creatures butt clearly you’re not just skimming the best products off the top. Of course they started selling 3D printing supplies, someone else was making money doing it and they thought that they could get in on it, that’s how Amazon works. But I don’t believe Amazon had any interest in 3D printing other than it was a trending topic that could increase web traffic. Even as recently as last May Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos showed a shocking lack of understanding of the potential of 3D printing.
Bezos may not have fully appreciated 3D printing in the past, but he’s not the CEO of one of the most successful retail companies on the planet because he isn’t capable of finding a way to make anything fit into his business model. I’d be surprised if Amazon wasn’t keeping an eye on the 3D printed jewellery options for sale, and if successful enough, I’d be really surprised if we didn’t see a system similar to Create Space for 3D printed products in the future.
Source: Sculpteo blog
