Comment on Has anyone sold or otherwise handed off their 3d printing business?
mortalic@lemmy.world 1 day agoThis is really thoughtful advice. I super appreciate it. I don’t know what to do, I’ve had a lot of fun making stuff to solve peoples needs, but this year it’s all dried up and I’ve been spending the reserves to get into shows, pay for marketing etc…
Maybe I’ll just put everything on pause for a long time.
Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Everyone is bracing for the economic free fall that is going to be the next 5 years. We are still at the upper end and it’s only going to get worse under this administration.
So, I have no doubt that people just aren’t spending money on the kinds of things that they were even just last year. I wish I had something better to tell you, but it is going to be a while before we see people having the money to spend on custom designing anything. As the previous poster pointed out, you need to either decide to get rid of stuff and then sell it like you want it gone, or accept that now it is just a hobby that basically paid for itself.
mortalic@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Yeah, I know you are right. Just makes me sad.
Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I fully understand that feeling. Of course there’s nothing that says you won’t be able to start it up again at a later date. 3d printing is seeing a seismic shift right now with cheap and reliable multi-tool systems showing up, by the time the economy recovers, efficient, fast, multi-color, and multi-filament will be the norm. And with some of the more industrial plastics and even metals available through specialty printing services, I think we were already going to see a bloodbath amongst the smaller printing services out there no matter what. So maybe right now isn’t the worst time to dip out of the market anyway. I would suggest that you take this time to hone your design skills or focus on the more niche aspects of the market. You got the opportunity to learn and sample the market while money was gushing into it market, but it was a bubble that was never going to last. So, now you have the choice to take what you have learned and find something sustainable, or just run the other way and do something different.
I can personally tell you that having the market you are in ever so slowly shrink and die under you while you try to squeeze just a bit more out of its husk all the while feeling trapped because you have employees and customers depending on you… it’s fucking brutal. My family and I are doing well these days, but I can only imagine how much better I would have been doing if I had just called it quits much earlier.