EDITED: I had posted that it appeared that declines were on the rise, based on data that 3dhubs shares with us. I was worried folks were dropping orders in protest, but they said that this was not the case, and it appears with my own tests that this is true, so I removed the post. (people were asking why I deleted the post)
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Here is what happened. In lieu of responses from 3dhubs, I will speak for them. I will speak for them every day that they do not participate.
A. Last year, 3dhubs received $7 million US in series B funding. This was presented as an investment that would allow funding for 3dhubs to pay for a greater focus on professional type printers. https://www.startupdelta.org/news/3D-Hubs-secures-7M-series-B-round-to-focus-on-professional-users
B. 3dhubs posts on TALK a request for help in defining guidelines for “customer expectations” for FDM. They ignore hubs that say that is a bad idea. This was actually step 1 in their SECRET plan to denigrate FDM.
C. 3dhubs adds a dialogue when customers put up a model, with a dialogue that says “can we help you choose a material?” which pushes customers to SLS or SLA. Including our customers, our repeat customers, and customers that come from our own websites.
D. 3dhubs adds a “Disclaimer” for those who choose FDM, stating that the prints are not smooth, within tolerances, etc. They are then guided to SLS or SLA. Again, this includes our customers, our repeat customers, and customers that come from our own website.
E. 3dhubs changes the description of FDM to “Protoyping”. All the descriptions for other methods are given better wording, FDM is given negative wording.
F. 3dhubs changes the materials descriptions the customer chooses from “General Purpose Plastics” to Prototyping Plastics.
G. 3dhubs adds a dialogue that appears just before the customer completes the order with a “Disclaimer” that warns the customer that FDM is not the best way to go, and includes links that lets the customer choose SLS or SLA. This outright steals the customer from the FDM hub, and moves the customer to an SLS or SLA hub. This is true for our customers, our repeat customers, customers that we brought to 3dhubs on our own, and customers that arrive via our own websites or Facebook pages.
H. This was done in secret, with no input from the FDM hubs, no warning, and no notice on the changelog. 3dhubs says this is just a test, but we believe it is already a permanent change.
I. After 6 days of input, on day 6 3dhubs fails to respond to any messages, including those who have stated that their orders have declined. Active hubs have shown a direct loss of orders, but 3dhubs ignored the them.
No doubt, 3D Hubs will come back with some figures to show that order levels were unchanged. This is a nightmare for me and they don’t seem to care.
If they continue to push customers away from FDM, I imagine the result will be a competing website full of FDM printers.
@Filemon @Perry_1 Whilst we are going though all the anti FDM processes on here I thought I’d go through the material selector wizard to show how difficult it is to get an FDM result. I will post a tree displaying the results when I get chance but in the meantime check out the attachment. For my first try I thought I would try one that MUST be FDM…
I selected "Function, then “Form and fit”, then for accuracy chose “LOW” (this must be rough arsed FDM right?)… then the result still gives one last ditch effort to take you to SLS!!! WOW, just WOW!
Yes, I have been saying this for a week. This is my repeat customer getting that dialogue “can I help you choose a material”.
Then everything there has the solid intent of harvesting my customer…
Its not JUST that the subjective terminology is bad, its that it was shown automatically to a customer I earned. Repeat customer, customer from facebook, customer from my business card, customer from my ads…
The statement that customers only choose FDM because of price is my favorite.
Plus, the material selector is so subjective. Just what does form and fit mean, anyway? Where are the advantages of FDM listed?
The whole massive thing was done with the sole intent of moving customers from FDM to higher $.
They will say they are focusing on a more “professional” market now. That’s what Makerbot said just before they lost their market.
But focusing on professional customers translates to “lets take FDM customers and try to convince them to spend more money.” That is not focusing on professional customers. That’s harvesting already happy FDM customers.
Instead of going for the positive, they reversed it. They went negative.
I am not sure I can find a case where a company cannibalized their vendors and their end customers so harshly.
But they don’t say which hubs.
“a competing website full of FDM printers”
Yes, this is what I fear most, a split in the marketplace as a result of "opening the door to competition."
This is classic “voice of the customer” training for anyone in marketing. Keep your base happy. Show EXTREME loyalty. Do not show any disloyalty. That’s how competitors get a foothold.
Particularly with 3dhubs business model, which is to match a growing “COMMODITY”(vendors) with a growing customer base (end users). 3dhubs will likely not want a full press split in the market, and I absolutely don’t want that either.
How they did not work to protect existing hubs and customers on this was just amazing. That would have been step one. Marketing 101. Whatever you do, improve your base first.
Don’t expect any figures. I am not sure you should even expect them to come back to this thread.
"The data so far seems to indicate it’s working, no fewer FDM orders, but increasing print quality ratings "
" Success means high conversion numbers, for a variety of materials, without decline in terms of absolute numbers."
“Also, to be clear, 3D Hubs cannot benefit from any change if it does not benefit our Hubs”
This is a classic misdirection, but you can certainly read between the lines on those statements.
Yes, well, we know which hubs these changes are meant to benefit, don’t we? Its such an amateurish mistake companies make during growth phases, when they hit the death valley of the cost of customers vrs. the revenues of each customer.
This is like makerbot, back when they owned the market, saying they were focusing their market on more educational and industrial markets, because there was untapped money there. They then tried to show how bad their old printers were, in all their marketing, and tried to show how well their new printers were better. They also cut off all their support for their old printers, in the hopes the customers would move to better printers. They even deleted their old forum postings.
They tried to redefine the market.
They are now 1/3 of the company they were (at least as a division), and Flashforge stepped right in and stole their market, with A COPY of Makerbot’s old printer. I can give 20 other examples just off the top of my head, where companies who owned the market began to belittle (or complicate the messaging of) the actual market they were in charge of, to upsell their customers, and lost a TON of money, created competitors, or simply vanished. Makerbot was supposed to be the next Apple…
This is so scary to me. The lack of loyalty. I do not really want to see a 3dhubs competitor chip away at their market. But as my wife said- if she went to a competitor, (such as the printer farms that are popping up here in the states) and they described FDM as quick, inexpensive, and HIGH QUALITY, she would order from them over 3dhubs that defines the prints as low quality prototypes printed with prototyping materials.
It is all so sad to watch. This is just step 1 of “How to walk off a cliff.”
For me personally it is just disappointment. I’ve enjoyed telling people I am part of 3D Hubs and explaining how it works. Now I just feel FDM was a stepping stone for them and not looking after the people why got them there.
FDM is not a stepping stone for them, if they just fix some things in the correct way. The materials, qualities, etc., can all live together well. But they have just not been smart about how to go about it. They should listen to us.
