New MakerBot CEO Explains Layoffs and the Company's New Vision

merbs sends an update on MakerBot, one of the most well known names in the 3D-printing industry. After its acquisition by Stratasys in 2013, defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014. MakerBot co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis stepped down, and the company laid off 20% of its employees. The new CEO, Jonathan Jaglom, is now talking about how they're rebuilding MakerBot, and where we can expect it to go in the future. "The 39-year-old, Swiss-born Jaglom says that his priorities since taking over have been to dedicate more attention to customer support, to address the remaining fallout from the extruder problem, and to reorient the company to target its Replicators to the professional and educational markets."

Jaglom also envisions a sort of "iTunes for 3D printing," where people can easily buy designs online and print them out at home. He says, "I'll be sitting at home. Maybe something broke; maybe my glasses. Maybe I want to reprint it and I'll go to Oakley, Ray Ban, whatever, Philippe Starck in this case, download the file, pay $3.49 for it, and print it at home. And then you will have to go to your Kinko's or your Fab Labs, your local 3D printing, if you want it in metal or plastics you can't have at home."

Comments

$3.49?

[Frederic54]

From Oakley, Ray Ban or Philippe Starck? Sure you mean $349.

Re:$3.49?

[DigiShaman]

Considering those aforementioned products have a very high markup being that they're as much fashion as functionality. But lets assume $175. How much of that goes into R&D and factory tooling / production?

breakerbot

[schlachter]

we started calling our $3,000 Makerbot the Breakerbot, after it stopped working a few months after purchasing it and Makerbot support failed to return our calls or emails...for the support plan we paid for.

to their credit, and much to our surprise, they finally responded to our requests about 6 months later and promptly fixed it. maybe it was the new CEO.

their thingiverse.com site is pretty cool. and their software is mostly stable/usable.

$3.49

[BradleyUffner]

"I'll go to Oakley, Ray Ban, whatever, Philippe Starck in this case, download the file, pay $3.49 for it"

If you think you will get anything from a popular name brand for $3.49 you are out of your mind. 99% of the cost of these brands is for the name its self; the materials cost practically nothing.

But will they keep

[Quok]

stealing ideas from the community and patenting them? IMO that's more damaging than their crappy extruder and other quality problems, and is something they need to publicly address.

Rebuilding Makerbot?

[TWX]

Can't they just use an existing Makerbot to make a new Makerbot?

Re:Rebuilding Makerbot?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

No, they're broken.

consumer alert

[swell]

"... defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014."

When I was a motorcycle enthusiast I marveled at the enthusiastic reviews of the new models. Amazing new technology, better materials, better handling and safety, etc. But amongst all the praise for the new model, there was usually a comment like "They finally fixed the xyz problem that plagued last year's model." Various design, material and safety problems sometimes went years without any warning to buyers although the reviewers knew about them.

Never believe advertising or reviews that are paid for by advertisers. Don't put too much faith in Consumer Reports or Amazon reviews either. Join the maker community for somewhat honest advice in that area.

Re:consumer alert

[gl4ss]

thanks to the internet though.. you can go online and look.

which is why Makerbot shut down their google groups support community group. this group provided people with answers for the previous (open source) models on how to make the machines work reliably and be top performing sub 8k$ home printers(extrusion problems plagued rep1&rep2 before community made printable fixes - fixes makerbot later adopted into their design and "fix pack" they would send to users).

with the 5th gen printers though, if you tried to mess with the smart extruder, that would void the warranty(supposedly) and users were stuck for weeks waiting for replacements and sometimes answers from their premium paid support mind you(you paid extra, like applecare, but got shitcare instead. in fact, it would be easy to argue that those paying extra in many cases did not get even the legally required warranty support(!)).

as a result they couldn't keep deleting posts just forever without starting to nuke so much stuff that people were starting to make threads to ask why are they deleting threads.. so one day they just froze it with the excuse that they preferred support to go just between makerbot and the user(they did not improve the user support at all though).

theres alternative communities now of course since, at places where they can't delete posts like they could in their own.

it's quite easy to spot a makerbot review where the reviewer never started the friggin bot even. a bunch of reviews done based on pictures. the 5th gen has a webcam, sure, yeah, that's a plus, but the firmware handling even that sucks big time AND it's equivalent to a camera . the 5th gen is also noisier and has worse output quality than replicator 2's(they went from replicator 2 to "replicator 5th" gen in one jump. for marketing reasons, to emphasize that it's a mature product. at the same time they changed the gantry -to a h-bot and not a corexy like any sane engineer would have done - , they changed the control board, they switched to their homebrew stepper controllers that suck big time, they completely redesigned the extruder and seemingly never tested it for more than an hour)...

Vision? Looking to the side?

[Mr D from 63]

Jaglom also envisions a sort of "iTunes for 3D printing," where people can easily buy designs online and print them out at home. He says, "I'll be sitting at home. Maybe something broke; maybe my glasses. Maybe I want to reprint it and I'll go to Oakley, Ray Ban, whatever, Philippe Starck in this case, download the file, pay $3.49 for it, and print it at home. And then you will have to go to your Kinko's or your Fab Labs, your local 3D printing, if you want it in metal or plastics you can't have at home."

This vision is already being implemented by some on-line 3D printing services, and they've already thought further ahead and included DELIVERY!

New Makerbot?

[monkeyxpress]

Stratasys was a pre-existing player in commercial 3D printing who totally missed the consumer 3D printing bandwagon and then had to buy MakerBot to get into the market. Since that acquisition they appear to have totally fluffed it. That usually means it is run by MBAs.

The logical conclusion is that they just need to wait for someone to start a MakerBot 2.0 and then they can acquire and destroy the future a second time. Maybe the MakerBot founder's non-competes are running out soon?

Let Me Guess

[Greyfox]

"As CEO, my vision is that the only way this company can work is if I'm grossly overcompensated while all the other employees learn to make due with less. I will run the company into the ground for the next two years and then leave, taking a 'severance bonus' of 2 years salary and stock options, all the while laying off employees with a promise not to contest their unemployment claims if they sign a waiver promising not to sue us." Is that about right?

Not surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing the excellent Netflix documentary entitled Print the Legend, I can't say I'm surprised about the downfall of Makerbot. Bre is a major tool, he let his success get to his head in the worst way.

Print The Legend
http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/80005444

So they want to piss on the maker community?

[Gliscameria]

We went from these being open source tools for 'makers' to little boxes that you put coins into and they spit out DRM'd content? It even sounds like they've given up on the consumer hardware and now just want to sell files. There's about a million other startups and existing companies that could do the same thing with no clear disadvantage now that they've said "Meh..." to the printing hardware.

Re:Oh well?

[tshawkins]

Checkout myminifactory

Its turning into a nice thingiverse alternative, and they have a rule that all items must be printable and accompanied by a pic of the print. 80% of the shit on thingiverse has never been printed, and is just a dumping ground for designers. The stl files on thingiverse are often broken and are non manifold or missing vertices, such that they wont slice properly.

Re:Even better... how about unique brands?

[gl4ss]

talking about cloning 3d printers... ..if you want a decent "makerbot"(a replicator 1/2 like bot running mightyboard+open source firmware) you need to buy a clone of the last gen makerbots(wanhao, flashforge are common brands). (due to the 5th gen "extruder problem", shitty electronics and so forth - you don't want a 5th gen. the clones are better!).

basically the management for last year sold shit and they knew they were selling shit, they just didn't care, their merger bonuses depended on last year. oh and the CES etc awards for makerbot 5th gen replicators printers last year? all given without seeing output from one, just bought with money. the samples at the show were printed with their previous generation printers.