A recent report by business consultancy firm AT Kearney has put the spotlight firmly on the development of 3D printing, and specifically as it relates to printing jewelry. The global value of 3D printing was estimated at $4.5 billion in recent years. But the publication of the new study by AT Kearney predicts that the market is set to triple in value over the next couple of years to $17.2 billion by 2020, with jewelry playing a large part aided by a wave of improving hardware and technology.
The AT Kearney study, entitled ‘3D Printing: A Manufacturing Revolution’, gives an overview of where the technology stands in today and what it is expected to do over the next five to seven years. According to the study, the consultancy company predicts the market for hardware, supplies and services is set to greatly expand. The current market is valued at approximately $4.5 billion, in which the aerospace (including the defense sector) industry accounts for 18 percent similar to the value of the industrial (including construction) sector (also around 18%).The medical sector currently accounts for about 16 percent of the market, while the automotive and jewelry sectors both have about a 12 percent market share. Energy accounts for 5 percent, with the remaining 20 percent being covered by miscellaneous sectors – including home users.
AT Kearney is expecting the market to grow with a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 25 percent to reach $17.2 billion by 2020. Remarkably, a huge portion of that growth is attributed to jewelry, which they project to grow by between 30 to 35 percent.
Mass customization is a key point which the report recognizes as appealing to a large group of customers, while new capabilities enable the mass production of goods without high-fixed capital costs. Coupled with the decrease of production time and the fact that 3D printers are efficient and can be placed in every store, they predict that the nature of production itself is set to change.
"Digital fabrication will allow individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand, wherever and whenever they need them. The revolution is not additive versus subtractive manufacturing; it is the ability to turn data into things and things into data," the report states.
But 3D printing is not without its challenges. In particular, there is the hardware issue. The researchers feel that 3D printing technology is set to improve drastically over the next decade, though that is a necessity for this growth as well. "Hardware could be five to seven years away from achieving the technical and cost requirements needed to go beyond its currently prototyping role into supporting production across broad, multi-material categories," according to the study. And in the years after that, 3D printed production of cars, Apple watches and more should also become possible, they speculate.
The technology of 3D-printers has come a long way since they were first developed in the 1980s, especially in recent years. 3D printing includes everything from 3D-printed art, to 3D-printed firearms, and even 3D-printed prosthetics.
There are now 3D-printed jewelry shops, such as WonderLuk, an online platform that helps fashion and jewelry designers, car designers, and even architects, to create and sell unique 3D-printed accessory collections.
The process not only gives creative people greater freedom to sculpt geometrically complex forms, but helps them to be less wasteful, and to get their lines on the market very quickly.
“We are an umbrella brand that gives young, independent, talented designers a platform to showcase their designs,” explains Andre Schober who founded the WonderLuk website with business partner Roberta Lucca in 2013. “We don’t have a very restrictive creative direction, it’s very open in fact. The designs just have to be original, wearable; and printable.”
Lucca said that she was inspired to start the company after learning how wasteful mainstream fashion brands can be. “The whole fashion chain has been quite wasteful,” she explains. “Half of all the garments and accessories that you see in stores will end up in landfills.
“At WonderLuk, we create jewelry on demand, so you never have the situation where we have lot of products going in the bin because the season has passed and nobody bought them.”
Customization is also key to reducing negative environmental impact, Lucca adds. “Once you go to the website and you put your initials on a product, or change the material, or alter the shape a little bit, it becomes yours,” says Lucca. “3D-printing is democratizing customization to the masses.”
“Our story began a while ago, when I got a 3D printer believing it would transform my relationship with fashion. I envisioned myself creating incredible fashion accessories and shoes, and having them ready to wear within a few hours. But it all turned out to be somewhat disappointing. The world of co-creation I imagined would unfold was replaced by hours of fiddling with tech to print a simple bracelet. The few 3D communities around were built for and by geeky men, not women like me; and they didn’t have much to do with fashion.
Design and ‘the new’ are all over my life. I couldn’t stop thinking how to make it better. WonderLuk is a destination for design and fashion lovers who are risk takers, who are in control of their lives, arts, families or businesses.
They want to be treated as individuals, want to stand out, not blend in. They enjoy things that are made exclusively for them, in the color, material and size they want, and not what everybody else wants.”
The very nature of the process has opened new doors of creativity for designers, says Schober. “The materials that we work with, they are very versatile; nylon is a plastic that allows us to depending on the design to be very flexible or very solid and sturdy,” he explains.
“It also allows designers to create geometries and shapes that would not have been possible before; a structure in a structure, interwoven strings, or cross sections. The same is true for metal 3D-printing.”
WonderLuk allows designers to sell their products far more swiftly too. “We’re probably twice as fast as fast fashion,” says Lucca.
“In the fashion world it would take anything between three months and six months from the moment that something is conceived as a new collection up to the point it’s out in the stores, for us it’s anything from between two to eight weeks.”
The company currently receives about 100 applications a month, of which just five or six are selected, but designers don’t have to be 3D-literate.
“They design the pieces and we support them with our in-house design team,” explains Schober. “Then we sample the pieces to ensure that wear, fit, durability are all perfect, and when that is done, we do all the marketing wrap and put on the website. “The great benefit for designers is they can focus on what they do best, which is to create.”
Although 3D-printing is more expensive that traditional manufacturing methods, this streamlined business model also results in financial gain, says Lucca.
“If a designer wants to create a pair of earrings and sell to a high street store, they would need to manufacture a minimum order, and the minimum quantities are usually around a thousand.
“In our case, we don’t need to invest anything up front, we can create just one pair of earrings. In time, this becomes much more cost effective for everyone in the chain.
“You no longer need to be dependent on these very established high street stores picking you out of many thousands. You can partner with startup like ours and explore new ways to create products and to market those products to people.”
By our Israel correspondent Abraham Dayan
