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/