Historical & Pivotal Dell Transaction Actually Never Occurred with Zortrax

[Brian_Krassenstein]

The global reputation of Polish 3D printer manufacturer Zortrax rests on one large transaction with American computer giant Dell, a transaction that never occurred. The whole thing began about two years back, when an unknown 3D printer startup out of Poland suddenly became an international player with a massive bit of news: PC manufacturer Dell had placed an order for 5,000 of their desktop 3D printers. Zortrax seemed ordinary from the start, just a small business with yet another desktop 3D printer on Kickstarter. After the news about Dell, however, it was natural to wonder what made their relatively simple M200 3D printer so special. Looking at the company’s publicly disclosed sales numbers, however, things just don’t seem to add up. In 2015, Zortrax reported selling 5,500 M200 3D printers with revenues of PLN37.6M. However, in 2014, the year in which Zortrax claimed to have sold 5,000 printers to Dell, revenues were only PLN12M, less than one-third that the following year. During this time, Zortrax printers and filaments remained at the same price. If a similar number of units were sold each year, how, then, could their revenue have increased so much from 2014 to 2015? On the other hand, if the Dell deal is removed from the equation and 5,000 3D printers were not sold in 2014, the numbers make sense. Read more at 3DPrint.com:
https://3dprint.com/144633/zortrax-deal-never-happened/

[Eddie]

Very interesting article. I hope we see a response from Zortrax.

[curious aardvark]

news to me.

never heard of the deal before. zortrax make decent printers, always figured that's why people bought them :-)

To be fair, had I heard of the dell deal I would have thought considerably less of zortrax.

Dell make and licence the cheapest and nastiest kit on the planet. When they were rebadging lexmark printers as dell - they were truly awful. All their computer kit is custom made to be cheaper and less functional than of the shelf parts. This also makes repairing dell machines a real pita.
So if I believed dell were buying zortrax machines - I'd have automatically assumed the printers were cheap, nasty and totally unreliably, like dell kit usually is :-)

I figure this news can only be good for zortrax.
Maybe dell looked at a printer and realised they were just too well made to take a dell badge or be used in a dell office and cancelled the deal.

[classone]

Very interesting article. We wait in suspense to see what happens haha

[SarahA]

Zortrax has responded:

“In late 2013 and early 2014, prior to the commercial launch of our debut 3D printer, strong interest in the product provided a good outlook for our entry into the 3D printing sector. A potential contract with the Asian division of Dell, noted in the article, was communicated through various marketing channels, due to a mutual good faith effort to complete the deal. Due to confidentiality of the agreement, we are not able to reveal additional details of the contract, other than to say that it could not be completed on mutually acceptable terms and conditions by both parties.
We want to clearly communicate that information related to this opportunity was, and has been clearly communicated to prospective investors. As the article noted, Zortrax discontinued communication efforts regarding the potential contract in our marketing communications, addresses to the market, and conversations with investors due to its unsuccessful conclusion.
We would like to note that financial numbers quoted in the article do clearly indicate the usage of real numbers. Potential profits from unrealized contracts are not reported and were not formally included for the basis of establishing the valuation of the company.
Since 2011, Zortrax has focused efforts on providing the highest quality products and services in the field of 3D printing technology. This effort has been validated by, among other things, numerous honors and awards, and constant company growth creating new jobs, and the further development of innovative products and services.”