ailer Asda will become the first supermarket chain in the country to offer in-store 3D printing when it begins its trials on October 15.The chain said it will be offering the service, which can scan anything up to the size of a car and reduce it down to an 8-inch model, first at its store in York, before rolling it out more widely if it’s successful. Priced from £40, Asda says its shoppers simply need to pop into the store with whatever they want scanned (which only takes about two minutes) and can then pick up their item as they are doing their shopping the following week.
Asda says customers will be able to scan anything, including people, pets or cars, and create lifelike figures made from ceramic. They can also opt for different finishes, choosing from colour, white or a bronze-style coating, and scale to the size they want.
Whether or not people will want to spend £40 or more on an 8-inch replica of themselves remains to be seen, but the company envisages this being one of the top requests.
The supermarket hopes the service will prove popular in the run-up to Christmas and has plans to roll out the technology to further stores in the future if it proves successful.
3D printers are widely used in manufacturing to create prototypes and in architecture for modelling. Their use by brands for more personalised marketing is also on the up. The likes of Nokia, Converse and Soundcloud are all using the technology, with the latter recently running a campaign to let fans turn their favourite songs into 3D-printed iPhone cases.
Asda is the first of a line of retailers to test consumer interest in the technology. Selfridges is also introducing a 3D printing service from October 24 to allow shoppers to produce small figurines of themselves. The models will cost from between £50 and £200 depending on the size.
