Earlier this month, we covered what seemed to be ominous message from the Solidoodle, the Brooklyn-based 3D printer company started by former MakerBot COO Sam Cervantes, which claimed on their website, “Attention Customers: Ordering is currently disabled on the site. We’ll be providing more information over the next few days. We appreciate your patience during that time.” Since then, 3D Printing Industry has been reaching out to both Solidoodle and their customer-base to get the truth behind Solidoodle’s sudden disappearance from the world of 3D printing. After weeks of investigating and correspondence with dissatisfied customers, Cervantes has finally released a statement admitting to what our evidence has already led us to believe, that the days of Solidoodle are over.
Before Cervantes announced the suspension of operations yesterday, I actually traveled down to Solidoodle headquarters in Brooklyn to check in and see what was going on. What I found was an abandoned workspace lined with trash bags, no sign of Solidoodle or any life at all behind the shuttered doors. I decided to ask around the block to see if anyone had information on the whereabouts of Solidoodle, and was, more or less, given a briefer and more straight-to-the-point version of what Cervantes tried to put elegantly yesterday. After speaking to an anonymous source from the next-door Carrol Gardens Plumbing Supply, I was told that, basically, Solidoodle made some bad product investments in China, angered their customer base with poor quality printers, and, thus, caused investors to slowly pull out the money that was keeping Solidoodle afloat. The source, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that the Solidoodle workshop has basically been vacant since November of last year.
Here is an explanation of the direction that the company took in Cervantes’ words, from yesterday’s press release:
From 2011 through 2014 we assembled our first four product generations at our own factory in Brooklyn. Soon demand began to grow so large that we felt it would be difficult to scale effectively in Brooklyn, so we sought to partner with an outside assembly factory. We had been largely successful purchasing components in China, so manufacturing our entire product there seemed like the next logical step.
However, this proved to be much more difficult than expected. Despite spending months in China building the partnership, training workers, and inspecting finished units, the factory shipped units which did not live up to our standards. This setback was exacerbated by the 2014 West Coast Port labor dispute and slowdown, which kept hundreds of printers ordered for the Holiday Season from arriving until March. Had they arrived on schedule, we would have had much more time for testing and inspection, and would have realized crucial cash flow much sooner.
There seems to be a lot of factors that just didn’t end up going Solidoodle’s way, but one of their biggest criticisms (outside of their last line of shoddy printers) is their refusal to refund, let alone acknowledge, many of their customers who have either received a defective printer or never received their order at all. After our article speculating on the Solidoodle situation gained traction, a number of frustrated Solidoodle customers reached out to share their concerns about the company’s lack of customer service. One Canadian customer (who wished to remain anonymous) contacted us about a number of issues they had to deal with after ordering a Solidoodle Press printer.
“Well, I bought a Solidoodle Press, received it 6 months later and it never worked. When I contacted support they asked me to send it back to them for repairs which was OK with me at the time,” the source told 3DPI. “And, unfortunately, once they received it, they stopped answering my emails and I never got my printer or money back.”
The customer also does admit that, in hindsight, they probably should’ve just asked for the replacement parts themselves, but that doesn’t seem to excuse Solidoodle for going off the grid and leaving prospective customers frustrated and confused. The source also felt that since they were from Canada, Solidoodle knew that they could keep both the printer and their money without having to face repercussions. We also heard from another customer as well, who told us, “I ordered a printer a year ago, they took my money, wiped my account clean and never delivered and hid behind voicemail.”
So, it’s fair to assume there are probably others facing the same dilemma, and even in Cervantes’ recent announcement about Solidoodle’s official closing, he acknowledges that “there remain a few dozen customers still owed a refund for a returned or undelivered product that we cannot honor.” But for these ‘few dozen’ customers, some of whom we’ve talked to ourselves, there does seem to be a glimmer of hope that could alleviate the painstaking experience with Solidoodle. According to Cervantes, customers who never received their refund will be sent a free MOD-t 3D printer, the $400 desktop 3D printer by New Matter.
“New Matter, makers of the award-winning MOD-t 3D printer, have graciously offered to ship a FREE MOD-t to all Solidoodle customers who are due a refund. I am very grateful to Steve Schell and the New Matter team for their generosity and dedication to the industry. They were under no obligation to step up and are receiving no financial compensation to help us. Those customers with Solidoodle refunds due can contact New Matter at [email protected] by May 1, 2016 to follow up on the free MOD-t offer, or go to www.newmatter.com and sign up for their email newsletter to learn more,” Cervantes wrote in the statement.
After going AWOL for months, and slowly, but surely, shutting down their operation, Solidoodle has finally confirmed that their doors are closed. It’s nice of the New Matter team and Cervantes to try and compensate the customers who were felt they were completely screwed over, but I’m not sure if the MOD-t 3D printer offer will fully erase the bad taste that Solidoodle’s last product line left in the customer’s mouth. At the end of the day, however, it might be healthiest for the 3D printing community to reflect on the strong start and early reputation earned by Solidoodle back in 2011, as it’s easy to forget that, before this debacle, they were a quality startup on the rise to prominence. But, there are also quite a few lessons to be learned in Solidoodle’s failure as well. The most important ones, it seems, are to always value and respect your customer-base, and also to invest in components that will function as well as they look.
