The battlefield of 3D model repositories was already spread out when Lychee announced and launched its curated platform, Lychee Library, last year. But it’s been a major success despite the competition, says Cyrille Cohen, the company’s new CEO.
Cohen joined Lychee just two years ago as head of marketing and was the driving force behind both Lychee Library and the company’s rebrand from Mango 3D last year, he told All3DP. Now, stepping up to the role of CEO, Cohen is overseeing the growth he attributes in large part to the repository.
“I think we’ve surpassed our goals, for sure,” Cohen said when asked about the repository’s success. “We were expecting just a few people to use the Library, because it’s still a first version… as always, we are really surprised by our community.”
The repository is now responsible for 50% of the company’s growth, Cohen says, with the other half credited to the slicer software Lychee is known for. Interestingly, Cohen reports that Lychee Library users print twice as those who only use the slicer.
While most 3D model repositories are something of a free-for-all, where designers create and manage collections with little oversight or assistance from their hosts, Lychee has opted for a curated approach. It works with a few approved designers (70, at the time of writing), verifying and pre-supporting their models manually before making them available on Lychee Library.
The result is a platform full of high-quality, instantly printable models.
There are over 1,200 such models available on the Library right now, Cohen said, with a backlog of another 2,000 that has required Lychee to outsource to tackle in relatively reasonable time – there’s currently a months long queue between model submission and availability. Right now, the release pace is about 15 to 20 models a week, but Lychee has plans to grow to raise that number to 100 per week; a goal thats long-term success will undoubtedly be helped by the additional 10 creators applying to contribute to the Library every week.
Despite the ambitious goals, Cohen wants Lychee to stay relatively small as a company.
“We’re going to grow 20 to 30 percent in 2025, but I don’t want us to be hundreds of people,” he said. “I like the way we all know each other, and that we are the first users of our slicer; I don’t want to lose that and become a company with no identity.”
Cohen himself is an avid 3D printer, having first tried to enter the hobby when he and his brother purchased a Dagoma about ten years ago, putting it around the release of the Discovery200.
“It was the worst experience I’ve had in my life,” Cohen joked, recalling wrestling with the, at the time, budget 3D printer. “It used to be too complicated. That’s one of the reasons why I always want to make even the most complicated features easy to use.”
It wasn’t until years later, when a friend’s Ender 3 rekindled Cohen’s interest in 3D printing that he discovered resin 3D printing.
“I’m a huge Formula One fan, so it’s great to print things like steering wheels for myself. I’m also a fan of comics and video games – resin printing is definitely for me… I love all the detail.”
Now the CEO says he plans to learn how to paint his models, but it seems like he’ll have plenty of options for practice with the Lychee Library.
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License: The text of "Lychee Library is a Hit, Says New CEO" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.