Makerbot, one of the most recognizable names in the 3D printing industry, has had a really tough year.
First, there was a bout of layoffs announced back in April, along with the closure of their brick and mortar stores. Following that, there was a class action suit filed from the shareholders in response to the smart extruder design.
In a blog post today by Makerbot CEO Jonathan Jaglom, it was announced that the company would be reducing staff by 20% again. Citing a failure to meet ambitious goals over the last “few quarters,” several changes were outlined. There have been two new placements: Kavita Vora as Chief of People, and Nadav Goshen as President.
The immediate changes listed in the blog post were:
- Reorganizing our teams and reducing our staff by 20% globally
- Changing our leadership team to focus on our people and the MakerBot 3D Ecosystem
- Moving our R&D teams from Industry City in Brooklyn to our corporate headquarters at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn. This will bring our teams closer together, ensuring more collaboration and easier communication. The MakerBot Factory will remain in Industry City in Brooklyn.
- Setting a defined product development plan that is centered around building connected products within our ecosystem
- Working with a contract manufacturer to produce 4th generation products to save on costs and focus our teams at our factory in Brooklyn on our current generation of MakerBot 3D printers
In the blog post, Jaglom talks about the future direction of the company.
Nadav and his teams are focused on building out our world-class ecosystem and supporting our community better than we ever have. He will ensure that strategy around our product offering, ecosystem, and brand are in full alignment.
This statement makes us wonder what future changes we’ll be seeing in services owned by MakerBot such as Thingiverse.com, the popular 3D model repository.
11 thoughts on “Makerbot Lays Off 20% of Its Staff for the 2nd Time This Year”
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“Working with a contract manufacturer…” is that corporate speak for “…we are moving manufacturing to China.” ? If so, you can count on me…to never be a customer.
It depends. It could also just mean outsourcing it to another company who specializes in manufacturing to reduce cost as a specialized manufacturer can build it more efficiently. Or it could just be China. One of the two.
We had been buying maker bots (over 10 now) since the original replicator and have watched the quality absolutely tank. the 2x was the last passable printer they made while the quality on even those has completely fallen through. We are definitely never going to purchase another one and i tell every single person that asks they should but ANYTHING else. Their name brand must have finally hit the point that it just doesn’t matter how much momentum they had at the beginning, it is now just a matter of time.
When Makerbot first started out with Bre at the helm there was no competition at all thus boosting sales, but as the years passed competition came with some of them being far better than Makerbot at half the cost. In reality with Makerbot you’re paying $3,000 for a name and that’s it. Lower the price and the sales will go back up granted you still deliver the same quality product as before.
My local library system has a couple of makerspaces in its branches and their experience with MakerBot Replicator 5th Generation 3D printers is not good. Extruder clogs happen far too frequently, so they had to become experts on clearing them which was not easy because the heads apparently weren’t designed for easy maintenance.
You’d think they’d have gotten it right by the 5th generation.
I tried to order the original makerbot. The thing was never in stock. The company has seemed very poorly run since the beggining. Now they have competition and their answer to that was to reduce quality while retaining a premium price tag. They really do deserve to fail.
“Moving our R&D teams from Industry City in Brooklyn to our corporate
headquarters at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn. This will bring our
teams closer together, ensuring more collaboration and easier
communication. The MakerBot Factory will remain in Industry City in
Brooklyn.”
So, moving the design guys away from the manufacturing guys (who provide direct feedback and the necessary back-and-forth required for project to go ahead occurs) and instead moving them under the careful eye of the suits so that they can micromanage the projects into the ground.
Nope, the suits wouldn’t move the corporate HQ to where R&D and production are, so that -all- could cooperate closely. That would be too inconvenient for the management.
You have a group of “producers” make something wonderful and life-changing, then the “non-producers” arrive and spread a little cash around to gain control. After that, they really have no idea what to do with it, because they don’t understand making things in the first place. So an entire hierarchy of empty heads and suits start suing, laying off from the bottom up, calling in other non-producing experts, ad nauseum, until the whole thing goes belly-up. They all drew big salaries during this time, so they’ll just move on to another big corporation and look for some new productive entity that they can suck the life out of. There are always clueless investors happy to pay these experts to destroy, never figuring out the game that’s being played.
I will never consider purchasing a Makerbot product again, and I am not surprised at the news of the company imploding. I was an early adopter of Makerbot, and I still have a Thing-o-matic – which works when it wants to. However, just after they were bought out, they dropped all support for the TOM, and ignored the people that helped build their company and the online community. Typical big company mentality.
I will say that I am extremely pleased with the ease of use and reliability of my 10 month old Ultimaker 2. While it is a little pricey, (but less than a Makerbot) it has been running nearly nonstop since I first purchased it making thousands of parts for educational toy kits that we sell.
So sad. They were part of the whole open source community and decided to cut themselves off from that in the name of profit. Instant Karma’s gonna get you!