Ultimaker is now officially Designed in the Netherlands, Assembled in the USA.
Ultimaker has long been seen as one of the leading 3D printers in the market place. No matter what kind of 3D printing person you are, a professional, a hobbyist, you’ve probably heard of the machines produced in the Netherlands. They are takng the next steps to secure their place in the American market by opening up a location in the states for assembly of their printers.
We had a chance to speak with Sander Van Geelen, the Community Manager for Ultimaker.
Why Did Ultimaker decide to assemble printers in the US?
We learned very soon that our biggest market was in the Northern US and Europe. Obviously because we were stationed in Europe that was our main focus. Because of the demand for the Ultimaker and the young nature of the company it took a little while before we matured enough to make this step and expand.
The US market has proven to be very fruitful and embraced our open source nature. A few of the best designs and initiatives came from the US. We want to decrease shipping time and shipping costs, and at the same time improve our level of service under the supervision of our dedicated and talented community member Simon Oliver.
From the signals we have heard we know that there are a lot of people eager to get involved with Ultimaker but are hesitant because we were located overseas. Through this move
We want to answer those signals and empower our position on the US market.
How will this effect your US based customers?
The US customers will have access to our technical support in their own timezone and will be able to benefit from Simon’s professional level of support.
He can offer technical service just as we have been doing, and our US customers also have the option to have their machines serviced by the staff in the US.
The shipping costs and shipping time will decrease and the Ultimaker will be assembled with pure old fashioned US knowhow.
We will not only sell and ship Ultimaker from the US, but also spare parts and consumables.
When will the US location be operational?
We have already started shipping Ultimaker’s assembled in the US for a little while and we will continue to do so and increase the volume.
Simon has already been selecting a crew of capable people around him and they will join him in providing the US with this wonderful machine.
Any closing thoughts?
We are going to celebrate this step with some nice promotions and with every Ultimaker 2 will be a special surprise.
What it is, I guess we will just have to wait and see until we hear from the first customers!
If you are interested, keep an eye out for our social media channels.
This weekend at MakerCon Anna Kuziunas France talked with Eric Debruijn, C0o-Founder of Ultimaker. He spoke about the Open source aspects of the business and was happy to discuss the ramifications of their expansion to the states.
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