We have a lot to talk about!
West3D celebrates 5 years in business!
On October 1st we celebrated 5 years of being open for business! For those who don’t know, I started this in my garage because I wanted to build a Voron (2.4) when I guess everyone else did too, because parts were not available. Working as a sourcing manager, I set out to bring sub-kits in with the hope I could find 9 people to buy them which would essentially fund my own build.
Holy crap, we sold out before things even reached my door. Then the rest is history, I kept bringing in products using my background to improve pricing and quality. Vendors like Fabreeko and KB-3D helped along the way too, as we all grew to meet the insatiable appetites of our fellow makers!
For those first six months I would work over my breaks and after my wife and kid went to bed. People in those early days got used to shipping notifications well into the morning hours. I’d sleep a few hours and then start my day, finishing my day job around 4pm, packing for another hour and a half and then running over to the post office (yes, I drove every package to UPS or USPS those days). Some local customeres even had their orders hand delivered!
It only took about 6 months for my wife to tell me I couldn’t keep taking up space in the garage (and hallway at one point) and I moved the business into a small ~800sqft warehouse in the back of a business park. We hired Xivi, our first employee, and the rest is sort of history. Each year we continue to grow more than we thought possible, and each year we find ourselves yearning for more space (more on that next year…). We’ve now moved 2 additional times since then, not including an expansion of our current location (~6000sqft). We’ve developed new products, launched a successful filament brand and surpassed 100k orders without signs of slowing. It’s been a truly unforgettable trip and I pinch myself every day not knowing if this is real… Thank you for your support along this journey.
~Daniel
Major Changes to West3D Rewards – A Comparison
A few weeks ago we sent a survey out to our Discord members, which represent a little over 3000 customers.
“West3D current reward program is a bit funky, you pick rewards based off points earned (50 points per order) for various things. Sometimes they break. Should we update our rewards program to a more traditional 'cashback' system instead (e.g. spend 100 get 100 points, apply as a $1 discount)?”
We received 100 responses and most people preferred the change. So here we are.
I want to be upfront and honest with you, West3D is a small store and things like the rewards program are handled by one person (me). As someone who started in my garage, I am forever going to be grateful to each of you who have joined our community and spend money at our store. Because of that I want to offer rewards and make those worth something to you. The changes made, earning levels, and redemption attempt to match the value of our old system. We used things like our Average Order Value (AOV), order counts and redemption analytics to get as close as we could. That said, there are going to be people who do not like the change or earn less, and those who earn more. Below is a rundown that explains how that will happen. But first we have backed up existing tier/membership levels so those should not change.
Our old rewards system was kind of weird.
Previously, every order earned 50 points whether you spent $20 or $500. Rewards ranged from fixed discounts to percentage-off coupons, merchandise, filament discounts, and tier perks. It worked, but it was difficult to know what your points were actually worth.
The new program works much more like cashback: the more you spend, the more points you earn, and higher membership tiers accelerate that earning rate.
You'll also receive a point bonus when reaching a new tier:
Green Tier: +350 points
VIP: +750 points
BERSERKER: +1,000 points
What does that actually look like?
On a $150 purchase, the old system awarded 50 points, regardless of the order amount.
Under the new system, that same $150 purchase earns:
150 points as a Member
225 points at Green Tier
300 points as a VIP
450 points as a BERSERKER member
For gift-card redemptions, points are essentially worth 1¢ each. For filament rewards, they're worth 2¢ each.
So that $150 purchase earns roughly 1.50-4.50 in gift-card value, or 3-9 toward filament, depending on your tier. Gift cards are also redeemable alongside sales, this wasn’t the case before with the discounts offered.
What's better?
The biggest improvement is that rewards now follow what you actually spend. Someone making a larger purchase no longer receives the exact same 50 points as someone making a tiny purchase.
Higher-tier customers also earn points dramatically faster. A BERSERKER member earns 3X the points per dollar of the base tier.
Redemptions are also much easier to understand. Instead of trying to figure out whether 500 points should become $15 off, $20 off filament, a percentage coupon, or something else, we're moving toward straightforward point values and rewards.
What's worse?
We want to be upfront about this part too.
If you frequently placed very small orders, the old program could be unusually generous. A $20 order and a $500 order both earned 50 points. Under the new system, a $20 base-tier purchase earns 20 points while a $500 purchase earns 500.
We've also removed the old 10% and 15% percentage-off point redemptions. Those could be especially valuable if saved for a very large purchase, so some customers may prefer those old rewards.
And some physical rewards, like shirts, hats and hoodies, now require more points than they did previously. Because points are earned much faster under the new program—particularly as you move through the tiers—we needed to rebalance those redemption amounts.
What isn't changing?
All of the extra ways to earn points are sticking around.
You'll still earn bonus points for things like signing up, newsletters, birthdays, social follows, reviews, Google reviews, joining Discord, TikTok, YouTube and other activities.
Those are in addition to the points you earn from purchases.
Why make the change?
We wanted West3D Rewards to be something you shouldn't need a spreadsheet to understand.
Spend money → earn points.
Reach higher tiers → earn points faster.
Use those points on rewards you actually want.
There will inevitably be individual purchases where the old program would have earned more, and others where the new program earns substantially more. We're not trying to pretend otherwise.
The goal is to make rewards more predictable, easier to understand, and more directly connected to how much you shop with West3D.
And, as always, if something about the new program feels completely out of whack please let us know. The system is meant to be sustainable to us but also rewarding. So with all of this said, as lessons are learned we will make adjustments as needed. Again, it’s just me, we aren’t a corporation who has ‘crunched the numbers’, just 3D printing fanatics like you.
Ambrosia New Materials/Colors drop!
3 Brand-New Materials:
PET-GF – Available in 5 colors!
PCTG – This is highly requested, tell us how you like it and we will add our Ambrosia colors to this!
Foaming TPU – If you haven't tried it, this stuff is awesome.
A bunch of new colors: We're talking some staples we just missed before like Navy Blue, Marble, Chocolate Brown (ok I'm going this is more a milk chocolate, back to the drawing board), Green PETG and stuff like that... but ALSO some amazing creations like Midnight Blue, Marigold Yellow, Crimson Eclipse (holiday winner color!), Bone White, and more!
We've also expanded our TPU95A colors, new Matte ABS colors etc.
We always place colors chronologically, so you can find the new ones at the bottom of our filament pages!
Oh, and we're not quite done. There's one more new color we're keeping under wraps for now. You'll hear more about that one after Voron VICE in Portugal next week.
We have other exciting Ambrosia plans (changes to filament spools, more materials and colors, and more), thank you for your support both in helping us bring more awesomeness as well as letting us know whenever you have suggestions. This is beyond anything we would have thought possible 2 years ago, thank you.
Let’s Talk AI
We are starting to work on an AI policy as AI starts takes a greater role in all of our daily lives. We are human centric, and believe in the community of makers we are a part of. We are not with or against AI, right now AI just ‘is’ - we are seeing it in almost every tool and service we use. Because of this, it is important we develop own our standards and policies so that we can effectively use these tools without sacrificing the community stewardship we hold.
The good: AI is in one way a great equalizer in business, it allows small companies like ourselves to do a lot in very little time and expense. We can get insights into stocking issues that keep more product on the shelves, we can flag suspicious behaviour to stop bad actors from committing fraud on our site, we can provide 24/7 ‘live’ order editing and cancellation - saving headaches and making things better for everyone.
The bad: AI can also be misused very easily in a way that is both detrimental to customers as well as the as the company itself. AI can be used to price discriminate between customers, it can be used to develop communications (whether that is art media, text or voice) that sacrifice convenience and understanding for cost-efficiency or remove human elements people need.
There’s a list a mile long of the good and the bad, that is why we acknowledge that AI just ‘is’.
At West3D we grapple frequently with the choice to use AI in our daily operations or not, and we have people who feel strongly one way or another that we call friends. Because of that, I wanted to give you a brief rundown of what we do with AI and what we don’t do with AI:
What we do:
1. We do use AI to assist with our marketing images. This is something that not everyone appreciates, ‘AI slop’ is something that is real, and it turns many of us (including myself) away. I do believe that are ways to use AI as a tool, and this is one useful one. Something that used to take considerable planning and resources can be done much quicker.
Side note: AI has gotten MUCH better, we used AI as almost a joke for our Ambrosia banner we use at shows - it’s literally greek gods eating filament like spaghetti, and that spaghetti is embedded in their beards etc. It’s great 😀
That said, you can’t lose control of the tool - a clear idea of what we are trying to convey, text, logos, color codes, all of that needs to be human. While we still use fully human images in much of our material, when we do use AI we do our best to make it as human as possible, making corrections, re-prompting, and post-processing those images to make sure we are delivering accurate content that is on brand and meets our intent. We also do our best to notate the images so it’s clear it was made with the assistance of AI tools.
2. We do use AI to analyze and summarize product quality reports to help make sure things don’t fall through the cracks, this is primarily done through our ticketing system.
4. We do use AI to analyze our inventory and determine proper ordering quantities based on seasonality, sales etc.
5. We do use AI as an automated chat bot that can help modify orders before they ship as a self-service tool. This also provides the initial entry point on our website if you pick the ‘chat’ icon.
We do not love the current state of AI chat bots, but when someone needs immediate support it’s all we can manage. We review questions and responses so that when it makes mistakes we can make it less likely to occur again.
Our first message always lets you know you can bypass the chatbot if you wish. This is something that the tool we use actually incentivizes, we pay more if we turn off AI. Yes, we are struggling with that too.
5. We use AI to help craft occasional product descriptions. When this happens we review these and revise them before they are published. We continue to rely on our own expertise or information furnished by the manufacturer.
6. We use AI to monitor the web and let us know any significant movement around our brands and company. This comes to us weekly, and has helped make sure we can address issues that don’t make it to us through traditional channels and make sure our reputation remains strong.
What we don’t do:
1. We do not use AI to respond to customer inquiries, when you’re with us you’re with a human who likes 3D printing probably as much as you do.
2. We do not use AI to make corporate decisions, there is no ‘auto-pilot’. Tools that use AI are not given the latitude to make changes without authorization.
3. We do not use AI to create marketing campaigns, emails, or other messaging.When you read this newsletter, it was written by me.
4. We will never use AI tools to price discriminate amongst our customers. This is wrong and we have posted about this practice before.
AI can do a lot of good for small businesses, but we also think those businesses should be transparent - particularly as machine generated content becomes harder to distinguish from human content. Almost all businesses are using AI in some form or another, and I know some customers will not like how we use it. From where I stand, we are living in a reality that is rapidly changing and AI has become the norm. I believe West3D is in the minority of companies that are recognizing impacts and attempting to be forthcoming about its use and to develop responsible policies. As things continue to develop we will attempt to always use the best of technology available to us in the most responsible of ways. If you find something that you think is off and doesn’t fit the West3D standard, please let us know. We are listening.
Filament Toaster Update
We have some good news and some not good news here. The filament toaster continues to be on of our most popular products, and people overwhelmingly have had positive experiences. That said there are a few things we have heard, and one safety event we want to address.
Safety First:
This past weekend we had a report of a community member whose Filament Toaster caught on fire. Fortunately no one was hurt, the fire was contained within the toaster, and the damage around the toaster from the extinguishing was not severe. That said, we want to pause and take a few weeks to do a thorough independent investigation of the product. This will make sure there are not design defects / electrical issues with the product. If we find something we can address is, if we let it go and say ‘whew, glad you’re OK’ and leave it at that I don’t believe we are being responsible stewards. Safety is always a priority here.
Because of this event, we have ceased the sale and shipment of Filament Toasters until after the investigation. If there is no defect we will release shipments. We are doing this ASAP to make sure we don’t add delays. We will release the findings to owners of the Toaster via email, which may include advice or instruction dependeint on the results.
Improvements:
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Current Toasters beep, it’s kind of loud. The next batch of Toasters will have the beeping disabled, by popular demand.
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One thing that comes with a high temperature filament dryer is the ability to anneal. We added annealing trays a while ago, and now we are working on annealing functions. These will have warm up temperatures and durations, holding temperatures and durations, as well as cooldown temperatures and durations for most of the common filaments you’d anneal. Specifically we are looking at 4 functions:
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Low Temperature Annealing
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Stress Relief Annealing
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Higher Temperature Annealing
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Engineering Annealing
Each will have instruction about filaments recommended at each setting.
West3D Continues to Grow and Give
Since early on in West3D’s days, we have been a giving organization. We have donated to over a hundred organizations to date and donations occur regularly. We recently closed our Community week where over $4000 was donated to organizations like 3D Printing Elves, Voron Design, 4Ocean Foundation, Mental Health Community Partners and GirlsWhoCode. This year alone we have sponsored more than a dozen robotics teams, supported 3D printer projects, youth sporting teams, elementary schools, maker and hackerspaces. This year we have donated about $25,000, and since we began operating have transferred well over $100,000 worth of capital and goods to community organizations. To put that in perspective for us, that’s more than the cash profit we’ve made in all of our years of operating.
We do this because we care about our community, this is a business that continues to benefit very much from the trust and support of the makers who frequent our store. Like in past years, West3D continues to experience growth that outpaces our expectations and makes it possible. Year to date we have seen a whopping 69% growth in net sales, 142% increase in in-person retail sales, and strong growth in our Ambrosia Filament brand driven by a 77% increase in sessions to our store.
Our product catalog has grownt include new brands (e.g. Bambu and Prusa), and we continue to carry an extremely large and growing assortment 3D Printers and the parts for them. And while tastes and products change, you keep coming back to us, thank you.
Thank you again, everyone, for making West3D the place it is today. You impact the lives of everyone who works here and all of programs we support on a regular basis.