3D Printed Eyewear, not ready for prime-time :(

Benoit Valin
11 min readOct 22, 2017

Those who know me, know that I have an idea a minute and a huge appetite for half-baked ideas, the burned frozen fish stick kind of idea.

For the last few years I’ve been operating under an open door innovation policy, where every idea deserves my attention, decent ideas deserves a pitch-deck, a business plan and a week of my time, and good ideas get a few months and a few coins to get them off the ground.

My innovation and portfolio development process is, to be honest, a bit puzzling for some and dizzying for others… but seems to work for me as it syncs up with my thought process and satisfies my desire to get my hands dirty.

One of these ideas, which for the last 5 or 6 years has been one of my favorite pet project on my roster, was to develop dyes, pigments and other functional & value-adding coatings to post-process SLS 3D printed plastic parts and make them as consumer ready as a 3D printed part can be.

On a side note, we’ve also been developing membranes and coagulation & flocculation agents to filter out dyes, pigments and other additives from unpolymerised SLA resin to make it possible to change the colour and polymerised mechanical properties of resins, vats at a time, without having to maintain a vat for each type of resin needed. But let’s keep this topic for another article… Now, back to dyes.

To put things in context, a few grams of dye powder is enough to make a bathtub full of dying solution and also enough colour the same amount of parts… so you can imagine a service bureau with a kilo of each colour has enough dye to colour parts for years and years. So even though we’ve developed a global client base, repeat business is kind of an issue.

So like any other business, we started thinking about how to drive consumption, searching for applications, products, businesses that could use our dyes in larger quantities. This has been going on for more than a year now, yes, and without much breakthrough on the matter, this until two months ago.

Two months ago I get a call from an entrepreneur aspiring to bring 3D printed eyewear to the masses and looking to grow his network across Asia.

As he was talking, the dots started connecting in my head, the lights started turning on, and soon it felt like Deepavali.

So the pitch became simple

3D printed eyewear Singapore first mass-customised consumer product, creating a new consumer product category and paving the way for others companies to follow suit and bring their own innovation to market. Effectively formalising Singapore’s 3D printing footprint and demonstrating the commercial viability of end-to-end production of customised consumer goods, and selling our dyes in the process, a lot of it.

Like any Singaporean entrepreneur we picked up the phone and called NAMIC who supports 3D printing ideas with up to S$ 250K (€ 156K) in grants, then to Spring Singapore which supports the growth of local SMEs with up to in S$ 2M (€ 1.25M) in grants, and finally made a call to the EDB which supports the growth of large companies and MNC operating in key industries with no limits on financial support.

The conversation were all very positive, each one of them had been looking on ways to close the additive manufacturing loop, develop national post-processing capabilities to create a fully vertically integrated 3D printing value chain for local production of made to order custom & unique products to Singaporean and regional consumers… and we had that missing ingredient, dyes.

And it all made sense, being that Singapore is one of the world’s largest luxury market, it has the world’s highest density of millionaires (15.5%, Bloomberg 2009) and its citizens have the third highest GDP per capita (US$56,700, Forbes 2017)… so across the 2.25M myopics, who consume 1M frames a year, we’re certainly able to find 5000 to buy 3D printed eyewear and prove my point. Right?

On top of that, I discovered that Singaporean opticians have on average a catalog of 1500 SKUs and 5000 frames in stock at any given time and that all of them were looking for ways to reduce this stock to reduce their sunk costs and provide them a bit of liquidity, something 3D printing has been striving to solve for, like, ever.

So it’s all good so far, the government’s on board, the market is there, opticians have a problem that 3D printed eyewear can solve… definitely enough for a pitch deck, a few weeks of my time and the cost of producing samples. Boom.

A month later, half dozen pitches under the belt, the project is dead.

So what happened? Why did the project fall flat and why 3D printed eyewear isn’t ready for prime-time?

I’m sure there are many more reason, but here are 4 that came up during our market outreach.

SLS Nylon is just too flexible

Eyewear needs to be rigid to ensure that the location of the lenses remains constant over the eye, this is especially true for progressive bifocal lenses where the Sphere (SPH) and Additional Magnification (ADD) varies across the vertical axis to concurrently accommodate both presbicia and myopia (in older people) as well as toric lenses, to correct astigmatism, where the optical power and focal length varies as the lenses Axis rotates around its center.

In the current state of the 3D Printing industry, Nylon Sintering, whether it be SLS, MJF, SHS or other, is the closest technology the industry has to mass produce products. Unfortunately the resulting parts, although durable, are extremely flexible compared to traditional eyewear materials such as polycarbonate and acetate (or titanium in the case of metal frames).

As such, as the sintered frame flexes, the relative location of the lenses to the eyes will move, in turn dynamically changing their perceived optics. Consequently, this lens movement throughout the day will make the wearer dizzy and potentially delivering a powerful headache (the kind you get with new glasses).

Test it for yourself, simply tilt your glasses forwards and see the effect of the change, now imagine this happening all day long.

To illustrate SLS Nylon 12 flexibility, gentle forces, similar to normal wear conditions, have been applied to a frame with living hinges to demonstrate flex (left) as well as one with mechanical hinges to demonstrate torsion (right).

3D printed eyewear have the wrong market fit (Quality & Price)

3D printing is expensive compared to traditional mass market manufacturing, the cutting edge 3D printed frames frames still cost S$ 80 (€ 50) to print and finish, and by the time it reaches the optician it becomes roughly S$ 125 (€ 78). In comparison, the quality of the 3D printed frame have the perceived value equal to that of the S$ 2–3 sunglasses you buy at the petrol kiosk, this according to leading opticians and optical distributors in Singapore.

This said, the promise 3D printing brings is size and fit customisation: unique frames for unique faces, however current frame manufacturer already offer a wide enough variety to satisfy the needs of 80% of the population (as well as addressing the Asian fit issues) which is unfortunately insufficient to account for the price disparity.

Everyone in the eyewear industry knows that clients want a lot of variety in colour, pattern, texture and feel, unfortunately 3D printed frames are at best monochromatic: single colour, single finish, single texture, also not enough to excite the client or to justify the price disparity.

In context, Owndays outlets (Japanese eyewear super-chain) hold a selection of 2000–3000 frame SKUs which come in a myriad for colourful options, materials, textures and finishes with a perceived value far beyond those of 3D printed frames. As for costs, their glasses average a total retail price of S$ 150 (€ 94) including lenses, where their material cost average around S$ 30 (€ 18.75), of which S$ 10 (€ 6.25) is for the frame.

3D printed eyewear have the wrong market fit (Lead-time)

In today’s market, mass market optician shops like Owndays are able to deliver eyewear within the same day, if not within an hour. If you’re like me and you have and have “ooohh, we’re going to have to special order your lenses” vision, lead-time is then extended to overnight or at worst two days. And even in the super fancy understaffed optical shops that feature S$ 1200+ (€ 750+) Dita frames in their bargain bins still are able to deliver glasses within a 2 to 3 day window.

In the current state of 3D printing, the shortest realistic lead-time for printing and finishing a frame, this if the entire supply chain is localised, would be 1 week at best. However, as part finishing facilities aren’t readily available in every city, the production lead-time of 3D printed eyewear is effectively 3–4 weeks, which is far beyond mass-market and far too long of a wait time to make it an exciting value proposition to clients.

3D printed eyewear have no brand value

Brand value is a bit hard to understand for eyewear as often only the wearer knows it, as opposed to products like clothing, shoes, handbags or bicycles for which their brands shine like a bat-signal to all who passes.

Regardless of the actual quality of the product, the brand communicates perceived value to the consumer, reassures them that the product is of a certain quality and that no matter what happens the brand will be there to protect them, like a wooly blanket. Just think of drugs, a doctor says to a patient: “Your feelings of depression are temporary, I’ll give you a prescription for some Fluoxetine, and you’ll be right as rain in no time”, patient replies: “Could you give me Prozac instead?”. Even though Prozac is Fluoxetine, the value the brand provides to the patient is the assurance of potency or effect, even if it is artificial.

One of the core opportunities 3D printing unlocks is the ability to produce small batches of anything at relatively low costs. One could leverage this to establish a new private label of built-to-order or built-to-stock over the counter sunglasses or clear vision fashion eyewear, overcoming the challenges caused by frame flexibility by not having prescription while delivering the benefits of 3D printed eyewear.

Not a bad idea right? Now imagine these private label frames proudly hanging next to Ray-Ban Aviators, the titan of the fashion eyewear industry, glossy and iconic with a brand that commands status to all who see it, and at a price of S$150 (€ 94) just slightly higher than the cost of the 3D printed private label ones. It’ll be a hard sell.

OK, so what about partnering with a brand, say Staccato or Desigual, who have strong brand equity, a healthy client base in the same target demographic and no eyewear in their product catalogue. That could work? Or what about a local label like Ong Shunmugam or Depression? Surely having direct access to local designers could prove to be successful at establishing a partnership and a product line.

True, so we did out-reach, we called a few companies and a few designers, but without any luck. We discovered that larger companies seek above all large profit margins, which, with the size of their distribution and retail real-estate have the ability to reach out directly to eyewear leaders such as Luxotica, to create custom collections that will both best represent their brands and deliver handsome profit margins they desire.

While talking directly to designers, we discovered that their focus is regardless of price or margin, and that it’s all about the ability to deliver on the design and vision that they are striving to achieve, which require materials, textures, finishes that go far beyond the current capabilities of 3D printing, or even hybrid manufacturing (3D printing with a mix of off the shelf parts or traditionally manufactured parts).

So Is it really all doom and gloom for the 3D printed eyewear industry?

Happily it’s not! We have identified three opportunities that could be captured by 3D printing.

1. Opticians do have inventory problems

An optician shop might have 1000–1500 SKUs in their inventory, multiple copies of each totalling a few thousands units in stock, this to accommodate the whims and desires of their clients, however this huge inventory represent a huge sunk cost in operating an optician shop, one that many would like to get rid of. Especially considering that frames can remain on the shelves for years before they are sold of garbaged at a loss.

There is a huge push on all sides to reduce the number of SKUs and the size of in boutique inventory, 3D printing is definitely on everyone’s radar and everyone is waiting for 3D printing to deliver.

2. Super high-end eyewear

When retailing a S$ 125 (€ 78) 3D printed frame, the price becomes S$ 275 (€ 170) and perhaps S$ 350 (€ 218) with lenses, which makes 3D printed eyewear not cheap enough to compete at the sub S$ 200 (€ 125) low end, and not premium enough to compete with the S$ 500 (€ 315) mid-range.

However a niche opportunity for 3D printed eyewear that we did uncover is in the super high-end eyewear segment, the S$ 1500+ (€ 936+) frames. In this segment the bespoke craftsmanship, refined design elements backed by an artisanal story, is enough to command a price.

Minutely post-processed 3D printed parts, polymer and metal, could complement other traditionally crafted parts to create complex, bespoke and sought after designs.

This unique value proposition would go head to head with brands such as Mykita, Matsuda or Lindberg, which already command the status symbol of extreme luxury. Adding the customisation of form and fit, that 3D printing provides, to similar design elements, textures and finishes to these brands could deliver a significant added value and be transformative in this niche segment.

This said, this market is not very large, but it’s there and getting bigger.

3. Semi-disposable, re-printable children eyewear

Everybody knows: children break things, lose things and inexplicably stop liking things, often in a matter of seconds. From the opticians’ point of view, children’s faces are really, really, hard to fit with glasses. And it’s for these reasons that this eyewear segment is by far the easiest to capture, decentralise and democratise through 3D printing, even low cost 3D printing.

In this segment, designs could be built around a selection of fixed lens shapes, that parents and children could design around, print and reprint: Thing-O-Matic style.

Using no more than basic household devices like a camera and a ruler, parents could measure their children’s pupillary distance, width of the bridge and the lengths of the temple (the arms that connects to the ears), type them in a wizard and let the kids design away, printing and reprinting as they want.

The price point to meet in this segment is S$ 80 (€ 50) frame and lenses, and provided the child’s eyesight doesn’t change, that S$ 80 could perhaps last them midway in elementary school before newer larger lenses would be required, similar to the Stokkecrib and Infento bicycles.

If you’d like to talk more about these points, or would like to pitch an idea, feel free to message me (you can find me on Linkedin), i’m always (t)here.

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