3 ms·

An unspoken issue here, and one often facing the industry I'm in presently (I'm not going to mention what it is, as I don't want to attract any flak down the ro

by drone 14y ago

An unspoken issue here, and one often facing the industry I'm in presently (I'm not going to mention what it is, as I don't want to attract any flak down the road, given I run an OSHW company at the moment) - is that it's easy to take a design that's been proven, and sell it for less. It's easy to attract a large segment of the market over to your, near clone, of that product for less. You don't even have to make it in China - you're one guy with some outsourcers that'll do everything for you - you can just lower your margins. The problem now becomes that you need to sustain that business. You're not making enough margin to hire a handful of additional engineers to design the next generation products while you sell today's. You're making a comfortable living for you - while driving the innovator you just copied to lower their margins and lay off staff. (Or, exit the market entirely.) Copycats of OSHW at cheaper prices who don't innovate new capabilities harm the market in the long run, but make today's customer happy. It drives OSHW vendors out of the market, and forces new players to make a choice between open-sourcing and facing massive margin pressure, or come out closed-source and ensure they have enough breathing room. Of course, it's a false dichotomy: we've been copied several times, but focus on extreme customer service, and way out of our way warranties to differentiate ourselves, while also continuing to invest in new products. But, we're also in a much smaller niche. That being said: I haven't followed Makerbot in a while - how much new R&D do they do? That is, have they been coming out with systems with newer capabilities and competing aggressively, or have they largely been resting on their laurels?

ChuckMcM 14y ago
This. So there is this story of Fry's electronics. Back in 1985 there were a half dozen electronics stores in the Bay Area, Quest, JDR, Quemont, Jade, Sunnyvale Electronics, just to name the ones I remember well. And along came Fry's and said "Gee we can sell electronics like groceries, buy them in bulk, sell them for a few % margin, and then put a lot of high margin items in around that to make up the difference. And it was a huge success (for them) and soon people would just go to Fry's to get their electronic components and tools because they had everything and it was cheaper besides. All the electronics stores went out of business, unable to compete at the margins Fry's charged. Then Frys decided it was too much trouble to sell components, and moved toward more high end stuff. That completely destroyed the eco-system in the Bay Area for parts. Sure you could go to a surplus place and get a part if they happened to have it, but if they didn't they didn't and it wasn't like they would restock. The surplus places are at the whim of a manufacturer dumping their leftovers. Radio Shack had also moved on so here we were, engineers in the Bay Area ordering resistors from a company in Minnesota (Digikey) with a turnaround time of days rather than minutes. Of all the things one can hate Fry's for, this for me is the top one. They came in, destroyed a market that had been around for decades and then left behind the burned rubble. One of the survivors was Jameco, they have been coming back now that Fry's has left the market. And even Radio Shack (which is also selling OSHW in the form of Seeed Studio stuff btw). But man it sucked during the down time.
MBCook 14y ago
They've been doing quite a bit. In the year and a half since I purchased my Thing-o-Matic, they've come out with three new hot ends, the Replicator, and dual-strusion. The Replicator is supposed to be easier to calibrate and easier to use. It also uses accelerated printing by default, which is a nice improvement. From what I've seen, they are definitely continuing to work hard. They probably could have kept the Thing-o-Matic as their top machine, or just done a much more minor upgrade, and been safe for an additional 6-12 months. It's only now, 6+ months after the Replicator came out, that I'm starting to see posts about other commercial 3D printers (i.e. not DIY kit like a RepRap or Printbot). Good luck with your business. Makerbot's customer service has been excellent the few times I've had a question. If you were to buy a Tangibot, I wonder how much support they will offer directly vs. having to ask the community. Of course in that case, you're really no worse off than if you sourced & built a printer yourself like a RepRap.
- drone 14y ago
  That's good to hear - there's always the risk that someone is going to come along and say "Well, but they hadn't done anything in a while!" As long as they keep investing and pushing the envelope, the copycats shouldn't drag them down too far - 3D printing, especially, is a huge market right now. Not in the market for one myself, still prefer subtractive machining, but I imagine, like most new and small companies, support will be hard for Tangibot at first. They'll either get it and move ahead, or struggle under the weight of success (should they succeed). An interesting experiment will be to see whether they meet their goal, now that they're making the news.
wmf 14y ago
It seems like profitable open source hardware relies on a sort of essential hypocrisy: while a project makes its cred off "maker" and "open source" buzzwords it fails as soon as someone actually uses that openness.
- ptorrone 14y ago
  open source is fueling many great kickstarters: http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/20/how-open-source-hardware-is-kick-starting-kickstarter/ http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/20/how-open-source-hardware... tangibot's issue(s) were not about open source at all.

by drone 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This. So there is this story of Fry's electronics. Back in 1985 there were a half dozen electronics stores in the Bay Area, Quest, JDR, Quemont, Jade, Sunnyvale Electronics, just to name the ones I remember well. And along came Fry's and said "Gee we can sell electronics like groceries, buy them in bulk, sell them for a few % margin, and then put a lot of high margin items in around that to make up the difference. And it was a huge success (for them) and soon people would just go to Fry's to get their electronic components and tools because they had everything and it was cheaper besides. All the electronics stores went out of business, unable to compete at the margins Fry's charged. Then Frys decided it was too much trouble to sell components, and moved toward more high end stuff. That completely destroyed the eco-system in the Bay Area for parts. Sure you could go to a surplus place and get a part if they happened to have it, but if they didn't they didn't and it wasn't like they would restock. The surplus places are at the whim of a manufacturer dumping their leftovers. Radio Shack had also moved on so here we were, engineers in the Bay Area ordering resistors from a company in Minnesota (Digikey) with a turnaround time of days rather than minutes. Of all the things one can hate Fry's for, this for me is the top one. They came in, destroyed a market that had been around for decades and then left behind the burned rubble. One of the survivors was Jameco, they have been coming back now that Fry's has left the market. And even Radio Shack (which is also selling OSHW in the form of Seeed Studio stuff btw). But man it sucked during the down time.

MBCook 14y ago

They've been doing quite a bit. In the year and a half since I purchased my Thing-o-Matic, they've come out with three new hot ends, the Replicator, and dual-strusion. The Replicator is supposed to be easier to calibrate and easier to use. It also uses accelerated printing by default, which is a nice improvement. From what I've seen, they are definitely continuing to work hard. They probably could have kept the Thing-o-Matic as their top machine, or just done a much more minor upgrade, and been safe for an additional 6-12 months. It's only now, 6+ months after the Replicator came out, that I'm starting to see posts about other commercial 3D printers (i.e. not DIY kit like a RepRap or Printbot). Good luck with your business. Makerbot's customer service has been excellent the few times I've had a question. If you were to buy a Tangibot, I wonder how much support they will offer directly vs. having to ask the community. Of course in that case, you're really no worse off than if you sourced & built a printer yourself like a RepRap.

drone 14y ago
That's good to hear - there's always the risk that someone is going to come along and say "Well, but they hadn't done anything in a while!" As long as they keep investing and pushing the envelope, the copycats shouldn't drag them down too far - 3D printing, especially, is a huge market right now. Not in the market for one myself, still prefer subtractive machining, but I imagine, like most new and small companies, support will be hard for Tangibot at first. They'll either get it and move ahead, or struggle under the weight of success (should they succeed). An interesting experiment will be to see whether they meet their goal, now that they're making the news.

wmf 14y ago

It seems like profitable open source hardware relies on a sort of essential hypocrisy: while a project makes its cred off "maker" and "open source" buzzwords it fails as soon as someone actually uses that openness.

ptorrone 14y ago
open source is fueling many great kickstarters: http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/20/how-open-source-hardware-is-kick-starting-kickstarter/ http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/20/how-open-source-hardware... tangibot's issue(s) were not about open source at all.