MakerBot CES 2015
MakerBot has announced that it will be laying off 20 percent of its global workforce and is making some significant structural changes to its teams in Brooklyn.
The news was announced yesterday in a blog post by MakerBot CEO, Jonathan Jaglom and comes just six months after the desktop 3D printing giant made the decision to lay off an initial 20 percent of its 400 employees and close all of its retail locations.
In the post on MakerBot's blog, Jaglom explained how despite the company’s ambitious goals, it has been impacted by the wider challenges of the 3D printing industry and therefore substantial changes have been necessary to ensure future growth.
Jaglom wrote: “We have spent a lot of time evaluating the market and understanding our customers so we can make plans on how to move forward strategically. These decisions were not taken lightly. Today we will part with some of our exceptionally talented and hard working colleagues, and I’d like to thank them for their commitment and contributions.”
William Alden - Buzzfeed News.
MakerBot closed all retail stores back in April.
As of yesterday the company began reducing and reorganising its core teams and leadership structure. Former Hewlett-Packard HR Director, Kavita Vora recently joined the team as Chief of People in a bid to change the company’s leadership direction and focus on its people and the MakerBot Ecosystem whilst Nadav Goshen has been appointed President, a move in which Jalgom says “will ensure that strategy around our product offering, ecosystem and brand are in full alignment”.
MakerBot’s R&D teams based in Industry City, Brooklyn will now move to the company’s HQ in MetroTech, Downtown Brooklyn but the MakerBot Factory will remain in Industry City. For its fourth generation product range, MakerBot will work with a contract manufacturer in order to save costs and allow teams at the Brooklyn factory to focus on its current generation technology.
Jalgom added: “In order to lead our dynamic industry, we need to get back to our entrepreneurial spirit and address our fractured organisational structure.”
A more mature focus on products from MakerBot at TCT Asia.
As arguably the most recognisable brand in the industry, responsible for turning much of the mass public on to the technology, MakerBot has undergone a bit of an image transformation over the last year from quirky Brooklyn start-up to a mature and leading brand now part of one of the world’s biggest additive manufacturing companies.
When TCT met with Jaglom earlier this year, he was keen to address the challenge of bringing Stratasys' expertise and resources to the company whilst preserving that powerful MakerBot culture. This year we’ve seen a lot of that with more mature material solutions, global expansions, partnerships and an education focus coming from MakerBot and these things are probably easy to forget in the shadow of what Stratasys CEO David Reis called, “the continued scaling of MakerBot”.
It will be interesting to see what direction the company takes over the next few months and moving into next year but Jaglom assures the community he is “highly optimistic” and “excited” about MakerBot’s future.
