They informed employees of the shutdown as they were firing them. This was a few days AFTER they revoked the employees insurance benefits without notice or explanation. Those same employees were also told that they're unlikely to get their final paycheck.
As for me, I was suckered into pre-paying for $500 worth of classes that I'll never be reimbursed for. So many people who's livelihoods depended on their facilities were completely blindsided. Members who had been there for years were told they had hours to remove their belongings or they would be confiscated. The whole thing is a complete mess.
All of this just a few weeks after opening a brand new location in Brooklyn. I simply can't comprehend the level of negligence and mismanagement here.
> Those same employees were also told that they're unlikely to get their final paycheck.
This as a Finn sounds crazy. Here the employees are protected to a degree if the company goes bankrupt then the government will pay the final paycheck and the government will be the first one to get their money back from the bankruptcy (before any banks/other creditors when any existing assets are sold)
I checked the TechShop reviews on Glassdoor a month or so ago. While you have to put all such reviews through a b.s. filter of your own design, the overall impression was that the business was sinking and that management was wildly out of touch. Looks like some of that was accurate.
This was a few days AFTER they revoked the employees insurance benefits without notice or explanation.
There is somewhat of a saving grace here. Under federal law, these employees automatically qualify for a special enrollment period through the health insurance marketplace since they lost their employer-provided health insurance [1]. Since this happened during November, they can have coverage beginning December 1 as long as they sign up before the end of the month.
What was $500 in classes supposed to get you? It sounds like they were charging quite a bit for classes to make sure you knew how to not kill yourself on various equipment.
I was a member of Austin’s TechShop for two years. It was interesting contrasting it to the ATX Hackerspace. The hackerspace (a few years back, anyway) was much better at building a community. The fee was only $35/mo, and they had a starving student discount, and you were also free to invite your friends to tag along. As a result, there were always people just hanging out at the hackerspace. A lot of near-college-age space cadets and techno-dreamers, and they’d be there all day. You could go there to work on a project, or just to mooch off of the conversation.
TechShop never developed a community. It felt sterile in comparison. The fees were more like $125/mo (at the time, and only went up from there). There was no central area to hang out in and chat. And inviting a friend along cost something like $20. These conditions resulted in the demographic becoming more like a bunch of upper middle class dudes who managed to get a few hours away from the fam to work on their project. There was no social core, it never became a hang-out.
There were also some financial issues which really turned me off. I had spent about $1500 on classes early on (thinking I’d just get signed off on all of the machines asap so that I was free to work on anything), but I later found out that if you didn’t badge into a machine for over 12 months, your credential for that machine expired and you had to pay to take the class again. Boom, easily $1000 down the drain. By the time they started hiking up their membership prices, I was disillusioned and declined to renew.
I did a trial membership of the Menlo Park, California facility in 2009. It didn't have the vibe you mention, either, but it seemed like more fun than the quiet shared office spaces I was considering at the time.
What stopped me from signing up after the trial was the no-kids policy. I think the age minimum was 16. While I understand why this was the case -- insurance requirements, danger, and you don't want other people's brats treating the place like a playground -- it completely ruled out joining. If I couldn't stop by there on the weekend for even half an hour while my kids sat quietly in the corner reading books, then all my hacker exploits would be hidden from them, and I want them to be exposed to that stuff.
ATX Hackerspace has made a lot of progress over the last few years. It's one of the better hackerspaces I've been seen as far as sustainable growth, community, and business structure. If anyone has been displaced by TechShop closing, I'd recommend you give ATX Hackerspace a shot.
To each his own I guess, but socializing and constant noise around when others are socializing is the main thing I hate about hacker spaces. I would gladly pay extra to have a "sterile" workplace for my projects.
At the Redwood city location there were many artists and small businesses that depended on the facilities. It will be a big blow to them.
I think they got reckless with their expansion. The San Jose location moved to a new location after their lease expired. They chose to relocate to a prime location in downtown San Jose and ended up with a million dollar shortfall to renovate and open the new location. They somehow managed to scrounge the money through an appeal to the community and opened but it must have ruined their financials.
At the same time they were opening in other cities. If their financials in the Bay area were shaky (as they admit in their closing statement on their website) then it is not clear why they were taking on more risk by expanding.
They had no choice but to expand. They had a fairly large corporate office, which needed income from a lot of sites to cover the overhead. I was thinking about investing and got a good look at the financials - only the three Bay Area shops were profitable. Bottom line, they overestimated how many makers out there are willing to pay $150 per month to support their laser cutter habit.
Really tragic. I toured their SF facilities and was really impressed with the seriousness of their equipment. Definitely a huge leap above the average maker shop.
Ultimately the high price wasn't what held me back from joining, but the tool use policies required by their insurers. You had to pay for a brutally waitlisted class before they'd let you use so much as a laser cutter. I wonder how much this contributed - both the cost of insurance and its consequences - to their decline.
For better or worse, that's been the model at every makerspace I've been a member of/looked into. And I think it makes sense, insurance-mandated or not. Lots of expensive, potentially dangerous machinery that if used wrong can destroy itself, its user, and/or those nearby.
Also, in my experience once you've built up enough trust with the admins they'll let you get a crash course from a member who knows what's up and skip the fees and formal training process.
I thought the classes were pretty helpful and a pretty good deal, considering they had a maximum capacity of a few students at a time. I’m sure the instructors were only making peanuts out of it. I didn’t have any trouble getting into class slots at the SF location, when I was trying to do it a couple years ago.
The bigger problem for me was that equipment was under some contention, meaning that it took signing up for a particular (maybe 2 hour) block of time a couple days in advance. I was trying to prototype things and learn basic stuff at the same time, which meant that my original computer designs were typically wrong the first few tries, and I wanted to do several rounds of iterative improvements to my designs. That is: 10 minutes of cutting, followed by 30 minutes of fiddling with a computer program or vector file, followed by 10 more minutes of cutting, etc. With a 2 hour block of time it’s only possible to get through 3 feedback cycles in that style, after which I sometimes had to wait a few days to try again at a time that would fit in my schedule. I would have been dramatically more efficient if I could have shared a 6 hour block of time with 3–4 other people.
Wow. I'm speachless. I remember when Obama visited the TechShop near me in Pittsburgh. This was supposed to be the next big thing! The harbinger into the Uberization of the workforce. What a bummer and major dissapointment. I met with the staff there numerous times; they were fantistic people - well educated and helpful. This is just so dissapointing. There are quite a few makerspaces and hackerspaces in Pittsburgh. I hope this doesn't spell the end of this movement.
I hate to be the guy who says he saw this coming, but I doubt I'm the only one who did. Renting out prime real estate in downtown areas, buying very expensive tools and machinery, and letting people use them for a very small percentage of the cost? Not a good business model.
I suspect there is still a business model there. When I was looking for access to machine shop tools in Boston area (I primarily needed a good accuracy CNC mill) I found nothing that worked for me. Best match was a "maker space" with a mess inside, 4 machines 2 of which were broken (including their one CNC) and remaining two looking suspicious.
How can I use machines? Take a class after sign up. When is the next class? Not sure, in a few months maybe; they fill quick, too, so keep checking often. The attitude of an admin I checked with was "get lost, we have enough members already".
I finally found what I needed at a university hobby shop: working machines, busy but good access to tools, efficient admins. To get CNC access I needed 2 short classes that I could both schedule within 2 weeks.
Before I found that though I would gladly pay higher membership fees for a clean, efficient machine shop access. Just my 2c.
Market size would be a challenge. You likely represent a very niche segment - a highly technically savvy hobbyist who wants to work on tools yourself for the love of it.
For anyone doing requiring 3D printing, CNC etc professionally or even as a semi serious hobby, I'm sure there would be firms who can execute and fedex you the job.
Here in Singapore when I moved into our apartment, I ended up having to design a custom child safety lock for my windows. I found quite a few 3D print shops which could deliver the next day at quite a reasonable rate - fast enough for me to iterate the final design within a week.
I frequented the Redwood City location but bailed after the expansion. Or rather, I bailed after everyone else who I mooched knowledge off of bailed. Still, it was great while it lasted. Ace Monster Toys is similar in the East Bay.
What a shame. There was one right next to the San Jose State University campus. They were forced to move when construction on new private student housing began where their building had been located. After a lot of hardship and pleas for donations they had just finished moving into a new location right on 2nd street in the middle of downtown.
There was a location near me, but I could never justify spending that much money on something I'd use for a a day or two a month. Between commutes during the week and traveling on weekends there would never have been time to make it worthwhile. Sad to see them go under though.
I could never justify joining the Pittsburgh one when it was open. I did visit a few times and always felt like they had too many employees and too much space for what they were. They also chose one of the most expensive places to rent in a city filled with affordable real estate.
Eh good riddance. I recall encountering a litany of safety issues at their first location. For instance... a properly set up machine shop has the milling machines placed in the corners of the room, and the remainder with shields around them. This is so that if a part is improperly fixtured, the part won't be shot out of the vice at a neighboring operator. When a certain mill made a terrible noise at the speed I needed to operate it at, I was told to crank the speed up until the noise went away. This is when the location was run by the core group of people who started it... and thus I'm not surprised that it was mismanaged at scale as it grew.
These kind of facilities should be paid for by tax dollars (which they are in other countries). They provide a needed place for people to tinker and learn which is beneficial to the community overall.
This is rather unexpected and surprising to me. I wonder what it was about the business model that just didn't work?
When they opened the Chandler location here in the Phoenix area, I quickly signed up for a year's membership, but that turned out to be a mistake. I certainly didn't get my money's worth, but the mistake was on my end, not theirs: They were located in the east valley (where it seems all the cool kids are), and I live in the west valley; it was a good 100 mile drive round-trip for me to go there. I hardly ever went as a result, and the membership was wasted.
The space itself was amazing otherwise; had it been closer to my home I am sure I would have used it more often than I did for the tools I didn't otherwise have at home (like the laser cutters, for instance). I was always impressed how they had workshops for just about everything you needed to take an idea from a concept (CAD/design) to finished prototype.
There more more than a few startups that got their start at TechShop; one of the more famous examples was Square (they prototyped the original swipe reader thru TechShop).
I am now wondering what, if anything, this says (or what effects it will have) about other maker and hackerspaces. We don't really have very many in the Valley. For myself, I'll just continue doing what I've always done, and work from home or over at my friend's shop.
Update: the founder of Square is re-opening the St. Louis location.[1]
The Deputy City Manager of San Jose has his staff looking into what to do about the San Jose location.[2] There's a good chance San Jose and the Downtown Development Association will make something happen. They're very aggressive in building up downtown San Jose. In 2008, it was almost totally empty, and they want startups to locate there.
More broadly, it's kind of sad how little actually came of the "Maker Movement," at least in terms of startups. MakerBot sold for $400M and there are plenty of small 3-D printer companies targeted at hobbyists. Ponoko and Shapeways are solid if unspectacular. Arduino and Raspberry Pi are both solid projects, AdaFruit and Sparkfun are solid businesses. Make: Magazine is cool, but still a niche publication.
Of course, startups aren't the only measure of success. The net positive is hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of younger hackers who may go on to build the next hardware company based on lessons learned at a MakerFaire.
I belonged to the Redwood City TechShop for a year and was surprised five years ago seeing a TechShop planned for Raleigh, NC when we were thinking of moving to RTP. I'm not sure that it ever opened, it didn't last long.
We ended up in Winston-Salem, NC instead, and I look forward to checking on Mixxer when it opens, $550/year, https://wsmixxer.org/. Winston-Salem has a big arts community, might be an interesting place.
I was a member at TechShop RDU for a couple years. It started as an independent makerspace, got acquired by TechShop in 2011, then closed in 2013. It was a really cool place and I miss it. A lot of interesting characters there.
As others have said in this thread, I think TS had a tough value proposition to build a business model around. Classes were a pain and a fairly big start-up cost for new members, but inevitable to satisfy insurance requirements. The monthly membership fee was fairly cheap considering the awesome equipment they had, but expensive if you could only manage to go a few days a month. Plus whatever storage fees for larger projects and/or the hassle of carting your stuff around.
On top of that, management at both locations I used (RDU and Arlington) seemed a bit chaotic. Sad to see them go out of business either way.
[+] [-] uncletammy|8 years ago|reply
As for me, I was suckered into pre-paying for $500 worth of classes that I'll never be reimbursed for. So many people who's livelihoods depended on their facilities were completely blindsided. Members who had been there for years were told they had hours to remove their belongings or they would be confiscated. The whole thing is a complete mess.
All of this just a few weeks after opening a brand new location in Brooklyn. I simply can't comprehend the level of negligence and mismanagement here.
[+] [-] doikor|8 years ago|reply
This as a Finn sounds crazy. Here the employees are protected to a degree if the company goes bankrupt then the government will pay the final paycheck and the government will be the first one to get their money back from the bankruptcy (before any banks/other creditors when any existing assets are sold)
[+] [-] seattle_spring|8 years ago|reply
Did you pay with a CC? I would dispute the charges.
[+] [-] dehrmann|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subpixel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downandout|8 years ago|reply
There is somewhat of a saving grace here. Under federal law, these employees automatically qualify for a special enrollment period through the health insurance marketplace since they lost their employer-provided health insurance [1]. Since this happened during November, they can have coverage beginning December 1 as long as they sign up before the end of the month.
[1] https://www.healthcare.gov/have-job-based-coverage/if-you-lo...
[+] [-] saluki|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambax|8 years ago|reply
That is the question... is it mismanagement, or is the business model fundamentally flawed and unworkable?
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pitaa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cellularmitosis|8 years ago|reply
TechShop never developed a community. It felt sterile in comparison. The fees were more like $125/mo (at the time, and only went up from there). There was no central area to hang out in and chat. And inviting a friend along cost something like $20. These conditions resulted in the demographic becoming more like a bunch of upper middle class dudes who managed to get a few hours away from the fam to work on their project. There was no social core, it never became a hang-out.
There were also some financial issues which really turned me off. I had spent about $1500 on classes early on (thinking I’d just get signed off on all of the machines asap so that I was free to work on anything), but I later found out that if you didn’t badge into a machine for over 12 months, your credential for that machine expired and you had to pay to take the class again. Boom, easily $1000 down the drain. By the time they started hiking up their membership prices, I was disillusioned and declined to renew.
[+] [-] sowbug|8 years ago|reply
What stopped me from signing up after the trial was the no-kids policy. I think the age minimum was 16. While I understand why this was the case -- insurance requirements, danger, and you don't want other people's brats treating the place like a playground -- it completely ruled out joining. If I couldn't stop by there on the weekend for even half an hour while my kids sat quietly in the corner reading books, then all my hacker exploits would be hidden from them, and I want them to be exposed to that stuff.
[+] [-] uncletammy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbart|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viewtransform|8 years ago|reply
I think they got reckless with their expansion. The San Jose location moved to a new location after their lease expired. They chose to relocate to a prime location in downtown San Jose and ended up with a million dollar shortfall to renovate and open the new location. They somehow managed to scrounge the money through an appeal to the community and opened but it must have ruined their financials.
At the same time they were opening in other cities. If their financials in the Bay area were shaky (as they admit in their closing statement on their website) then it is not clear why they were taking on more risk by expanding.
[+] [-] URSpider94|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickS|8 years ago|reply
Ultimately the high price wasn't what held me back from joining, but the tool use policies required by their insurers. You had to pay for a brutally waitlisted class before they'd let you use so much as a laser cutter. I wonder how much this contributed - both the cost of insurance and its consequences - to their decline.
[+] [-] peller|8 years ago|reply
For better or worse, that's been the model at every makerspace I've been a member of/looked into. And I think it makes sense, insurance-mandated or not. Lots of expensive, potentially dangerous machinery that if used wrong can destroy itself, its user, and/or those nearby.
Also, in my experience once you've built up enough trust with the admins they'll let you get a crash course from a member who knows what's up and skip the fees and formal training process.
[+] [-] jacobolus|8 years ago|reply
The bigger problem for me was that equipment was under some contention, meaning that it took signing up for a particular (maybe 2 hour) block of time a couple days in advance. I was trying to prototype things and learn basic stuff at the same time, which meant that my original computer designs were typically wrong the first few tries, and I wanted to do several rounds of iterative improvements to my designs. That is: 10 minutes of cutting, followed by 30 minutes of fiddling with a computer program or vector file, followed by 10 more minutes of cutting, etc. With a 2 hour block of time it’s only possible to get through 3 feedback cycles in that style, after which I sometimes had to wait a few days to try again at a time that would fit in my schedule. I would have been dramatically more efficient if I could have shared a 6 hour block of time with 3–4 other people.
[+] [-] ars|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] typetehcodez|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twblalock|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptero|8 years ago|reply
How can I use machines? Take a class after sign up. When is the next class? Not sure, in a few months maybe; they fill quick, too, so keep checking often. The attitude of an admin I checked with was "get lost, we have enough members already".
I finally found what I needed at a university hobby shop: working machines, busy but good access to tools, efficient admins. To get CNC access I needed 2 short classes that I could both schedule within 2 weeks.
Before I found that though I would gladly pay higher membership fees for a clean, efficient machine shop access. Just my 2c.
[+] [-] sfifs|8 years ago|reply
For anyone doing requiring 3D printing, CNC etc professionally or even as a semi serious hobby, I'm sure there would be firms who can execute and fedex you the job.
Here in Singapore when I moved into our apartment, I ended up having to design a custom child safety lock for my windows. I found quite a few 3D print shops which could deliver the next day at quite a reasonable rate - fast enough for me to iterate the final design within a week.
[+] [-] CalChris|8 years ago|reply
https://www.acemonstertoys.org/
[+] [-] whyenot|8 years ago|reply
video featuring many of the regulars at the SJ location https://youtu.be/vYBivF3YNlg
[+] [-] swimfar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emeraldd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danshapiro|8 years ago|reply
We joined with a few other startups to offer something to the members who were affected.
glowforge.com/techshop
[+] [-] jimktrains2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dheera|8 years ago|reply
I'm most interested in having access to a laser cutter, mill, and lathe.
[+] [-] gaze|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cr0sh|8 years ago|reply
When they opened the Chandler location here in the Phoenix area, I quickly signed up for a year's membership, but that turned out to be a mistake. I certainly didn't get my money's worth, but the mistake was on my end, not theirs: They were located in the east valley (where it seems all the cool kids are), and I live in the west valley; it was a good 100 mile drive round-trip for me to go there. I hardly ever went as a result, and the membership was wasted.
The space itself was amazing otherwise; had it been closer to my home I am sure I would have used it more often than I did for the tools I didn't otherwise have at home (like the laser cutters, for instance). I was always impressed how they had workshops for just about everything you needed to take an idea from a concept (CAD/design) to finished prototype.
There more more than a few startups that got their start at TechShop; one of the more famous examples was Square (they prototyped the original swipe reader thru TechShop).
I am now wondering what, if anything, this says (or what effects it will have) about other maker and hackerspaces. We don't really have very many in the Valley. For myself, I'll just continue doing what I've always done, and work from home or over at my friend's shop.
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
The Deputy City Manager of San Jose has his staff looking into what to do about the San Jose location.[2] There's a good chance San Jose and the Downtown Development Association will make something happen. They're very aggressive in building up downtown San Jose. In 2008, it was almost totally empty, and they want startups to locate there.
[1] http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/inventors-take-heart-...
[2] http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/16/rip-techshop-san-jose-...
[+] [-] replicatorblog|8 years ago|reply
Of course, startups aren't the only measure of success. The net positive is hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of younger hackers who may go on to build the next hardware company based on lessons learned at a MakerFaire.
[+] [-] nwatson|8 years ago|reply
We ended up in Winston-Salem, NC instead, and I look forward to checking on Mixxer when it opens, $550/year, https://wsmixxer.org/. Winston-Salem has a big arts community, might be an interesting place.
[+] [-] grmarcil|8 years ago|reply
As others have said in this thread, I think TS had a tough value proposition to build a business model around. Classes were a pain and a fairly big start-up cost for new members, but inevitable to satisfy insurance requirements. The monthly membership fee was fairly cheap considering the awesome equipment they had, but expensive if you could only manage to go a few days a month. Plus whatever storage fees for larger projects and/or the hassle of carting your stuff around.
On top of that, management at both locations I used (RDU and Arlington) seemed a bit chaotic. Sad to see them go out of business either way.