There was this exact discussion recently and I think many felt they are seeing a decline or no orders at all.
Oh, I didn’t see it, What do you think the cause is? 3D Hubs not letting customers view hubs without uploading parts?
Maybe they see an increase of orders to the more expensive and professional hubs and not to us so now they make more money…They are acting as the employer and not as how they used to…
Yes, I know this is a way to find a Hub that can do work for you without actually placing an order.
However, this work-around is not so easy to find. I think it is rather unlikely that a new, potential customer would find this out himself if they would visit 3D Hubs for the first time.
More likely they would stop at the moment they are required to upload a STL-file (assuming that they know what it is in the first place, many of my first-time customers have no idea what is needed for a 3D print). Then they would click around a bit and then, most likely, just leave 3D Hubs and start searching for another 3D Print server.
Nowadays, in most areas, 3D Hubs is not the only 3D Print provider.
If you need something printed fast and don’t want to pay for shipping the local pickup is a nice option…I don’t see a point for paying for FDM services far away from you and having to pay for shipping, all the smaller hubs that aren’t professional print basically the same quality.
I agree that proximity might not always be important.
That said, however, take a look at the Home page of 3D Hubs: It literally says (in capitals, no less): Local 3D printing
I agree that having the option to check for localised Hubs is a good one.
But then, I might add, I would also like being able to sort for Hubs with highest rating, fastest estimated delivery, lowest price, most reviews, possibility for invoicing, 3D modelling/designing, 3D Scanning etc.
Especially now that the list with ‘recommended Hubs’ is not a list of proven and best performing Hubs.
This could be.
Do you ever visit the 3D Hubs home page?
There is this proud statistics line that’s mentioned there: Number of parts printed, avg. turnaround time, services online etc.
My quess is, no one ever really looks at those numbers.
The average increase in the number of parts printed is about 1800-1900 per day.
Now, it is not clear if this is ORDER printed or just, literally, PARTS printed.
But if I assume that it is orders and that each order averages out at around 40 Euros, it would mean that 3D Hubs has a revenue of about 3.4 million a year.
That is not that much considering the network they have to keep running.
So, steering customer more and more to more expensive and professional Hubs is, business wise speaking, a smart move.
If the average price per order goes up, so do the 3D Hubs revenues.
I think they are making around 7 million. That’s what this link says- https://datafox.com/3d-hubs
during the first half of the year i was getting 1-2 orders per week. since june until now I have received 1 order. i have been wondering why orders simply stopped coming in.
I have had around 5 or so a week lately. mostly repeat orders though.
Hey all, I just posted a similar topic. I haven’t had any orders the entire month of July, this is after averaging between 2 and 6 a week pretty steadily. This trend is definitely concerning to me. Hopefully orders pick up soon!
About a week and a half ago orders stopped. I’ve also received reports that I cannot always be located on when the users select SLA. Another local hub has the same issue where some users can only locate them if FDM is selected (unfortunately, I only print in SLA on 3D Hubs). Fortunately, this is saving me from having to remove support materials and sand the prints. <- Last part is sarcasm related to another Talk thread.
My apologies, must have missed your remark.
Seven mil. is indeed higer, but still not that much. It means the average order amount is a bit higher than I expected.
Nevertheless, I am not sure that, unless they manage to significantly increase either the number of orders placed and/or the average order amount, there is not that much room for revenue growth.
If I look at the Hubs saying that their orders have decreased, I am not sure that is what’s happening right now.