Earlier this week Amazon announced its latest foyer into the 3D Printing space – an on-demand store where users can design, order & deliver 3D Printed objects. Here in France, international 3D Printing service Sculpteo has already jumped on board the service (their services here) in order to power 3D printed objects and suggest some neat designs.
Earlier this year, I wrote what can best be described as a slightly critical piece about Sculpteo – a piece which CEO Clement Moreau took in stride when we spoke last month at the France Digitale Day event – stating that the company was switching away from being an end-to-end solution, and focusing on being a 3D Printing operations service, an evolution that I equated to Netvibes move away from being a B2C solution to becoming a B2B/white-label analytics dashboard.
While I won’t say that I’ve changed my current sentiment around the company, one thing is sure: they are making this move fully, and not wavering one bit. Where there is 3D Printing, they are integrating and making their services available. In this respect, there may still be an opportunity for them to grow with the growth of the 3D Printing space – it just may not be the same size of growth, or the same relationship with the end-user that they thought they would have. In a simliar move, Sculpteo announced integration with Adobe’s Creative Cloud for Photoshop, a move which Sketchfab also made earlier this year. They have also worked with Autodesk, eBay, Dassault Systèmes, LaPoste & Orange.