Transforming retail-display manufacturing with Large Format Additive Manufacturing (LFAM) technology
Retail displays have long been built with laser cut, welded, and powder coated metal, a reliable but time consuming, material intensive route that struggles with today’s demand for organic shapes and rapid iteration. This case study shows how Barrows, a global retail experience company serving brands such as Tesco, Red Bull and Unilever, replaced those subtractive steps with Large Format Additive Manufacturing (LFAM).
By integrating the CEAD Flexbot robotic pellet extrusion system in 2024, Barrows now prints showroom-ready parts, cutting lead times from weeks to days, slashing waste, and meeting its sustainability goals. Continue reading to learn about Barrows selection criteria, advantages of LFAM and great examples of their use of the machine.
Global, sustainable design and production
Barrows is a global retail experience company that designs and manufactures permanent in-store displays and “Connected Store” solutions for brands such as Tesco, Red Bull, Unilever and Holland & Barrett.
Founded in 1990, the firm now operates from New York, London, Toronto and multiple hubs in South Africa, combining shopper marketing, display design and category transformation under one roof.
Committed to sustainability, Barrows has introduced initiatives like “Barrows Re:Store”, aiming to decarbonize in-store activations and connect with environmentally conscious customers and consumers. With a team of over 500 employees worldwide, Barrows continues to drive retail forward by combining design, technology, and strategic insight to create impactful retail experiences
Making Ripples
“Using Grasshopper in Rhino we can create all kinds of algorithmically driven textures and shapes. We created a ripple bench for the guest showers in our offices. The inspiration was taken from the water droplets in a shower, echoed by the translucent plastic.”
Why Barrows adopted LFAM
Traditional fabrication in Barrows’ high-mix / low-volume factory relies on laser cutting, bending, welding and powder coating sheet and tube metal and plastics.
While precise and robust, these subtractive steps create three persistent pain-points:
- Long lead times & slow iteration: complex, non-linear forms demand multiple jigs and skilled labour before a concept can be evaluated on the shopfloor.
- Design limitations: the retail market increasingly asks for organic shapes that cannot be bent or folded from sheet metal without costly tooling.
- Material waste & carbon load: off-cuts, re-work and shipping heavy prototypes sit uneasily with Barrows’ Re:Store sustainability program.
“The Flexbot has been a game changer for how we view engineering and design challenges with a whole new perspective. We are able to tackle complex multi-part designs through clever design strategies and toolpath generation, achieving greater results with fewer processes and less manual input.”
Terracotta Soldiers
“Part of our furniture production run for the Cape Town is the modular couch system in a trendy red brick colour. These big boys are about to be packed and sent off to have cushions fitted.”
Criteria for the LFAM solution
When Barrows set out to adopt large-format additive manufacturing, the team drew up an exacting checklist: the platform had to print true large-format parts at high deposition rates, deliver repeatable accuracy, and slot effortlessly into a high-mix, low-volume workflow for rapid prototyping.
Just as crucial was open material capability, the extruder needed to handle a broad range of palettes, from cost-effective PLA to fibre-reinforced engineering grades, so designers could tune strength, weight, appearance and sustainability case by case.
CEAD’s Flexbot met every technical requirement and, just as importantly, came with a partner mindset: collaborative training and workshops, process-tuning sessions and ongoing engineering support turned the purchase into a practical relationship, not a transaction, enabling Barrows to unlock value from day one.
“CEAD provided a solid platform and backed it up with collaborative working sessions and ongoing support to help us get up to speed. The relationship has been practical and useful, not just transactional, which helped us get value from the system early on.”
Rapid Response
“A great example of rapid prototyping. Yesterday morning the request came in for a second prototype structure to develop freight packaging for the Walgreens CS FSU as these units will be packed two-per-box. The team turned to LFAM as this requirement is purely volumetric and weight specific for testing and it would take additional time to fabricate a sample structure through the conventional processes.”
9:00: Brief and sketched designs
10:00: CAD model resolved
11:00: Slicing and Printing commences
18:00: Completed
Material, software and training: getting up to speed
To get the most out of the Flexbot, Barrows quickly built a robust foundation of materials, software, and in-house expertise. The printer now runs more than eight polymers, ranging from locally sourced PLA for small prototypes to PCTC and Mitsubishi Chemical’s PIPG with 30% glass fiber.
Most toolpaths are generated in Adaxis’s AdaOne slicer, while Creo, Rhino, and Grasshopper power the CAD-to-Fab workflow for parametric designs and hybrid builds. Thanks to the pre-existing know-how of Brett Horn and Dino Kartoudes, who together bring over twenty years of large-format 3D printing experience, the adoption of the technology was a positive and streamlined process.
The real learning curve lay in fine-tuning material selection and strategic toolpaths to extract maximum performance from the machine. Open communication and hands-on support from both CEAD and Adaxis accelerated that optimization, making Barrows LFAM-ready in record time.
This is bananas!
“How far can we stretch the outputs of this technology and can we finish the parts as a smooth, realistic representation of something else? We did a trial print of some fruit to put our process to the test.”
Multi-planar print paths allowed to overcome the hangs.
Printed part in clear PCTG
Painted part, still not decorated
End goal of the display
Collaboration with CEAD
The partnership between CEAD and Barrows is more than a supplier–customer relationship, it’s a two-way creative and technical exchange. CEAD’s engineers help Barrows squeeze maximum performance from the Flexbot, while Barrows’ design team feeds back ideas that push the hardware’s creative limits.
A perfect example is the 3D-printed furniture in the video below: conceived by Barrows designer Dino Kartoudes and produced on CEAD equipment, the pieces headlined a recent trade fair booth and show how seamlessly shared expertise can turn bold concepts into standout reality.
LFAM on a pedestal
“Another interesting piece for our Cape Town office is this truly unique and expressive presenters podium. We wanted to take the opportunity to showcase the capabilities of the technology, embracing the freedom of form, translucent substrates and interesting textures. Its made from a clear outer skin with a pigmented inner.”
What’s next for Barrows?
Barrows uses the Flexbot for hybrid manufacturing for various purposes: R&D, fast prototypes as well as for production purposes. The company aims to continue to expand its manufacturing capabilities to lean more and more into the LFAM process, taking more steps out of other processes and blending into one machine with an optimized holistic process.
“We are excited to keep developing our capabilities and further utilize a combo of Printing and milling to achieve even greater results.”
Crushing Couches
“One of our first big pieces was the couch module for the Cape Town office. A modular set of Lego blocks that can build out to any layout. After numerous models and versions we whittled the form down to the bare minimum, repeatedly being surprised by the incredible strength of the glass filled nylon.”
Start your large format journey with CEAD’s LFAM machines
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