"We can no longer imagine managing production and sales of custom orders without eWay-CRM," says 3Dees Industries business analyst Ladislav Čermák. The Czech seller of industrial 3D printers and manufacturer of printed parts for automotive, aerospace, and defense industries gets nearly maximum value from their CRM. The recipe? Data literacy, adapting the tool for their own purposes, and the need to manage information flows across a group spread across multiple locations in Europe.
When people hear "3D printing," most picture either a small hobbyist printer in a young tinkerer's garage, or on the opposite end, a large print farm like Prusa Research. But you focus exclusively on B2B, with your home base in the Czech Republic and Central and Eastern Europe. Can you share your revenue and team size?
It depends on what you include. In your database you have 3Dees Industries s.r.o. — that's the Czech entity — but we also have Paarts Additive, a sister company within the group. Then we have two Ukrainian companies and a Polish one. If you add it all together, last year we did over 200 million Czech crowns (roughly $9 million USD) in revenue, with a team of about 22 to 25 people.
That works out to nearly 10 million crowns (around $450,000 USD) in annual revenue per person, which is extraordinary for a company this size. You started by selling HP printers, then began printing yourselves, and have since added consulting and design. Am I missing any of the main categories?
The portfolio of printers we represent as resellers has expanded significantly. Each technology is different. HP is designed for plastic parts up to roughly half a meter, suited for serial production. Then there are metal printers and Stratasys technologies based on photopolymers or FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling — a common desktop-style 3D printing method), so the material portfolio is really what's growing. Alongside that, we do design, custom printing, and metrology — meaning scanning, measurement, reverse engineering, and selling the related equipment.
"In custom printing, we handle hundreds of projects per year. That's really hard to keep track of in your head. We built automations so that when something happens in the production system, it gets pushed into eWay-CRM, which then sends a message to someone in the back-office in Prague to issue an invoice. If that broke down, it would be extremely painful."
So what are the core products from your perspective? On the website you see everything from a bionic hand to plastic caps...
Those are applications for which our technology can be used. You can make an ashtray out of sheet metal, but you can also make a bracket for an F-15. With printers, you can make whatever you want — it just depends on who designs it and what they need it for. We operate a bit like a Kinko's (now FedEx Office). When someone needed to print their college thesis or architects needed large-format blueprints, they went to the copy shop. The staff running the machine didn't need to know what was coming out — they just printed it and handed it over. We work the same way. In custom printing, we don't need to know what a part is for. We just tell the customer what can and can't be printed, and what to watch out for. We don't have our own product — we produce what someone else has designed and needs printed.
I was struck by your gradual expansion of offices — Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Kyiv, Warsaw, Košice. How did you choose those locations?
There were various reasons. Prague is headquarters — management is here, as are the back-office team and the people who prepare print jobs that get sent to Ostrava for production. Ostrava was chosen because labor and real estate are cheaper there than in Prague. For manufacturing, you need a large floor space, forklift access, good electrical infrastructure, and ventilation. We also had trusted contacts there who could oversee and manage production remotely. Brno works because one of the co-owners is from Brno and had a similar business there previously. Turnov exists because a colleague lives there — we just set up an office so he wouldn't have to commute. Košice came about because a colleague, a great salesperson, moved back home, and since HP also assigned us the Slovak market, it's better served by someone local. Kyiv happened because HP offered us Ukraine, and doing business there without a local partner isn't feasible — so we founded a joint venture with someone from Kyiv. Poland worked out exactly the same way, with a Polish colleague leading that market.
Since you mentioned Ukraine — every armed conflict tends to accelerate technological development, whether in drone development or prosthetics for injured soldiers. How has the war in Ukraine affected your industry?
The war has definitely had an impact, but we saw something similar during COVID. Back then, we were printing respirators designed by CTU (Czech Technical University in Prague), and it was enormous publicity for 3D printing — suddenly no one questioned whether the technology made sense. Everyone in the U.S. knows brands like Stratasys and Markforged, but industrial machines are a completely different world from consumer printers. The war helped raise awareness. Everyone's now asking whether we print drones. We don't know what our customers over there are printing — that's their business — but the demand is clearly there. 3D printing's strength lies in the rapid iteration of designs. If you design a weapon system, a countermeasure is found quickly, and you need to innovate fast. Doing that through traditional manufacturing methods using molds would take months. Our customers have gotten hands-on with the technology and grown accustomed to changing designs quickly.
How to Get Maximum Value from CRM
Companies with longer histories often resist adopting CRM because more tenured colleagues aren't used to reporting, oversight, or digital tools. You, on the other hand, are quite advanced in your use of eWay-CRM. Does that have to do with being a younger company in an innovative industry?
We're a relatively young company — the average age is probably around forty. But what really mattered was that one of the founders championed the CRM implementation and wanted things systematically connected. Once a company spreads across multiple cities and countries, people don't see each other as often. Managing people remotely is tough — you either solve it through constant meetings, or through systems. Resistance to filling in records and data is probably a universal human trait; both young and older employees push back. But over time they realize that because of it, they don't have to keep repeating information — they can just look it up in the system.
You've been a long-time customer of ours. If you suddenly didn't have eWay-CRM, what would be the biggest problem?
Definitely in custom printing. With high-end printer sales, the sales cycle is long and you sell maybe a handful of units per year — but in custom printing, we handle hundreds of projects annually. That's really hard to hold in your head. We built automations so that when something happens in the production system, it automatically syncs into eWay-CRM, which then notifies someone in the back-office to issue an invoice. If that fell apart, it would be extremely painful.
"We needed to define how we'd use AI in the company in a meaningful and secure way. Some of our customers are defense contractors, and their data cannot leave our environment. So we decided to lock everything inside Microsoft's ecosystem and use Copilot, which is a platform we're already comfortable with."
You've had a number of roles at the company, including marketing. Now you're a business analyst. You also seem to have a very open mindset — curious, willing to try new things, comfortable combining AI tools. What's your background?
I studied demography and geography. Demography was heavily quantitative — I had about twelve semesters of statistics. Geography, to me, is the science of connections, and that really appealed to me. I don't have a technical or mechanical engineering background — I don't know the exact melting points of titanium alloys — but I'm comfortable with data and process thinking. And I can always figure out the technical specifics when I need to.
Back to your company. A lot of industrial companies are wrestling with which data ecosystem to choose and how to combine them. How do you approach that?
Right now we're really diving deep into the Microsoft world across the board, because we need to consolidate our data somewhere, and Microsoft is the logical choice for us. So we're exploring things like how to connect Copilot Studio with eWay-CRM and how to make use of other Microsoft applications — there are seemingly a million of them and I barely know any of them. We're figuring out which ones might actually be useful. There will probably be a bunch of tools where all we need to do is try them out, connect them, and brief our team.
You mentioned that alongside CRM, you use a separate production tracking system. Are you planning to integrate them directly?
We transfer data between the two systems using JSON files via Make (a workflow automation platform, similar to Zapier). We have a kind of converter. We actually don't want a direct integration, because then you become dependent on it. We're also currently evaluating whether to switch to a different production system — one that's newer and looks promising. If we'd gone through the trouble of building a tight direct integration, we'd lose all of that when we switch. So it's better to use neutral, middleware tools. Any decent system usually has an API or some kind of data export — you can push that somewhere and work with it. That's the approach we follow. Either way, it massively speeds up the work. Before, someone had to manually click through everything or forward emails. All of that is now automated. Things just drop into someone's queue — here, handle this — and once it's done, the next person gets notified. Nothing gets forgotten, nothing gets lost.
What would you flag for less experienced users, or people just starting to think about CRM?
Don't expect CRM to be a product that works perfectly for everyone right out of the box. We're used to working with it and bending it to different purposes. We work with the eWay-CRM team on things like, "We need you to build this feature," or "We need to customize and reshape this part." What I love most is that the tool is really flexible — you can mold it to fit your needs. That's great.
Can you give an example?
You assume everything will just work on its own, and then you realize the company has changed — you've grown, new people have joined — and suddenly you're saying, "Hey, we should think about data security. Right now everyone can see everything. If someone left on bad terms, they'd walk out with everything. We need to set up access controls." So you start doing that, and of course that breaks fifteen other things in the original setup, which you then have to go back and patch. But that's just normal company evolution.
What else do you use eWay-CRM for?
We also use it for basic accountability. If someone claims they're overwhelmed with work but has nothing logged in the CRM, you can say, "Well, either you're not being straight with us, or you're forgetting to log your activity." So it also acts as a bit of a check — it naturally shapes team behavior and accountability.
AI and Data Integration
Microsoft has its Copilot chatbot, and recently enhanced it with Copilot Tasks and an autonomous agent environment. Where are you in your AI adoption journey?
I started experimenting more seriously last fall. I liked Google Gemini, but we needed to define how we'd use AI in the company in a meaningful, security-conscious way. Some of our customers are defense contractors, and their data cannot leave our environment. So we decided to lock everything inside Microsoft's ecosystem and use Copilot, which is a platform we already know well. The first thing we're launching is an internal knowledge base. Our salespeople cover a wide portfolio, and when they're with a customer, they need to look up information fast. Beyond that, I'd like to do more advanced customer segmentation from our custom print data and make data analysis accessible to people who aren't data analysts.
Beyond monitoring workflows, where do you see AI playing a major role? Design is a big one, which is squarely in your territory.
On the AI side, modeling and design generation will move forward a lot — someone describes what they want, AI generates a draft, they tweak it, and send it to us for production. It'll also be a big help in processing scan data and generating reports. But there will always need to be hands-on expertise from the user to guide the AI correctly and evaluate what it produces. Right now we're focused on embedding AI into our processes. We're digging into the setup and management of all of it. We've automated some data flows, including ones tied to eWay-CRM, to cut down on manual steps and let things run a bit on autopilot. There's a lot you can do, but then you hit the reality of running a business. The key is finding the right starting point and building from there.
You've mentioned that you enjoy experimenting with AI chatbots, and that they've been useful when you're stuck in eWay-CRM...
Yes — Claude is really great for that, actually. Recently I couldn't figure out how to set up a specific filter in eWay-CRM — I needed a particular view and had tried setting it up about fifteen times without getting it right. So I described the problem to Claude: "I'm using eWay-CRM and need to filter by two parameters and then by a third one. How do I set up those conditions?" I got the answer immediately and it worked right away.
To close — a question that isn't easy to answer in today's turbulent environment: Where do you see the company's future?
We're following a natural, evolutionary path. We're not making big acquisition plans or drawing up strategies to conquer new markets. The emphasis will be on technology and on stability through diversification — equipment sales, custom printing, and consulting. If one area takes a hit, the others carry us, and we can keep the business going.
