TechShop Has Closed Its Doors

It's a cool idea, and I looked at joining the one in Pittsburgh, but for the cost of monthly membership, I could buy a quality machine tool every other month. Also when I visited the one here, everyone had their nose so high, I was surprised they could see where they were going.
 
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They have a location less than 10 miles from me but I have never taken the time to check it out. Too bad they had to close the doors.
 
1) Cool concept but without deep pockets it was doomed from the start. If one really want to learn a trade and hone it, they can join the nations largest "Techshop" and get paid to be a member. US Armed Forces
2) If one needs access to machinery, then save up and buy em or pay someone for services.

I have done both 1,2 and never looked back. If I have to pay for services or rent a tool more than six times/year, then I save up and buy needed tool.
No one else is gonna buy it for us. As for the snobby attitudes some of you might have experienced, who needs that? I've always despised cliques and the world is full of those knuckleheads. As humans we are cut from the same cloth regardless of intellectual levels.

Life is great until you run out of someone else's money...... I was pleased to read they paid their debts prior to closing.

FWIW, not trying to be offensive, just realistic.
 
Also check for local Hackerspaces. Sort of like a non-profit Coop type of TechShop.
 
Nonprofit is the business model that TechShop should have pursued, but they realized it too late.
There are a lot of things a not for profit can do that a for profit business cannot, like taking donations, and giving tax write-offs.
They could have had sponsorships and endowments from a lot of corporations, like toolmakers, machinery companies, schools, and had training provided by governmental entities as part of work programs. Instead, they went for the large gains that might come from having venture capital investors, and others seeking large returns.

Plus, people in the US no longer "make things" like they used to. In the "old days", everyone had a shop in their basement. Now, people have a bar, a home theatre, a TV watching room. Things have changed. Most people don't make things, they buy things cheap that are made for us in China. And people who want a shop will buy their own tools, and make their own shop in their house or rent a space to put their tools.

Making a hobby into a business is tough. Running a business is very hard. You cannot count on revenue streams. You must have a sustainable business model, or quickly morph into one. They decided to "pivot" when things were already too late.
 
I visited the one in Crystal City, VA. I was impressed with the equipment they had on hand. I bielieve the fee was $60 per month, which is very reasonable considering the capabilities one would have acess to. I expect at that price they would have had to have quite a number of members to make thier rent, the location was likely very pricey. I expect that rent on the space they had was north of 30k a month. Add the staff and interest on the capital (they probably had 500k in machinery) and I could see how making a go of it there would be difficult. I don't know about the other locations, but I think maybe they should have looked at lower cost locations. It would have made access more difficult, so they probably would not have had a many members, but greatly reducing that rental fee would have gone a long way to making it work. That said, there are non profit makerspaces poping up all over the place. It is a good thing to be able to get more people involved in this hobby by reducing the expense to get invoved. There are plenty of folks who would be interested in this hobby that either don't have the space or the funding to get fully invovled in it, makerspaces like this might help motivate them to someday start a shop of thier own. I go to the NAMES expo every year and I am always disapointed with the ratio of old farts to young people there.
 
There are no non-profits around here with a milling machine. Gotta go down to LA for that, and it is kind of far. There must be some other way to make this work out, non-profit, for-profit, education based, co-op, shared economy, etc. There must be...
 
I talked with some guys around here that are involved in getting one started localy. We have a lot of engineers around here and they like to tinker, so I expect they will probably pull it off. I never checked into it more deeply, as I have pretty much all the tools I need in the shop. I guess I could use a CNC plasma cutter if they wind up with one. I think all the Techshop locations supported major metro areas (the one I mentioned is just across the Potomack from DC).
 
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