An Interview with Alessio Lorusso
My family owned a mechatronic manufacturing company and I grew up tinkering with machinery and tools around the shop floor. In spite of my parents’ insistence that I choose a secure career in finance or accounting, I could not bear the idea of sitting in front of a computer all day looking at spreadsheets. My passion was technology.
At age 17, applying the know-how acquired from my family trade, I built my first 3D printer without belts, marrying the latest 3D printing technology with traditional mechatronics. This innovation, de facto eliminated the issues linked to the rubber belts regularly used in desktop 3D printers: distortion, wear, inaccurate repeatability, and the need for frequent calibrations. Thanks to that first invention, I started Roboze, the most accurate 3D printing technology in the world for high-performance super polymers. We now employ over 100 people and we have facilities in Italy, Germany, and Houston, TX.
Why did you decide to start a business?
As I was working on my invention, I also did some business analysis and I realized that the market was basically separated into two large segments: the consumer one where people bought kits and assembled them and the industrial segment with prices around a million dollars. In the middle there was practically nothing viable, hence the intuition to create a business based on an extremely professional product offered to SME's. To this target market, I wanted to offer an extremely precise 3D printer capable of producing finished parts, not just prototypes. I achieved this by disassembling and observing one of my family's CNC machines that worked very accurately. I realized that it was moving in gears and then I considered bringing the same technology to 3D printers. I patented my beltless system in 158 countries, creating the most accurate 3D printer in the world.
What problem does Roboze solve?
Roboze strengths are the technological precision of our printers' output and the very strong specialization in high-performance techno polymers. This way we give our customers the ability to manufacture customized medium batches (up to 3000 finished parts per year on a single system) in special materials developed for extreme applications such as aerospace, medical, energy, motorsports, Defence, etc. In fact, we have a team that focuses in the R&D of special materials.
How does Roboze generate income?
Thanks to our high-quality and high-tech products, we have partnered with several world leaders in their respective sectors, ranging from aerospace to racing. Our secret is to bring technological solutions to the market very quickly, especially in a sector like ours which runs at an alarming speed. We adopt a very fast decision-making approach in choosing new projects and this is the best weapon against our larger, slower competitors.
We generate income by selling and servicing our printers, selling our filaments and we have recently created a subscription ‘Manufacturing as a Service program’, which is aimed at generating recurring revenue streams, called Roboze 3D Parts bringing production back to the point of use through a decentralized production model of independent, certified micro-factories around the world, making finished parts for companies where and when they are needed. This will contribute to fighting the global supply chain crisis.
What is your pricing strategy?
Our 3D printers pricing is value-based tailored to target SME's while the Roboze 3D Parts program is a subscription model.
