Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I am a designer for 3d printing. Recently together with my business partner we started a shop, MakerPoint, where we sell different type of 3d printers. The way I started with 3d printing was not the usual path.
I started studying mechanical engineering in Eindhoven, but for me technology was not the only part that interested me. Thus I went to study Industrial Design Engineering, which is partly technical and partly design. 3D printing is the ideal tool for products that benefit maximum from those two fields.
What would you consider your distinctive achievement?
Until now, it is opening this shop. I always work partly as designer, but for now this shop is what I am really proud of and at the same time it’s also our biggest challenge.
What are the qualities needed to be able to achieve this?
You need to have a very strong commitment and have a huge passion for what you are doing. Already starting up your own business is quite a demanding action, thus think about starting it in a completely new emerging growing market, with a lot of insecurities. It is like artists, is the work I am making good enough? Will they buy my art? This is also applicable to this field, where no one knows where it is going, whether the printers or printing technology that we have right now are good enough for the future.
What are you looking forward to?
To have more acceptance of the full use of this technology. I look forward to a consumer market that has more knowledge about this technology and it is going to use it in a right away. Where costumers determine the creation of a products that reflects their needs. This will create a huge demand for on demand manufacturing and make 3d technologies more common.
Which advice would you give to the other professional?
If they are interested in using this technology in their own product, because we say everyone is a maker. Start by making unique one of that kind product, with 3d printing you can create them in an affordable way. Do not focus on mass production unless you want to mass customize the result.
What are the challenges that we need to overcome to make ‘cultural entrepreneurship’ more accessible?
We need to overcome a lot of misunderstanding and misleading thoughts about entrepreneurship in itself.
Especially nowadays you see the line of entrepreneurship overlapping with the artistic field and vice versa. Now it’s much more intertwined, especially in my field, people that use 3d as production. Some use it for prototyping and production and others use 3d printing in order to create art pieces or both.
There is not one label anymore for these persons. It is much harder to tell, what you are going to invest your money in. But also for subsidies there is not one a specific field anymore , everything is merging together.
Thus, it’ s harder to say what you are investing in. It will be more and more about the idea and the person rather than a business model, strategy etc.
You don’t want to be labeled, but this label makes it easier to sell you product and what let others understand what they can expect from you.
