Significance of Staples Carrying the Cube

I've been traveling for the last few days and so I was quite surprised to get a phone call this morning alerting me the fact that Staples will be carrying the Cube 3D printer online and in select stores.

Checking in to the Cubify Blog, I found this article.that makes the announcement.

This is a HUGELY significant development along the path toward bringing 3D printers into homes and offices as mainstream productivity tools.  For the first time, as far as I know, someone will be able to walk into a store and actually SEE the printed output from a 3D printer.  Prior to this, potential buyers had to rely on images or attend a special showing at an event to get any idea about the capabilities of the Cube.

While I do not believe that this is going to push the Cube designers any harder than they has pushed themselves, it's bound to have an impact on improvements and feature improvement.  Having worked for a video game company whose product was sold in major stores, I know, firsthand, that store buyers can be very vocal about things they'd like to see for their customers.  Numbers mean something.

It also means that designers hoping to sell their designs on Cubify should see a major boost in the sales potential for their designs.

I should be able to gauge the impact, at least on a rudimentary level, by closely monitoring the traffic on this blog.  I can tell you that the increase in traffic was significant when the 2nd Generation Cube was announced earlier this year.  It was as if a light switch had been turned on!  I expect to see an equally big boost based on Staples showing an all new spotlight on the Cube and home/office 3D printing.

It only keeps getting better!  :)