Stratasys Launches iAM Marketplace

Stratasys has released the iAM Marketplace. The company aims for this to be a marketplace for polymer 3D printing machines and materials. The company hopes to make it easier to get quotes and buy both materials and machines. The platform uses a shop operated by Stratasys’ subsidiary iSQUARED and adds to it Nexa3D and Forward AM products. The site includes all Stratasys-branded materials but also wants to sell materials by others.

Stratasys CEO Yoav Zeif said,

“The launch of iAM Marketplace is a bold step forward in our materials strategy, expanding our total addressable market and creating operational efficiencies by positioning us to serve the entire additive manufacturing industry. It provides all manufacturers with a broad portfolio of quality certified materials, machines and expertise which makes it easy to access exactly what they need from a reliable partner, whether they’re focused on cost, performance, or use case-specific solutions.”

At the moment, the printers and materials on the platform are all Stratasys systems. You use the site to buy Ultem filament, though, as well as the Forward AM filaments. You can purchase UltraFuse PLA and ABS spools for open systems. The site also sells refills for Stratasys systems, as iSQUARED used to. Beyond Stratasys products, the marketplace lists Henkel, as well as Stratasys-owned SOMOS and Forward AM resins. The site also allows you to buy Certified Pre-Owned 3D printers, including the F120 or the Dimension SST1220ES. The SST was released in 2008, by the way. You can also buy a Dimension Elite and the SST 1200. You can also order custom materials or have the lab perform testing.

On the one hand, does this mean that Stratasys is encroaching on resellers? Selling 3D printers and materials online has traditionally been the purview of Stratasys resellers. These companies are tied to Stratasys and, in some cases, may be prohibited from selling other machines. I wouldn’t be happy with this if I were a reseller. It looks like Stratasys is competing with me for the consumables that are key to my recurring revenue. Does this point to a rift between Stratasys and its resellers?

Or is this just an attempt to showcase the Stratasys materials, printers, and those of its competitors? Is this just a vision of a more open ecosystem brought to life in a website? I’m a bit confused by it all, to be honest. At the same time, the pricing on the website does expose some key issues. First off, not all the pricing is public, and you have to ask for a quote, contrary to many reseller and online sales sites, where all pricing is transparent.

750 grammes of ABS from Ultrafuse costs €28 ($34), while a Stratasys refill for 922CM³ of ABS X-Treme costs €185 (and $618!). Made in the Netherlands, 3D4Makers ABS, for example, costs €20. And that is some of the highest quality ABS available. The refill price is comparatively extremely high, while the open price is significantly higher than a premium alternative. It’s unclear, therefore, if the platform can really deliver on competitive pricing going forward. Can Stratasys compete with RS Components, Amazon, and resellers such as Printed Solid and Dynamism? Does Stratasys aim to take the battle to the people it has traditionally relied upon as a channel? Does it want to compete with GoEngineer & Purple Platypus? Or does it hope to keep selling through companies while selling some products directly in tandem? Either way, I’m not sure here what iAM is or who it is for.

In high school, they made us read Wuthering Heights. I dreaded beginning the book, which seemed altogether too frock and crock to me initially. I ended up liking it much more than expected. There was something forlornly romantic and entertaining there, but also some surprising depth. One quote that I managed to salvage from the book is, “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” I saw this as a major red flag at the time. The heroine, Catherine, suddenly swerved irrationally. If you think that you may disappear if your partner does, then as a person or as a relationship, that is a red flag. However, in business, if you don’t think that you’ll disappear if your partner does, this is also a red flag.