Starting A Niche 3D Printing Business on Etsy - MTM #36 - Printsforplants5276

In this episode of Meet the Makers, we chat with Chris from Prints for Plants, a 3D printing enthusiast and houseplant lover. Chris shares how his passion for houseplants led him to 3D printing, starting with a single trellis design on Etsy, now growing into a successful small business with multiple 3D printers. He discusses his journey, challenges, and the unique designs he creates using Fusion 360. Watch as Chris explains how he merges his love for plants and 3D printing, offering valuable tips for aspiring makers. Plus, get insights into his handling of customer service, managing inventory, and the benefits of using Etsy as a sales platform.
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Where to find Chris
Tiktok:https://www.tiktok.com/ @printsforplants5276  
Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/printsforplants/?etsrc=sdt
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/printsforplants/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100078070181210 

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Come be a guest on meet the makers: https://forms.gle/wTqzxqGpsu9hZ39F6
Follow misfit printing on Tiktok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@misfit_printing
Support the show / Misfit at The Harpo:  https://theharpo.com/ 
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Chris and Prints for Plants
00:18 Journey into 3D Printing and Houseplants
01:23 Growing the Business: From One Printer to Many
04:05 Sales Channels and Craft Shows
08:53 Designing and Iterating Trellises
14:02 Customer Service and Challenges
17:42 Insights and Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
20:17 Chris's Passion for Houseplants
22:55 Sustainability and Recycling in 3D Printing
25:18 Conclusion and Where to Find Chris

Transcript

riverside_chris_& kate _ nov 30, 2024 001_misfit_printing's s
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[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to Meet the Makers we have Chris from Prints for Plants both on the 3D printing side as well as being a houseplant enthusiast. So two things that are very near and dear to my heart and super excited to be talking to you today.

Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Awesome. Cool. To kick it off, How did you get into 3D printing in general? But I guess before that did plants start first for you?

Did printing start first? And how did those two end up meshing together? So I've been collecting houseplants for probably almost a decade now. The upstairs of the houses. It's, we have plants everywhere. Yeah. So I, I was the reason I got into 3D printing wasI've always been interested in it.

And then I found an ender three Pro for, on some shady site for $200. And I. Probably about three or four years ago, the first thing I printed was stuff for my plants and then I started learning Fusion 360, that's when I designed my first houseplant trellisI started making those, and then people were interested in them, so I was like, I'm just gonna throw this [00:01:00] up on Etsy, I started an Etsy shop, Prints for Plants with one single trellis for a very long time. NowI have a small shop here, I have six printers currently. I just retired that Ender 3 Pro. I'm probably going to hang it from the rafters up here, like a, retire it like a baseball number.

Yeah. It's maybe in a future project you could have a giant plant pot and use the Ender as a trellis of sorts in Magix. it's cool to hear though that it sounds like your operation's grown from the early days of just having one listing online. What printers are you running in the background right now for your operation So right now the two newest printers are two A1 combos and those have been great. That's why I retired the Ender 3 Pro finally. I have an Anycubic Cobra that's dedicated to PETG. It prints the anchors for my Plant trellises, all day long.

And then I have a Mingda Magician Pro, which is an unusual one. It was my first large format printer. It's, 400x400. And then I also have a Neptune [00:02:00] Max, which is a fantastic printer. Which is like 450x450 or something like that, I can print some larger scale trellises and, yeah, it's pretty cool.

It's using, you have a dedicated printer for Pot G, it actually, it reminded me of something long before I had 3D printers myself. I had actually purchased a 3D printed pot on Etsy I'm sure it said somewhere in the description not to leave it in the sun or not to leave it outside but it had been PLA and I hid it outside in Arizona of all places and, one day it justPulled apart into a million pieces and the plant them all everywhere but for you if I heard correctly, it's is it the base of your trellis that you're putting in?

Pet g I print the base in pet g. They're mostly they're indoor. I mark them as indoor Yeah, but some people still put them outside. You know having the you know Having the base in pet g is just a little bit more heat resistant so they don't just fall over Some of the first ones I made were actually for my parents 

They put them outside in colorado With the intense sunlight and they all wilted. that was sad. I feel like you being a houseplant enthusiast yourself, and I always think this for like almost any [00:03:00] product that you offer, but it's really helpful if you can use the product in your day to day and see like the process of what that product like does and how it works.

Where's interiors is over time. And yeah, houseplants stuff, it's definitely a, I think that's a place where it really probably comes in handy for that now coming back to the beginning. So it sounds like, you printed your initial trawlers for yourself. And then it branched out from there.

Other people were interested was that kind of friends and family who were interested or were you posting it somewhere and like strangers were interested? How did you like initially think to yourself Oh, this is, maybe this is a business opportunity. Yeah, it was actually I, where I worked, I actually had a lot of plants, and I started bringing them in there, and people, being the IT person there for that place, I had a lot of people in my office, as you can imagine, and they were interested in them, so I started handing them out, and So that was really fun, and they started wanting to buy them for their family.

So that's what got me interested in selling them. And then the other part was I was interested in adding more printers, and as everyone here knows, that gets expensive. I found a way to kind of fund that. So I've [00:04:00] expanded the whole print shop based off sales from my Etsy shop. Gotcha.

No, that makes sense. For you right now, is Etsy, is that your main sales channel? Do you do any other sales channels, or is everything on Etsy right now? Everything's on Etsy right now. I actually just got the prints for plants domain like a week ago, finally. Oh nice. I hope to have a Shopify eventually.

And then we do some craft shows every year, which are, Surprisingly, they go great. I'll probably keep up that trend. My job, my day job is pretty busy, so I don't have a lot of time to build or even maybe the knowledge to drive my own traffic. So Etsy has been really great for that.

Yeah, no, that that definitely makes sense. I, way back in the day, I actually, before any of this, I had a house, a small house plant shop where I sold houseplants myself, and I had started out on Etsy actually, and that was one of the things that I when I had moved to Shopify and I went that path as well.

One of the biggest surprises to me was I was so used to Etsy driving my traffic, and when I was responsible for driving my own traffic, I was like, Wow, [00:05:00] this is this is a whole other adventure of like business that I was like just a whole new thing for me Yeah, it's it's a talk about a second job.

Yeah but I hope to get there you know It would be pretty cool. Yeah. No, I definitely think it's harder to get traffic over there when you don't have like algorithms that you've used to your products, but ultimately like in the long run I do think for people who are just on Etsy or are just on TikTok shop like having your own mailing list and having your own customers on your own website.

I do think it just adds a little more stability there for me, it was an uphill battle in the beginning, I think it's long term it's great to have that. Yeah, definitely, and, Etsy can do whatever they want, and you could disappear from there at any time, just for no reason at all, for sure. Now you mentioned in there that you guys are doing some craft shows, markets, things like that occasionally. When you guys go to shows like that do you guys is it very, obvious for people stopping by who are buying this do they know that it's 3D printed, is that something you guys overtly show that they're 3D printed, or do you think, are, like, are there people there who probably just think that they're trellises, [00:06:00] or how much of The 3d printing piece of it.

Do you advertise to people? That's great. Yeah. When we go to shows, like to show the product, I just, I put that in plants. Like I bring plants, I put the trellises up and people think that's cool. But then I definitely tell them that it's 3d printed. And that, cause they're all original designs that I do.

So it's kind of part of my spiel. I said, these are original they're 3d printed. Most of them are 3d printed in a wood fill. PLA, like I said, And I don't get quite that into it, I say there's actual real wood in here and people are like blown away because, it's not a technology that they've seen.

Usually when you go to those shows, it's oh, this person has 50 dragons and that's what they know 3d printing as. So it's cool to show a different aspect of, maybe something they haven't seen before. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think like for somebody like you or me, we have 3d printers and we do it in the day to day.

After a while, it for us, it loses a bit of that magic of it being like this cool thing, but I know for me when I mentioned like I bought that first 3D printed [00:07:00] pot before I had a 3D printer, and that was like, it wasn't necessarily like the most beautiful pot that I owned, but to me it was so cool that it was made with 3D printing, and I think there's still a lot of people out there who like, They don't have printers themselves and this idea of something coming off of a 3D printer is really cool and really novel for them.

Yeah, I could see that being cool at shows. Yeah, the first 3D print I ever held was I had ordered a, it was a Pokemon Bulbasaur from someone local in town and that was almost 10 years ago. And it was printed solid in ABS and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. thing and it's sat on my desk at work ever since, but now when I look at it, I'm like, wow, the print quality is not very good.

It's still magical. I still, it's a piece of history almost. Yeah. No, absolutely. I you won't be able to see it on your site, but maybe for people later, they'll But I have a 3D printed rocket lamp over there and same thing, it was another like thing I bought before my 3D printers and it I saw a bunch of people on the listing.

They were like, the layer lines are so bad and I [00:08:00] had gotten, I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. But now I look back and I'm like, yeah, I guess this could be a little bit better, better quality. But no it's, it's a give and a take when you don't know about it. Yeah, when I, if I print on a trellis and maybe it's not exactly perfect, I'll usually take it to my wife, Catherine, and say, how does this look?

And she's it's beautiful. And I was like, alright. Again, yeah, I look harder at my stuff, like everybody I'm sure, but it's still a magical. Yeah. No, for sure. I I think for us is, whether you're a 3D printer, whether you're an artist or whatever it is that you do, I think everybody looks at their stuff the most critical eye.

And yeah. So you hate it. Yeah. Yeah. I there's been times where I printed stuff for friends and I've just toiled over it. I'm like, there's this, it looks terrible. I can't give this to them. And then sure enough, they get it and they're like, I love it. It's amazing. So yeah, it's I think we're always our onus, our own hardest critics and stuff like that.

Yeah, definitely. Now you mentioned that you're, the trellises that you guys do, like their original designs for you. And it sounds like you're making them in Fusion [00:09:00] 360. Yeah a lot of people use Fusion to make like rocket ships and I just, I'm here making brand trellises. Yeah, so I that was the first real program I learned how to model in.

And I was actually modeling practical things, which is really boring. And so I just, I decided to make my first trellis in that since they're flat. And it, the first one wasn't super beautiful, but I've learned when you make a layer, when you make a line I do a lot of fine lines.

and line work, to match it to the nozzle you imagine printing it to. But yeah, so I use Fusion. I learned it from the Desktop Makes person who's on, they're on YouTube. And it's it works for what I needed to do. I'm not a sculptor, there we go. Yeah and I think it's funny you mentioned you're not making rockets in there, but your trusses are, they're still very beautiful and I, certainly I could not go in there and I couldn't make something like that.

For you, how long did it take you from no skill infusion to like being able to get to being able to make your own trellises and things like that? The, it actually, it after I took, I just took the online [00:10:00] Udemy course for that and I was able to, I was able to make the trellises pretty quick.

But if you look at the first couple of that I've made that don't exist anymore, I'm not going to show you they were very like blocky and very like angular. And so after about a year of designing, just on my own, I figured out design this, print this, look at it. And print it again until I could get those kind of lines I was looking for.

I'm still whenever I design something I still have to print it and I'll always find something that needs to be adjusted on, structurally because I just, it's, I can't really see it until I'm holding it. Yeah. So maybe I'm at a disadvantage there but that's the beauty of, now I have these A1s that can print a trellis in, 30, 45 minutes when the Ender was like 6 hours.

So it's a lot faster now. Yeah, I hope that answered your question. Yeah, no, definitely. I always, I always think like the, I don't sell 3d prints myself, but the bamboo came out of the market. I think just from a prototyping [00:11:00] standpoint, it really must have changed the game for a lot of people.

Because like you said, going from 6 hours to hold something in your hand to 30 minutes It really speeds up that whole workflow there. For you, like, when you're making a new trellis, maybe at this point in the time, maybe at this point in the game you're just good and you can get on the first shot, but in the beginning, was there a lot of iterations of trellises?

And how often do you have to go back to the drawing board after you have that first print laid down? Yeah, so the first trellis I printed, I had this brilliant idea that didn't turn out so brilliant. I'd put a mirror in it, and it probably took four or five tries before the mirror actually fit.

And I just, it was measuring, and then the ender wasn't super, accurate. Yeah. It's still, I'd say every new trellis I make now, I still print it probably twice before I'm happy with it. And then, before we like mass produce them, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's always, I don't know if you can see this one here.

Yeah. So this one, this is a new one I had. I'm starting on multicolor [00:12:00] trellises. But, like I had to adjust, like this piece here has to touch here so the structure is good here. And then when I first printed the fox here, the leaves didn't touch and it was all wobbly. So those are the kinds of things I can't really see on the drawing board as well.

So yeah. Yeah. I know even for me, I also don't 3D model either, but even sometimes prints that I see online, I'll go to make them and then actually like having them in your hand and Oh, this is a little different than I was expecting. So yeah, I can yeah. I can see that for sure.

For you since you got, since you, you guys have original designs, you're making all of your own trellises how is that kind of something where you sit down and you say, I think that this is cool? Do you have people approaching you and say, this is what I'm looking for? What is that design process like and how much of that is just like your own mind and how much is driven by your customers?

So I, I have a list that I keep of just, if I get an idea, I put on the Google Drive list. I, my customers will often [00:13:00] suggest designs I think that's the bulk of it. It's, a lot of it's just, I this is My escape from the normal work. So it's I want to make this art.

That, that's how it goes there. But I do like to listen to what people are asking for. Cause you know, usually I can deliver on that. So yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think I, I'm not a IT guy myself, but I work at a software company and I think you sometimes you just need that like art escape or that hobby escape sometimes outside of your day to day job.

So yeah, no, that's a very relatable for sure. That's neat. I never imagined sending I've with Etsy, you can send your art all over the world. People buy it and Pretty neat. What's what's like the craziest, I don't know if you keep track of like where you've sent stuff, but do you have anywhere like super crazy you've sent your trellises?

Not, not crazy. They've gone to Australia, England Switzerland Sweden. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. So I sell a surprising amount a surprising a lot to Canada, even though it doubles the price of the trellis and shipping, which But, yeah it's [00:14:00] fascinating.

That's very cool. I'm always curious, I, and particularly for you being on the houseplant side, again, a little different, but, when I was selling houseplants, there was a ton of customer service that came up for just, by nature, selling a live plant through the mail. It's a lot happens with that.

But for you, do you have any crazy customer service stories, or anything that's but like a struggle from a customer service standpoint in your business, or is it been pretty smooth? I only have a couple one star reviews on that, and it was mostly just people being very unreasonable, so I had a person that bought one, and it got lost in the mail, and she was very angry, and I was like, no problem, I'll just send you another one, so I sent her another one, and then she said, oh no, I just got it, and she said, but it, she, like you, with your pot, she put it out, And it was, I don't know if it was Arizona, but somewhere very warm, it was like 110 and it warped it right away.

Yeah. And she's was very mad [00:15:00] about it. And I just said I already sent you a replacement. And one star. And that was just, I felt like there was nothing else I could have done for that person. Yeah. I feel there, sometimes you just get those people that you hit there's nothing you could do.

It was just going to be a one star. But. Honestly, I feel like when I look at reviews on businesses, I'm like skeptical of the people who it's all five star reviews. I feel if you've ever sold something, you're going to get a one star review no matter how good you do it. So yeah, I think I almost, when I see a couple of one star reviews and like that, that checks out.

That makes sense. Yeah a friend of mine's a like a senior marketing person and he actually I went to him and I was like What should I do with this? And he's here you just need to go on to the review and respond to it in like a normal manner Yeah Show that you did everything you can and he says that has a lot of value for folks like you Don't trust the people that you have You know all five star reviews.

So yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good strategy for sure for you, similar but different though in terms of like [00:16:00] craziness in a business selling 3D prints, especially back in the days when you were on and under?

Like you said, it's not something where you can just pump out a ton of them all at once. Have you ever run into inventory issues from a 3D printing standpoint? Yes, so I, the, I think it was my, probably my first Mother's Day. So my biggest time of the year, for whatever reason, is Mother's Day. It's bigger than Christmas.

Yeah and it's usually gifts to moms. And it was back when I only had the one printer, and I got so far behind that year that that's when I went and got the. Cobra. I was a, I caught up to it. It was like, like you were saying about customer service, it was like a lot of apologizing, a lot of, yeah.

Like I can't get this there before Mother's Day. I know. That's fine. And for the most part, and during that time, folks were very kind about it. That's one of the reasons why I have so many printers now. It's great. Especially you said, with the bamboos that I can now I can print a Charleston hour so I can.

I don't have to keep as much stock and yeah it's so much [00:17:00] better now. Yeah, I think having that quick turnaround time, it just gives a lot of breathing room across the board. Funny enough, talking to people throughout the different people who sell stuff, it seems to be a common trend that like a lot of people, they just hit, whether it's Mother's Day or Christmas or whatever it is, like that one week where it, a lot of people have to go out and buying additional printers just to keep up the capacity.

So seems seems like that's common.

I'm really happy about the era of super fast printing, let's put it that way. I'm sure everybody is, but from a pumping things out perspective, it's been such a godsend. Yeah, no, I could definitely imagine. Just as a hobbyist, it's a godsend, so I have to imagine as a business. It's probably very helpful. For you just like thinking about your business in general, how you've run it, From the, from a design standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, all these different pieces.

Anything critical you think you've learned along the way that you would pass on to maybe somebody looking to get into a similar style of business? Absolutely. So [00:18:00] costs are, I've changed how I think about costs. So since I use this to make art, like infusion, like that's not a part of the process that I cost at all.

Like the design time that I spend, I just do that to relax. When I first started, I was like, Oh, it took me this many hours and I'm only, so I threw that out the window. And it's been a lot less stressful since, so then what I do is just, I do materials plus 50 percent on markup for anything I sell and then, I try and keep track throughout the year of costs and that sort of thing.

So I'd recommend that to anyone that, you know, especially when you're getting started, maybe don't stress about the design time if you're doing original stuff. Yeah I think I can at least say for experience for me in starting small businesses, It's definitely important to know your numbers and it's definitely important to keep track of things.

But I think a lot of times too, especially if it's your first business venture you're gonna, it's, the numbers aren't always going to make sense when you factor your time into it. So I agree. I think separating [00:19:00] yourself from that, not forever, but like in the beginning, I think that can be really helpful.

Absolutely, yeah, if I was going to do this like full time, I'd probably again have to adjust, but I think the only other thing I'd say is, since I sell on Etsy, it's really important to understand the fees there, because it's like fee, they don't lump them all together in one piece there's a lot of good free trackers out there that you can put your price in and it'll tell you like all the current fees on Etsy and then you can know if you're going to make money at it, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, that's with Etsy, I know, I, likewise, I experience that. I know a lot of people, they get scared away from all the fees, which, it definitely, you do have to keep track of it, it's not super obvious when you're making your listing, all the places that the fees are going to come into play, but again I do think it's great, especially if it's your first time dipping your toes into selling stuff online, it's going to help you get traffic it's, there's just like that backbone of infrastructure there for you to not have to figure everything else out on your own.

So I know a lot of people get discouraged by the fees and get scared away by the fees, but [00:20:00] I think, Everybody has to make their own decision, but I do think it's a good platform to start on for sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's been great. So especially like I said, it's not my full time gig.

So it's, if I don't make I'm not gonna worry about making rent this month. Yeah for sure. For sure. We've talked a little about your business up until this point. We've talked about your 3d printing side But I am just curious because you're a plant enthusiast yourself to to know more about you on the plant side What do you have a favorite plant?

What types of plants do you tend to keep and tell me just a little bit more about what you got going on over On that side of things. Yeah, sure. Like I said, I've been collecting plants for a long time and Half of my collection is probably like orchids So I have what you'd call species orchids from all over the world which is pretty cool.

My smallest orchid is probably about this big which is really neat. And then for One of the first things I started doing with the trellises was Hoya's, so I have a lot of Hoya's plants if folks don't know they're, Hoya's come in all different leaf shapes and sizes, and they have some of the most beautiful blooms next to orchids in my [00:21:00] opinion, and trellising them up is a way to keep them healthy and keep them growing really well I have quite a few Hoya's as well.

I have a very forgiving spouse, so I have a, our entire guest room upstairs is probably filled with multiple plant shelves. Oh, nice. And it's definitely a different tour than this. Yeah. Yeah, those are some of my favorite ones. And then I just, I keep plants throughout the house at a more reasonable level.

That's it's cool to hear, I always love hearing people's different interests for plants. For you. Yeah. What you keep, it's I always think, when I think of orchids and Hoyas, it's a plant that, I think there's, it requires somebody who's very patient. They only bloom very, it's not very frequently that they bloom, but when they do bloom, they're so beautiful.

And I think a lot of people have a misconception too with orchids. It's, they're so common, you see them at grocery stores and you see them here and there and the flowers fall off. And I think a lot of people think that you just throw them away after that, which makes me so sad. Yeah.

It's sad. You seem to be more on the flower side of things. Am I wrong for saying that? [00:22:00] No I, you, the solution is you just buy more so then you have so many that something's always in bloom. Yeah. But yeah. I, ironically the ones that I have from the grocery store are the only ones that bloom on time every single year for me, so some of them I've been waiting for years, which is crazy to say, but Eventually they do bloom and it's pretty cool.

So yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's funny You say that about having so many that there's always something going on. That was how I How I think I originally got so deep into houseplants. I, I started out with just a couple and one was getting a new leaf at the time and I was so excited about it, but then you have to wait so long for the, for another leaf to come out.

And I was like if I just get more, they'll always be something that has a new leaf coming. So yeah, it's a very relatable. Yeah. Yeah, no, I, it's fun. It's again, like totally different than work. So it's nice to have a hobby. That's, I guess more organic, literally. Yeah, no, for sure.

I guess like a final question that kind of melds these two together it sounds like that you're [00:23:00] putting stuff in PLA and you mentioned things being like more of a literal organic hobby, but it's a bioplastic.

And in theory, I believe you have to like commercially compost it, but PLA, it's it does, it's more of a bioplastic than, other plastics that we see in the day to day. Is that something, when you're offering trellises, is that like an interest point to people, or does that come up in conversation?

Or is that kind of for non 3D printers, does that kind of go over people's heads a little bit? So I do list it as a bioplastic on on my listings for Etsy. In, in real life, I don't, Honestly, I don't really believe in calling it like a compostable plastic, I think we've all seen the videos where it's been buried outside for 10 years and it looks the same, so I try not to, most sellers do lean heavily into that.

What I talk about is, so I save you probably can't see it back there, but I save all my plastic, all the remnants, and I melt it down into small succulent planters. Oh, nice. And I sell those at my craft fairs. And that's [00:24:00] just, people love to hear about how we're recycling the plastic.

And like up cycled, so that's I approached from that angle we don't throw any plastic away. Maybe a small amount, but it's all gonna eventually be made into molds and and other practical things like that. Yeah, and then, if you're saving that waste, it's yeah.

In selling it, you're, you're recouping some of the loss there. Yeah, for sure I love melting down my, scraps and my supports and all that stuff. And yeah, I have one, I had this like big pot mold that I got. It's actually one of my favorite pots that I have.

I do need to drill like a drena tool in the bottom, but they're very cool. And yeah, I think that especially from presenting it to other people, I feel like that's a really cool way to, To discuss how everything, it's not just like plastic going into the trash.

that's fun too to see how they turn out, after you've been melted down. For the record, I use a sacrificial garage sale toaster oven outside. I don't do it inside because Yeah. It just, it gets a little strong scented there, but yeah. I used to do my inside in my like [00:25:00] actual cookware and yeah, after a couple rounds of that, I like I said, I ran down to Goodwill and I got myself my dedicated filament melting goes outside, but yeah, no, it's it can get a little crazy for sure.

Yeah. So we've recycled about seven pounds of plastic so far. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. That's very cool. so much. Chris, it was so interesting learning about you, learning about your plants, your printers, and your whole operation over there. For people who don't follow you online already and would like to, or they want to buy a where can they find you online?

Just Prints for Plants on Etsy, and on all the socials. Instagram, TikTok that sort of thing. So you can find me there. Awesome. Appreciate you coming on today. It was so much fun learning about all of the stuff you were going on there. And with that said, that has been Meet the Makers.