Stratasys owned MakerBot, a leading producer of consumer and prosumer targeted FDM 3D Printers, can already boast a high presence in brick and mortar retailers. Its machines are on sale in its own three stores (in New York, Boston and Greenwich, CT) and in Microsoft US retail stores. Now they will also be available in 25 Micro Center stores across the eastern United States.
For those of us living outside the States, Micro Centers are all but “micro”. Born from a small store in Columbus, Ohio, the retail chain currently has 23 locations (soon to be 25) and is a major retailer of top technology brands to a wide audience of first adopters. Apparently it also offers excellent customer service, as it was repeatedly voted the “Best Place to Buy Computers” by the readers of an (unspecified) top consumer magazine, according to Makerbot.
Makerbot and Stratasys probably figured these were sufficient credentials to make Micro Center the ideal place to step up their offensive toward the mass market, figuring that the best possible way to get someone who does not yet know what a 3D printer is to buy a 3D printer is by showing him or her what it can do. In person, in the store, through careful customer assistance. It is either that, or the company just loves the word “Micro” as it recently partnered with giant tech distributor Ingram Micro.
All jokes aside, Micro Center will sell the entire Makerbot line up, which is starting to get quite hefty and currently includes the MakerBot 2, MakerBot 2X and MakerBot Digitizer 3D Scanner. The new machines, presented at CES, will arrive in spring and that means that soon enough the new Makerbot Replicator Desktop, the Makerbot Replicator Mini and the MakerBot Replicator Z18 will also be available to just pick up and carry home.
Micro Center’s CEO Richard Mershad went on record saying the chain is experiencing “significant demand for 3D printing and scanning capability” and has promised all sales associates will be “fully versed in the capabilities and features of MakerBot technology,” which might make theirs one of the most coveted jobs in the retail sector.
For MakerBot – and by extension for the entire 3D printing industry’s consumer ambitions – it will be a good testing ground to understand whether the consumer mass market is ready to embrace this technology. Are there many doubters left out there?
