When people are evaluating full body 3D scanners for starting 3D figurine businesses they often overlook the time cost for setting up their full body 3D scanner, managing 3D scan files and keeping track of which scans belong to which customers.  This is not a problem when you only scan a few people but, for successful scanning  businesses that scan hundreds to thousands of people, you better have a scan solution that takes this into consideration.

Below is a table comparing the upfront, monthly and time costs for operating a 3D avatar business: 

One of the top questions we get from prospective customers looking to get into the 3D printing business to sell 3D printed portraits is how to price their products to ensure they run a profitable 3D printing business. It’s a tricky question since the answer is going to vary based on your local market, business model and who your core customers are. In this post we’re going to do our best to breakdown all of the main factors you need to consider when setting up your business and setting retail prices to ensure profitability. Here is what we’ll go over:

Watch the video below to learn more about the benefits of the Twinstant Mobile full body 3D scanning solution for 3D printed figurines, 3D portraits, 3D selfies, AR and VR.

The Consumer Electronics Show is the world's largest technology show each year and this year we joined forces with Kodak year to bring a full body 3D scanner to the show to 3D scan people for 3D printed figurines.  We received a spectacular response at the event as you can see in the pictures and case study below.

When people put together their business plans for setting up a 3D portrait business they will usually decide to either locate in a studio, setup in a mall, or take their full body 3D scanner to events. In this post we are going to focus on setting up in a mall and what you can do to give yourself the highest chance of success.

Starting a 3D figurine business can be really difficult especially when most customers have never heard of the concept. You will want to make sure you have a full body 3D scanner that produces good quality 3D portraits, have a reliable way to handle 3D printing fulfillment of the 3D figurines and a well though out business strategy. You can find more information about the first two in other sections of this blog. After surveying many different 3D portrait businesses, here is what they ranked as most important things to focus on:

Like any business, a 3D selfie business can be hard to get off the ground without the proper marketing. Using traditional marketing tactics such as billboards or radio ads can prove especially costly for a new business. As a new or small business your margin for error is small so it's paramount to focus on activities that are low cost, but have high ROI. More importantly, you want to focus your attention on activities that give you a high chance of getting you in front of your target customer. At Twindom we've had the privilege of seeing what's worked well and not so well for our customers operating 3D selfie businesses with their full body 3D scanner. 

Update: This post was originally published with 3 bullet points. We've since expanded it to 5 as we've learned more ideas on what types of marketing work for a 3D selfie business.

Here are the top 5:

When our founders first started building full body 3D scanners, it was certainly with 3D portraiture in mind. But thanks to the hundreds of emails and phone conversations with passionate members of the 3D printing community at large, we’ve discovered several unconventional use cases for the Twindom platform that we are excited to explore and develop further. Find a roundup of our top three unconventional full body 3D scanning use cases below: 

Imagine a company printing 211 million copies of a product catalog. That is more than 20 times the population of Sweden.What would happen if you added augmented reality to the mix? IKEA, a Swedish home furniture company, valued for offering good design and functionality at affordable prices, just started utilizing this strategy. They recently launched their augmented reality shopping app, called IKEA Place, which can overlay 3D models of furniture onto floors and other surfaces in a customer’s house in real time. Customers have been extremely excited because it has allowed them a sneak peek into how furniture would look in their house before committing to a purchase.