Crewe Alexandra uses full-color 3D print for kit launch figure

Crewe Alexandra turned its 2026-27 home kit launch into a full-color 3D printing demo that looked far more like a production workflow than a novelty stunt. The club built the reveal around a lifelike miniature of captain Mickey Demetriou in the new Puma shirt, printed on a Mimaki 3DUJ-2207 and shown off in a launch video that finished with Demetriou standing beside his own scaled-down double on the pitch at Mornflake Stadium.

The project started with capture, not printing. Demetriou was scanned at the club using an Artec Leo 3D scanner supplied by Europac 3D, with the scan taken in both the outgoing shirt and the new home kit. Europac 3D then processed and color-balanced the data before sending it to Hybrid Services for production. That chain matters because it shows where full-color printing earns its keep: in the handoff between scanning, color management and a printer that can reproduce more than 10 million colors without reducing the figure to a generic plastic likeness.

Hybrid Services, Mimaki’s UK and Ireland distributor and Crewe Alexandra’s official printer partner, handled the print close to home. Its headquarters are just a short walk from Mornflake Stadium, which gave the campaign a local, practical feel rather than an outsourced marketing exercise. James Beckett, Crewe Alexandra’s head of commercial, wanted to make the annual shirt launch more distinctive and to incorporate Mimaki technology into a major club production. The result was a printed model about 20 cm tall, with smaller commemorative versions made for Demetriou’s children.

That scale and finish are what make the story useful beyond football. The figure was not just a display prop. It carried shirt branding, facial detail, skin tones and the kind of subtle surface color that ordinary filament printing struggles to handle cleanly. In other words, this was full-color additive manufacturing doing exactly what it does best: turning a digital scan into a branded object that can survive a camera, a pitch-side reveal and social media without looking toy-like.

The launch video quickly found an audience, generating nearly 40,000 Instagram views. For Crewe Alexandra, the printed figure gave the kit reveal a clearer identity than the usual mix of player photos and fabric close-ups. For the rest of the 3D printing world, it was a sharp reminder that full-color systems are moving into real promotional work, where the winning formula is simple: scan accurately, color-match properly, print cleanly, and make the object worth filming.