MakerBot's new CEO Jonathan Jaglom lays off 20% of staff, about 100 people
MakerBot Just Laid Off 20 Percent of Its Staff — When MakerBot, the Brooklyn-based 3D printing company, became a subsidiary of 3D printing giant Stratasys, Inc. in 2013, everyone expected there would be changes.
Context & Ripple Effects
MakerBot was the poster child of Brooklyn's desktop 3D printing boom, but after Stratasys acquired it in 2013 the story turned: the company drew backlash for shifting parts of its product and software to closed source, shipped printers with well-documented quality problems, and watched rivals erode its lead while the anticipated consumer 3D printer market never materialized.
Jonathan Jaglom's arrival as CEO is a reset under parent-company pressure, and the ~100-person, 20% cut is only the opening move of it — a month later he sits for an interview covering the layoffs and the closure of MakerBot's retail stores.
First-order effects
- Roughly 100 MakerBot employees lose their jobs immediately, and the retail footprint shrinks alongside them as Jaglom restructures around what remains of the business.
Second-order effects
- Stratasys now has to justify its acquisition thesis with a smaller, cheaper operation — pressure that surfaces again when Stratasys CEO Ilan Levin departs in 2018 amid financial losses and competitive pressure.
- MakerBot's retreat from self-manufactured hardware points toward contract production, a direction confirmed the next year when it stops making its own printers and outsources manufacturing to Jabil in China.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, desktop 3D printing consolidates from boutique in-house manufacturers into brand layers over contract factories like Jabil, as the consumer market these companies were built for proves thinner than their valuations assumed.
The trend: The consumer 3D printing wave of the early 2010s is deflating into a contract-manufacturing model, with Stratasys-owned MakerBot among the first to absorb the correction.