Why Has a Prime Mall Retail Space Been Replaced by a Bambu Lab 3D Printer?

During the past National Day holiday, Bambu Lab opened two brand stores in malls in one go, located in Shanghai and Beijing; its offline channels now cover more than 100 cities in China, with over 400 sales touchpoints.

In prominent spots in top-tier business districts of first- and second-tier cities, you may see rows of 3D printers and curious consumers gathered around them. If you visit during the holidays, quite a few parents and children have often already gathered before the doors open, waiting to go in and look around or sign up for hands-on classes.

These stores have brought a new format to shopping malls. Many children in the stores watch spools of filament being drawn out into fine strands and built up layer by layer into miniature buildings, toys, and small objects for the desk, and they sit there for thirty or forty minutes at a stretch.

"Many people might not believe it, but as a consumer electronics retail store, what's most 'explosive' is actually the hands-on classes for families and beginners," said Shuisong, head of offline retail at Bambu Lab. The stores' popularity exceeded his expectations; daily foot traffic at many stores is often counted in the thousands, and sometimes a single store sees ten or twenty thousand people come in and stay over a weekend. Staff attending to one user while three or four others crowd around is a common sight during busy seasons.

Store openings by consumer-grade 3D printer brands, with Bambu Lab as the representative, have become one of the most closely watched changes in offline retail over the past year. Many stores sit in the most prominent locations of high-end commercial landmarks, spots that over the past decade often belonged to luxury heavyweights, high-end beauty brands, and new carmaking forces. So how did this change come about?

Prime retail spots have changed hands

Bambu Lab, founded six years ago, is a major driver of putting consumer-grade 3D printers into offline spaces. About a year ago, Bambu Lab began its offline expansion, opening brand stores bearing the company's sign and also entering Sam's Club, Apple authorized resellers, JD.com stores, and the family entertainment venue Meland; among them, 262 Apple authorized stores now carry Bambu Lab 3D printers.

The first to invite Bambu Lab in was Shenzhen Bay MixC; if you went on a weekend shortly after opening, it was almost impossible to squeeze into that store. On opening day, many users who came to the store had traveled from other cities, some straight off the plane. Next came brand stores opening one after another in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and other places.

On October 1, as Shanghai's second offline store, Bambu Lab's store in Huangpu Xintiandi began welcoming customers. On the same day, Bambu Lab opened its first store in northern China at Beijing China World Mall, and since then the brand stores have covered all four of China's first-tier cities.

The space of Bambu Lab's Beijing China World flagship store previously belonged to Lotus sports cars; the standalone store in Hangzhou MixC sits next to Apple and Pop Mart. The very fact that a young 3D printing brand appears alongside these names says a lot.

As tech hardware companies gain prominence, shopping malls have changed how they keep score; in the past they looked at how much sales each square meter could generate and who could afford the highest per-visitor rate. Now, with the premiumization of smart hardware becoming a trend, cutting-edge tech and smart hardware brands can bring a unique sense of technology and buzz, and high-end malls are willing to bring in fresh blood.

As a result, the locations of these companies often become the most crowded spots in these malls. Over the past six months, the cumulative real in-store dweller foot traffic at Bambu Lab's opened brand stores has reached the million level, with monthly in-store foot traffic at a single store approaching the hundred-thousand level.

"How long does it take to print, what does it print with, is it safe, what's the precision, how is the motion control. The deeper you dig, the more questions novice users have. These questions are hard to present intuitively through short videos or product detail pages," Shuisong said. Online presentation tends to be two-dimensional, whereas users care about the moment they own a 3D printer and the ongoing experience afterward, which must be seen and experienced in physical space in a concrete way; this is the three-dimensional approach, "and it lets ordinary people truly understand 3D printing technology for the first time."

Designed with this original intent, what users see when they enter the store is more than machines. The wall sand table at Bambu Lab's Beijing China World store takes an overhead view of the Forbidden City as its design source, and the top of the printer display stand extracts the structure of the three-tiered roof of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. In the Shanghai Xintiandi store, the experiential feel has been strengthened, with all display walls designed around scenarios, simulating a study, a bedroom, and a living room.

Outside observers have a sharper perspective. Industry insider and AM Yidao founder Zhong Yihan found that 3D printing stores often have many usage scenario displays, with particularly exquisite furnishings.

"Previously, whether inside or outside the industry, 3D printing was seen as professional equipment or a tool, and the user profile was bound to be geeks, mostly male," Zhong Yihan said. But whether online or offline, the business has changed a lot recently. Since the start of this year, some female users and families with children around him have begun spontaneously sharing 3D printing on social media.

Zhong Yihan said that previously 3D printing could not be seen in any offline channel. Many people heard about 3D printing 10 years ago but had never seen the real thing. Now entering multiple high-end malls shows on the one hand that the products are already good enough, and on the other hand, for offline retail it is also a new format.

In Sam's Club, into Apple

Starting in the fourth quarter of last year, Bambu Lab's offline channel expansion gradually unfolded. After its first offline store landed at Shenzhen Bay MixC, Bambu Lab soon entered Sam's Club.

Du Ya, head of Bambu Lab's domestic key account channels, recalled that at the time the main consideration was to start with leading channels and work through the questions that need to be verified in offline retail scenarios: for example, who the users are, how products should be displayed, and whether users are willing to stop for them. At the same time, they hoped to set a frame of reference for subsequent channel expansion, making offline implementation more solid.

Feasibility was quickly verified. Among them, Sam's Club mainly targets families and parent-child users, and this channel brought some unexpected surprises.

Bambu Lab initially chose two products, the A1 and P2S, to enter Sam's Club, at the 2,000-yuan and 4,000-yuan price points respectively. Judging by Sam's Club's past best-selling digital products, entry-level products should be more popular, but according to Bambu Lab, the products at the 4,000-yuan price point were actually selling better. Family users showed enthusiasm for 3D printing beyond imagination.

At Apple authorized stores, 3D printing went through a process from initial trial to rapid expansion in a short period of time.

To verify the results, Bambu Lab initially placed products in 62 Apple authorized stores, mainly in second- and third-tier cities, including one store in Inner Mongolia. Sales data quickly exceeded expectations, and the Apple authorized stores also attracted new foot traffic through Bambu Lab. As a result, the second batch of store expansion was originally planned to start with 100 stores, but later 200 stores were brought on board all at once before National Day.

Through the Sam's Club and Apple channels, new customer groups kept pouring in. From Sam's Club's after-sales feedback, Du Ya found that users mostly reported basic usage issues, and 3D printing novice users made up the majority. The Sam's Club channel played a significant role in expanding the audience.

The customer group from Apple authorized stores, by contrast, is strongly tied to "technology." Many users had already learned about 3D printers before. Feedback from users here centers on scenarios that require hands-on ability, such as repair and modeling. Many users hope to hand-build models or generate more personalized models.

In Zhong Yihan's view, entering these two channels is more significant for the industry's development.

"These channels can help the industry conduct mass-market education, and they also have an endorsement effect," Zhong Yihan said. A very important task the 3D printing industry has undertaken over the past decade is market education. "Although the equipment is getting easier and easier to use, even today, a large part of the industry's energy is still devoted to market education."

He said that in the past everyone focused on comparing specifications when looking at 3D printing, but after Bambu Lab entered Apple stores, Sam's Club, and meland, people subconsciously began to feel that it was more like scenario-based consumption. This subtle shaping of consumption and channels is crucial, and the entire 3D printing industry will benefit from this endorsement, user education, and the shift in awareness toward scenario-based consumption.

"Users' imagination exceeds ours"

Data shows that 90% of Bambu Lab users are still printing one year after purchase. Offline channels have also brought more tension and imagination to the 3D printing user ecosystem.

Shui Song saw more unexpected things offline: users have already made 3D printing part of their lives.

"Users' imagination exceeds ours. 'Using 3D printing to do what you want to do' is rooted in everyone's way of thinking," he said with emotion. At a store, a child shared that when he wanted to leave a book on the desk, his first reaction was not "I need a desktop bookshelf" and then going to an e-commerce platform to look for one, but "print one out" and model it himself. It is not just for things that easily come to mind, such as aircraft carriers, figurines, armor, and chain toys.

He also found that displays and experiences in offline stores shortened the path for users from interest to purchase. At the end of October, Bambu Lab launched the consumer-grade CO2 laser cutter R1. CO2 laser cutting is relatively niche in China, has a high barrier to entry, and is a relatively professional product. The team ultimately decided to first put it into the Shenzhen Bay MixC store as a pilot.

Unexpectedly, after offline users tried it, a relatively large number of intended orders were generated. Most of them were even new users of this category. This shows that even for relatively professional products, once there is a suitable touchpoint, customer groups that have a favorable impression of the brand and an interest in creation may generate demand, even if these users had never heard of the relevant products before.

Enhancing user interaction and experience remains the focus of the next step. Shui Song said that Bambu Lab hopes to make stores more like a platform, so that more people can first see, then try, then communicate with others, and gradually connect it with their own lives. Next, some displays of dynamic objects will also be designed, and the stores will show more room for imagination.

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