Answer: Not any time soon.
As someone who’s spent 40 years in the electronics industry, this is a classic Sales Channel strategy and more importantly, a seismic shift in go-to-market for Bambu.
Think of the phases that companies go through and we can take companies like Dell or Apple as an example:
- Get some initial customers and maybe seed money. (Today, that was done with GoFundMe)
- Release a standard product after the Alpha and Beta phase(i.e. The difference between the Apple I and the Apple II)
- Market directly to the consumer(X1 and P1 series)
- Market through channel partners(X1E series)
I figure that Bambu has baked-in a base margin of $1,000 based on the preliminary price of the X1E and knowing full well that the BOM cost between that and the X1C is likely less than $100.
So now that Bambu has a channel set up to support their high end product, it will be a wait and see process. If the channel strategy fails to produce revenue, they’ll change that back to a direct sales model. If it succeeds, we’ll likely see more of their products get price-protected in order to protect their channel partners. That’s something that will be an absolute first in history for a Chinese company. Unlike Japanese companies, Chinese companies don’t even respect their own partners and have a rich history of cheating each other. In my experience on both sides of that business model as a channel partner and a manufacturer, if the company that wants to do business with me is speaking Mandarin, I want an iron-clad contract before they get an order and even then, I won’t pay the invoice until the product is in my hands and has gone through inspection. That’s not easy to do with Asian suppliers.
This is one of the reasons I find Bambu so incredibly fascinating. In many ways they act like a western company by competing on better quality and superior design as opposed to and Ender-like approach of competing on copycat cheap, which gives one hope. But then they’ll pull a stunt like Makerworld and it’s “ah so… a leopard can’t change its spots”.
The X1E will be worth watching just as a student of business. Will they or won’t they “eat their young” as the expression goes in this business.