Last week I mentioned that I’ve been reviewing the 2014 Elite Dealer nominations and how many of those dealers, large and small, are making a move into Managed Network Services. This week, I have another observation to share and this is timely considering it follows up on last week’s recap of Airwolf 3D President Mark Mathews’ BTA East presentation. There aren’t a lot, but there are a few who are already offering 3D printers.
Based on that unscientific observation and the questions that Mathews elicited during his presentation, there seems to be more than a passing interest in the technology even if what Mathews says is true about it being a tough sell.
Out of the 56 2014 Elite Dealers that we’ll be formally announcing in the December issue of ENX, about a half dozen are selling 3D printers. The vendor of choice among this group is 3D Systems. The other players haven’t yet broken through, at least not among this year’s Elite. That’s probably good news for the other players because that means the office imaging dealer channel is currently far from saturated although one would imagine there will be some saturation happening as a result of the Konica Minolta partnership with 3D systems. It’s probably only a matter of time before other 3D printer vendors follow suit and partner with some of the other OEMs. Any guess as to which OEMs are going to partner with an existing 3D printer vendor?
Thanks for reading.
