Dixons Carphone CEO’s children convince him to stock new product

Let it never be said that pester power doesn’t exist.

Currys/PC World has begun selling the Robox 3D printer – and it’s all because the children of parent firm Dixons Carphone’s CEO Sebastian James.

Robox creator Chris Elsworthy met James at The Gadget Show Live last year. And it was the product demonstration that wowed James’ kids – who convinced their dad to stock it.

"It was the first time we showed the Robox in the UK the Robox – it was on the stage printing," Elsworthy told PCR.

"I think Sebastian James and his children were passing on their way to the super theatre to watch a show, and his kids were instantly drawn to the printer creating tuff. Then Sebastian came back afterwards to see what was going on. And I think his own children got the technology straight away – they understood the product and saw the scope of what it could do.

"And that got Sebastian interested in the product. From there he helped us get in contact with the right buyers at Dixons Carphone, and from there we went through the process with the buyers to get it listed."

CEL’s Robox 3D printer is now available in the UK and Ireland through Currys/PC World (and PC World Business). It’s priced at £999 and the range of filament rolls cost £39.99 each.

It’s billed as ‘the first truly plug and print 3D printer for the home’, and its features include a dual-head print nozzle (one nozzle is designed to print in detail while the other is able to ‘fill in’ larger areas at much higher speeds), stop-start functionality (users can pause a print part-way through and swap out the filament being used – allowing for multi-colour 3D printing), a print bed that automatically levels out, intelligent reels (that speak to the printer and tell it what material has been loaded), and a design that means print-heads for different tasks can be switched in and out. 

CEL launched the first full version of AutoMaker, its software for Robox, in January 2015.

Rachel Wareham, Category Manager at Dixons Carphone, commented: “With Robox you can go from unboxing to printing in a matter of minutes and the software even integrates one of the biggest libraries of 3D models on the web, so there’s no searching around for models to print, either. Robox has the potential to be a mass-market product – it works like magic, looks great and is incredible value-for-money.”

Existing Robox retailers include Maplin, Farnell, CREAT3D, PrintMe3D, 3D-Printworld.co.uk and Kitronik.