Every year at 3DCentral brings growth that was difficult to imagine twelve months earlier. 2025 was no exception. From production milestones that reshaped our capacity to artist partnerships that transformed our catalog, the year delivered changes that position our operation for a fundamentally different future than the one we started the year planning for.
This review covers the key developments across production, catalog growth, community expansion, and sustainability — an honest look at what went right, what we learned, and what it means for the year ahead.
Production Milestones: The 200-Printer Threshold
The headline number is simple: our Laval, Quebec facility grew to over 200 active 3D printers in 2025. But the headline understates the significance of this milestone.
What 200+ Printers Actually Means
Scaling a print farm is not linear. Going from 50 to 100 printers doubles capacity, but it also introduces new categories of complexity — fleet management software requirements, maintenance scheduling at scale, filament logistics, quality control across a larger sample of output, and power infrastructure upgrades.
The jump from 150 to 200+ was particularly significant because it crossed the threshold where manual oversight of individual machines becomes impractical. Every printer in our fleet now feeds data into a centralized monitoring system that tracks job status, failure rates, maintenance history, and output quality. This infrastructure investment does not show up in product photos, but it is the foundation that makes consistent quality possible across thousands of daily prints.
Quality Improvement Through Scale
Counter-intuitively, quality improved as we scaled. More printers meant more data. More data meant better calibration profiles, faster identification of suboptimal settings, and more rigorous material testing. Our failure rate in December 2025 was measurably lower than in January 2025, despite the fleet being substantially larger. The total number of units printed in 2025 exceeded all previous years combined.
Catalog Growth: Artists and Variety
The expansion of our product catalog in 2025 was driven by both internal design work and community artist partnerships.
Community Artist Partnerships
Our collaborations with community artists — Cinderwing3D, McGybeer, Flexi Factory, Zou3D, Gob3D, Twisty Prints, Arbiter, and others — deepened throughout 2025. These are not transactional licensing arrangements. They are genuine creative partnerships where artists and our production team collaborate to optimize designs for production-scale printing while maintaining the artistic vision that makes each piece special.
The result is a catalog that offers diversity of style, subject matter, and design philosophy that no single design team could produce. A customer browsing our figurines collection encounters whimsical articulated animals alongside detailed fantasy creatures and elegant decorative pieces — each reflecting the unique voice of its creator.
Seasonal Collection Strategy
2025 refined our approach to seasonal collections. Rather than treating seasons as simple color palette swaps, each quarterly collection became a curated design event with its own theme, limited releases, and coordinated marketing. Spring pastels, summer brights, fall harvest tones, and winter holiday designs each created distinct moments in the catalog year.
Our duck collection and gnome collection both saw seasonal variants that became some of our best-performing products — proving that familiar designs in fresh seasonal contexts can outperform entirely new products.
Catalog Depth
The breadth of our design library became one of our strongest competitive advantages in 2025. Customers who arrive looking for one specific item discover a catalog deep enough to keep them browsing and buying across multiple categories. This depth drives average order value and repeat purchase rates — two metrics that matter more than raw traffic for sustainable growth.
Community Expansion: Beyond Quebec
2025 saw meaningful growth in both geographic reach and community depth.
Canadian Growth
Our customer base expanded across every Canadian province, with particularly strong growth in Ontario and British Columbia. The Made in Canada positioning resonated with customers who actively seek domestically produced products, and our shipping infrastructure evolved to handle increased volume efficiently.
Our Amazon presence continued to serve as a powerful discovery channel, introducing customers to 3DCentral products who might never have found our website directly. The dual-channel approach — Amazon for discovery, direct website for the full brand experience — proved complementary rather than competitive.
US Market Development
The American market grew steadily throughout 2025. Shipping logistics improvements, including optimized carrier selection and packaging standards for cross-border shipments, reduced delivery times and damage rates. US customers now represent a significant and growing segment of our order volume.
Commercial License Growth
The Commercial License program attracted print farm operators from across Canada and the United States. Operators who previously designed their own products or worked without licensing discovered the value of access to a production-ready design library backed by professional quality testing. This subscription-based revenue stream provides predictable recurring income that supports continued investment in design and infrastructure.
Mystery Box Momentum
Our Mystery Box subscription built a loyal and enthusiastic subscriber base in 2025. The combination of surprise, curation, and seasonal rotation created genuine excitement with each monthly delivery. Subscriber retention rates exceeded our projections, confirming that the collectible community values curated discovery alongside self-directed shopping.
Sustainability Progress
Sustainability is not a marketing claim for us — it is an operational priority with measurable targets and transparent reporting.
Energy
Quebec’s hydroelectric grid provides over 99 percent renewable electricity. Every product printed at our facility is manufactured with clean energy. This is an inherent geographic advantage that we do not take for granted and one that aligns with the values of an increasing number of our customers.
Material Efficiency
PLA, our primary printing material, is a plant-based bioplastic derived from corn starch or sugarcane. It is biodegradable under industrial composting conditions. Our waste recovery programs improved throughout 2025, reducing the percentage of filament that ends up in landfill. Failed prints and support material are collected, sorted, and routed to recycling wherever possible.
Packaging Reduction
Packaging plastic reduction was a specific 2025 target. By transitioning to recycled cardboard packaging, eliminating unnecessary plastic wrap, and right-sizing boxes to minimize void fill, we dramatically reduced our packaging footprint. Every product shipped in 2025 left our facility in a smaller environmental package than its 2024 equivalent.
Looking Forward
2025 built the infrastructure — physical, digital, and organizational — for the next phase of growth. The printer fleet is larger. The catalog is deeper. The team is stronger. The systems are more sophisticated. And the community of customers, artists, and operators who make up the 3DCentral ecosystem is more engaged than ever.
Thank you to everyone who placed an order, shared our products, contributed a design, subscribed to a license, or simply followed our journey in 2025. Every interaction contributes to the momentum that drives investment in quality, variety, and capability. Read more stories from inside our operation on the 3DCentral blog.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many products did 3DCentral add to its catalog in 2025? A: Our catalog expanded significantly throughout 2025, driven by both internal design work and community artist partnerships with creators like Cinderwing3D, McGybeer, Flexi Factory, and Zou3D. Seasonal collections for each quarter plus ongoing new releases grew the catalog to thousands of unique products across multiple categories.
Q: Does 3DCentral sell on Amazon? A: Yes. Amazon serves as an important sales and discovery channel for 3DCentral products, complementing our direct website. Many customers discover our products on Amazon and then explore the full catalog, seasonal collections, and subscription offerings on 3dcentral.ca.
Q: What sustainability practices does 3DCentral follow? A: Our Laval, Quebec facility operates on nearly 100 percent renewable hydroelectric power. We print primarily with PLA, a plant-based bioplastic. Our waste recovery programs recycle failed prints and support material. And our packaging has transitioned to recycled cardboard with minimized plastic use, reducing the environmental footprint of every shipment.
