MakerBot Lays Off 20 Percent of Company, Moves R&D Team Back to Downtown

Brooklyn-based 3D printing company MakerBot might be doing a lot less hot than their plastic melting machines.

A borough mammoth in the tech scene, the homegrown company dismissed 20 percent of its staff this Thursday, MakerBot’s second major layoff in 2015. In addition to cuts, the business is relocating their research and development employees from their recently opened 170,000 square-foot Industry City warehouse to their Downtown Brooklyn headquarters.

“We have achieved a lot as a team, but we have also been impacted by the broader challenges in our industry,” chief executive Jonathan Jaglom wrote in a blogpost of the company’s move and financial hardships.

MakerBot signed the lease on their Sunset Park space shortly after laying off 100 employees this past April.

MakerBot’s printers dominate the hobbyist 3D printing market and are used in thousands of schools across the country, yet their continuous cutbacks show they have still not cracked the nut on consumer 3D printing.

While MakerBot experiences growing pains, the 3D printing industry still has bright prospects. Just this week former MakerBot employees launched a competing 3D printing firm out of Bushwick called Voodoo Manufacturing.

As MakerBot grows, shrinks, and endures, perhaps the most surprising aspect of it all is that the young company has stayed in Brooklyn, where rents are higher than the temperature of melting plastic.

[h/t: Crain’s]

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