
TechShop shuts down all U.S. locations, declares bankruptcy - wizardforhire
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/techshop-shuts-down-all-u-s-locations-declares-bankruptcy/
======
uncletammy
They informed employees of the shutdown as they were firing them. This was a
few days AFTER they revoked the employees insurance benefits without notice or
explanation. Those same employees were also told that they're unlikely to get
their final paycheck.

As for me, I was suckered into pre-paying for $500 worth of classes that I'll
never be reimbursed for. So many people who's livelihoods depended on their
facilities were completely blindsided. Members who had been there for years
were told they had hours to remove their belongings or they would be
confiscated. The whole thing is a complete mess.

All of this just a few weeks after opening a brand new location in Brooklyn. I
simply can't comprehend the level of negligence and mismanagement here.

~~~
doikor
> Those same employees were also told that they're unlikely to get their final
> paycheck.

This as a Finn sounds crazy. Here the employees are protected to a degree if
the company goes bankrupt then the government will pay the final paycheck and
the government will be the first one to get their money back from the
bankruptcy (before any banks/other creditors when any existing assets are
sold)

~~~
iagooar
This is what makes a European a European, and an American, American. We have
different standards and expectations about the social contract between
enterprises and society.

Also, no wonder American companies tend to grow a lot faster without many
impediments. The whole American system is built to support and protect the
enterprise, not the people. In Europe, as an enterprise, you have a lot more
requirements and obligations to fulfill.

And even though I have a disadvantage running a company in Europe as compared
to the US, as a European I believe it's the right thing to do.

~~~
briandear
Except in France, unemployment is 10% while in the US it's 4%. My point on
this is that it's a lot bigger of a risk to start a company in France, it's
harder to hire and fire and thus it makes it a more risk-adverse environment.

So the thought experiment -- is it better for someone to work for a year and
then get fired unexpectedly or not work at all and collect unemployment money
for 3 years?

I thought about opening an office in France for a dev team, but after looking
at the real costs -- there's no way I could afford it. The actual salaries are
fine, but adding in social charges, then all of the ridiculous "protections"
\-- it's easier for me to hire guys in Serbia, pay them well while not having
the financial risk of having to take care of employees when my business may
not be able to support them.

So there are 5 French engineers that aren't working now and 5 Serbians that
are because I can't afford the risk of hiring French workers because as the
business owner, I'm the "bad guy" \-- despite funding my little company out of
my own pocket and not even being able to pay myself a salary. To be on the
hook for French social benefits and the job protections when I can't even
provide that for myself? No thanks.

So I've had Serbian devs for the past 2 years and exactly zero French devs --
despite paying the Serbians the same net salary I would have paid the French.

I'm an anecdote, but that's the other side of this "protection" that EU
workers "benefit" from -- it's great when they DO have a job, but there are
countless jobs that don't exist precisely because of these policies -- and the
jobs that do exist pay far less than American jobs (despite similar living
costs) because companies have to price the risks into the salaries they offer.
So rather than paying a dev $100k per year plus benefits -- a French company
would pay $40k per year plus benefits. Then they have roughly 1.5 years of
"cushion" in case they're stuck with an employee they can't simply fire.

Before folks start to talk about how France has better social benefits and
thus a lower salary is ok.. Net disposable income is vastly less than in the
US. And, US companies provide health/disability/etc. benefits in addition to a
higher salary. So the idea that French companies pay a lower salary because
health insurance is free is just ridiculous -- since French companies aren't
paying for health insurance, they should be able to pay even higher salaries
than the US right? But the reason they don't is because they have to hedge the
risk that they can't fire this employee.

I'd rather work an uncertain year at $150k than three years of $40k
guaranteed, but that's just me. I'm an optimist while most French I know are
decidedly pessimistic.

~~~
avar
I'm sympathetic to your general point but it doesn't seem very relevant to
this discussion.

It's one thing to have employment law where you can't hire/fire people at
will. I agree that's relatively inflexible and I'd prefer the American model
(as a European). There's no free lunch here, you either need to pay for this
out of your taxes (as in France), or pay lower taxes and save for the
unexpected loss of job yourself (as in the US).

It's an entirely different thing that a company can't meet its basic
contractual obligations, i.e. the ability to pay salaries. That's a case where
a contract was made, there seems to be something very wrong with basic US
corporate law that would allow this to happen, i.e. a company should have
enough assets on hand to pay salaries in the event that it goes bankrupt.

In most of Europe companies are obligated to insure against this eventuality.
I can't drive a car on public roads without insurance, why should a company be
allowed to operate if it isn't insured against failure to meet its basic
contract obligations?

~~~
smokeyj
> I'm sympathetic to your general point but it doesn't seem very relevant to
> this discussion.

That you should judge the economy as a whole instead of picking one aspect and
extrapolating what "our values are".

Europeans tend to view issues through a classist lens. That society is split
up into the workers, and the capitalists, and that your ranking in the social
hierarchy is solidified.

For better or worse, we don't see it that way. Today you're a worker, tomorrow
you're a business owner. I would say America has more workers-turned-
entrepreneur than anywhere else in the world. We have more millionaires who
came from "worker" background than anywhere.

I've seen it first hand on multiple occasions. I've seen immigrants come to
this country with _nothing_ , work incredibly hard, build a business from
scratch, and turn into employers in their community. It's the story of my
family and many others here.

If the barrier for these immigrants starting a business was anything like
complying with EU regulation - I promise you these businesses and their
communities would not exist.

~~~
doikor
> Europeans tend to view issues through a classist lens. That society is split
> up into the workers, and the capitalists, and that your ranking in the
> social hierarchy is solidified.

And yet social mobility between the classes (they exist in the US too even
though you don't necessarily think in terms of them) in many European
countries is better then in the US. Especially the nordic countries. Pretty
much the only EU countries doing worse then US are UK and Italy and the
difference between US and UK is much smaller then US and Finland for example.

Maybe we Europeans are a bit pessimistic when it comes to our economic futures
but in terms of the chance of making from poor to rich (or vice versa) in many
places we are doing better then the US.

[https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways...](https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-
SOTU-2016-Economic-Mobility-3.pdf)

~~~
smokeyj
There's some truth here but it seems we're comparing apples to oranges
considering Finland is the size of a US city. I wonder how a top US city
compares to Finland for example, or the EU as a whole compares to the US in
class mobility.

------
cellularmitosis
I was a member of Austin’s TechShop for two years. It was interesting
contrasting it to the ATX Hackerspace. The hackerspace (a few years back,
anyway) was much better at building a community. The fee was only $35/mo, and
they had a starving student discount, and you were also free to invite your
friends to tag along. As a result, there were always people just hanging out
at the hackerspace. A lot of near-college-age space cadets and techno-
dreamers, and they’d be there all day. You could go there to work on a
project, or just to mooch off of the conversation.

TechShop never developed a community. It felt sterile in comparison. The fees
were more like $125/mo (at the time, and only went up from there). There was
no central area to hang out in and chat. And inviting a friend along cost
something like $20. These conditions resulted in the demographic becoming more
like a bunch of upper middle class dudes who managed to get a few hours away
from the fam to work on their project. There was no social core, it never
became a hang-out.

There were also some financial issues which really turned me off. I had spent
about $1500 on classes early on (thinking I’d just get signed off on all of
the machines asap so that I was free to work on anything), but I later found
out that if you didn’t badge into a machine for over 12 months, your
credential for that machine expired and you had to pay to take the class
again. Boom, easily $1000 down the drain. By the time they started hiking up
their membership prices, I was disillusioned and declined to renew.

~~~
kbart
To each his own I guess, but socializing and constant noise around when others
are socializing is the main thing I hate about hacker spaces. I would gladly
pay extra to have a "sterile" workplace for my projects.

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah if sterile means people don't leave shit around everywhere and dump their
unwanted junk in case someone wants it then sign me up.

On the other hand it sounds like the safety paranoia (have you been inducted
to use this hacksaw?) is even worse than at hackspaces.

~~~
cr0sh
At TechShop they were really conscientious about safety, but I don't think
that extended into "hand tools". Power tools, certainly.

And I don't have any problem whatsoever about restricting access (and
policing) to the larger or more dangerous equipment.

Lathes and milling machines can easily maim and kill if not treated with
respect and knowledge. Laser cutters must be supervised when running, or a
fire is easily possible (not to mention understanding why you shouldn't cut
sheet PVC in a laser cutter). Water jet and plasma table cutters are not toys
for the uninitiated.

I have zero problems with such rules. It's one thing if you own the tools
yourself in your home shop; do what you want, whatever consequences result.
But when you are doing it in a public or semi-public manner, having such rules
and regulations should be a sign of quality of the space.

------
viewtransform
At the Redwood city location there were many artists and small businesses that
depended on the facilities. It will be a big blow to them.

I think they got reckless with their expansion. The San Jose location moved to
a new location after their lease expired. They chose to relocate to a prime
location in downtown San Jose and ended up with a million dollar shortfall to
renovate and open the new location. They somehow managed to scrounge the money
through an appeal to the community and opened but it must have ruined their
financials.

At the same time they were opening in other cities. If their financials in the
Bay area were shaky (as they admit in their closing statement on their
website) then it is not clear why they were taking on more risk by expanding.

~~~
URSpider94
They had no choice but to expand. They had a fairly large corporate office,
which needed income from a lot of sites to cover the overhead. I was thinking
about investing and got a good look at the financials - only the three Bay
Area shops were profitable. Bottom line, they overestimated how many makers
out there are willing to pay $150 per month to support their laser cutter
habit.

~~~
viewtransform
Could you reveal whether the Bay Area shops were borderline profitable or
operating with decent margins ? I was surprised that they managed to stay open
for more than a decade and assumed that they had figured out a decent
sustainable business model.

~~~
bagels
San Francisco and Mid-Peninsula were break even (as of 2015). The rest,
including San Jose were hemorrhaging money.

~~~
cr0sh
I'm kinda surprised to think that about the "Phoenix" (Chandler) location;
they were essentially "given" the building they used by the city; it was also
a shared space with some portion of ASU (IIRC).

I wonder what will happen with that ASU program (I think it was part of the
engineering school)? I wonder if they will simply take over the space and
continue using it (though probably closed to the public)?

------
RickS
Really tragic. I toured their SF facilities and was really impressed with the
seriousness of their equipment. Definitely a huge leap above the average maker
shop.

Ultimately the high price wasn't what held me back from joining, but the tool
use policies required by their insurers. You had to pay for a brutally
waitlisted class before they'd let you use so much as a laser cutter. I wonder
how much this contributed - both the cost of insurance and its consequences -
to their decline.

~~~
peller
> You had to pay for a brutally waitlisted class

For better or worse, that's been the model at every makerspace I've been a
member of/looked into. And I think it makes sense, insurance-mandated or not.
Lots of expensive, potentially dangerous machinery that if used wrong can
destroy itself, its user, and/or those nearby.

Also, in my experience once you've built up enough trust with the admins
they'll let you get a crash course from a member who knows what's up and skip
the fees and formal training process.

~~~
WalterBright
I remember my experiences in high school metal shop. The teacher impressed on
us the dangers of leaving the key in the metal lathe chuck when turning it on.
One day, naturally, a kid left the key in the chuck and turned it on. There
was a loud bang as the chuck flew up and through the ceiling. It could clearly
have killed someone if they were in its path.

I don't want to be around people who use powerful machines without proper
training, or around kids using those machines, or using those machines around
kids who treat the shop as a playground.

~~~
stordoff
> using those machines around kids who treat the shop as a playground

Definitely the biggest hazard in my comprehensive school tech. classes. Little
makes you move to the other side of the room faster than people throwing
random pieces of scrap at a powered disk sander, and I'll never forgot the
noise an LED makes when shorted across a 230VAC wall socket (with a locker key
jammed in the earth pin for good measure...).

I sometimes wonder how the only injuries I got from those years was a minor
soldering burn (dropped the iron) and accidentally impaling the palm of my
hand with a screwdriver.

~~~
cr0sh
The high school I went to in the late 1980s was originally the city community
college; the campus was pretty large. The woodshop was located in what was
termed the "industrial arts" building (the building essentially was a high
school "techshop" all on its own; small engine repair, drafting, autoshop,
woodshop, metalshop, etc - all under one roof, three stories tall).

Well, the woodshop itself had equipment that was decades old; some of the
equipment was quality stuff dating from the 1930s. We had this huge surface
planer machine that could take wood 6 inches thick and 8 feet wide; it took a
good 10 minutes for it to come to a complete stop after powering it up.

A friend of mine wanted to see if it would plane 1/2" in one pass off a 2x6;
the instructor of the class had no problem with trying it, either!

It did. You wouldn't believe the sound it made, but it didn't miss a beat
doing it.

------
typetehcodez
Wow. I'm speachless. I remember when Obama visited the TechShop near me in
Pittsburgh. This was supposed to be the next big thing! The harbinger into the
Uberization of the workforce. What a bummer and major dissapointment. I met
with the staff there numerous times; they were fantistic people - well
educated and helpful. This is just so dissapointing. There are quite a few
makerspaces and hackerspaces in Pittsburgh. I hope this doesn't spell the end
of this movement.

------
twblalock
I hate to be the guy who says he saw this coming, but I doubt I'm the only one
who did. Renting out prime real estate in downtown areas, buying very
expensive tools and machinery, and letting people use them for a very small
percentage of the cost? Not a good business model.

~~~
clavalle
I felt the same way when I toured the Austin Techshop. They touted some hugely
expensive machine and I was thinking 'How many people need to cut an 8 inch
block of marble with precision?'

Honestly, I think a similar concept would work with much more basic equipment.

The various Hackerspaces seem like a good bet.

------
ptero
I suspect there is still a business model there. When I was looking for access
to machine shop tools in Boston area (I primarily needed a good accuracy CNC
mill) I found nothing that worked for me. Best match was a "maker space" with
a mess inside, 4 machines 2 of which were broken (including their one CNC) and
remaining two looking suspicious.

How can I use machines? Take a class after sign up. When is the next class?
Not sure, in a few months maybe; they fill quick, too, so keep checking often.
The attitude of an admin I checked with was "get lost, we have enough members
already".

I finally found what I needed at a university hobby shop: working machines,
busy but good access to tools, efficient admins. To get CNC access I needed 2
short classes that I could both schedule within 2 weeks.

Before I found that though I would gladly pay higher membership fees for a
clean, efficient machine shop access. Just my 2c.

~~~
sfifs
Market size would be a challenge. You likely represent a very niche segment -
a highly technically savvy hobbyist who wants to work on tools yourself for
the love of it.

For anyone doing requiring 3D printing, CNC etc professionally or even as a
semi serious hobby, I'm sure there would be firms who can execute and fedex
you the job.

Here in Singapore when I moved into our apartment, I ended up having to design
a custom child safety lock for my windows. I found quite a few 3D print shops
which could deliver the next day at quite a reasonable rate - fast enough for
me to iterate the final design within a week.

~~~
ptero
> Market size would be a challenge.

Possibly, but I am not sure about this. When I was looking (about 5-7 yrs ago,
US, Boston area) there were two types: cheap and nonfunctional beyond toys or
"we run your jobs for you". First type, as they are cheap, have no interest in
new members building things; in fact, as the membership is so cheap they try
to sell all sorts of overpriced classes as memberships do not cover costs.

At the other end there are those who take your design and ship you the
product, as you said. This is OK for many cases, but gets pretty expensive and
inefficient for prototyping. And there was nothing in between to fill this
wide gap.

In fact, when I was looking for such a shop and asked friends if they know a
place that would let me pay membership to use a decent quality 3+ axis CNC
mill and a laser cutter no one knew of a place but several said if I found
one, would I please let them know. So I suspect the market _is_ there.

The situation is much better with 3D printing -- there are small shops
everywhere and some could even let you come inside and iterate if you chat
with owners. However, inexpensive 3D printing is nowhere near the accuracy,
reliability and robustness of the end product you get with inexpensive
milling.

~~~
mdorazio
I think you just answered your own question there. Look up the price of a
3-axis mill with the capabilities you're looking for. The cheapest you'll find
is probably the Tormach 440, which starts at about $7K. A laser cutter in the
range you're likely looking for runs about the same. Now look at the unit
economics on that and figure out how many people like you would need to pay to
use the machines before breaking even, before even getting into rent,
maintenance costs, insurance, and the inevitable repairs needed when a non-
professional uses it and breaks it. It's just not worth it to have that level
of machinery available to the public unless it's part of a bigger TechShop-
like setup where dues are a grand a year and classes that much again (there's
a similar place to TechShop in Orange County, for example, with an almost
identical cost structure).

For what it's worth, I run a 3D printing shop (we also have a laser cutter and
woodworking equipment) and we let people prototype on our machines
occasionally. 3D printing is an order of magnitude more accessible than
milling, and probably about twice as easy as laser cutting, and if one of our
machines goes down due to user error, it's cheap and easy to replace parts and
won't stop operations since there are plenty of others.

------
CalChris
I frequented the Redwood City location but bailed after the expansion. Or
rather, I bailed after everyone else who I mooched knowledge off of bailed.
Still, it was great while it lasted. Ace Monster Toys is similar in the East
Bay.

[https://www.acemonstertoys.org/](https://www.acemonstertoys.org/)

~~~
ek750
Nice, I hadn't heard of this place before, but a little far for me. I was
actually looking at techshop and planning on going there since I had some
small projects I wanted to do.

I'm on the peninsula, is there something similar in this area?

------
whyenot
What a shame. There was one right next to the San Jose State University
campus. They were forced to move when construction on new private student
housing began where their building had been located. After a lot of hardship
and pleas for donations they had just finished moving into a new location
right on 2nd street in the middle of downtown.

video featuring many of the regulars at the SJ location
[https://youtu.be/vYBivF3YNlg](https://youtu.be/vYBivF3YNlg)

------
swimfar
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15705072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15705072)

------
emeraldd
There was a location near me, but I could never justify spending that much
money on something I'd use for a a day or two a month. Between commutes during
the week and traveling on weekends there would never have been time to make it
worthwhile. Sad to see them go under though.

~~~
cellularmitosis
You hit on what I suspect is a missed opportunity on their part. There are a
lot of businesses which seem to be thriving on the “too cheap to bother
canceling even though I stopped using it” idea, like the $10 gym memberships
you see.

Perhaps they could have come up with a drastically price reduced membership
which only allowed for a couple of days of use per month? It would have eaten
into some of their full memberships, but I suspect they could have
dramatically grown their membership in that fashion.

------
danshapiro
This is just terrible. We need more, not less, access to tools in our society.

We joined with a few other startups to offer something to the members who were
affected.

glowforge.com/techshop

------
jimktrains2
I could never justify joining the Pittsburgh one when it was open. I did visit
a few times and always felt like they had too many employees and too much
space for what they were. They also chose one of the most expensive places to
rent in a city filled with affordable real estate.

------
dheera
Pragmatic question: what are the alternatives in the Bay Area that are
available to me right now?

I'm most interested in having access to a laser cutter, mill, and lathe.

~~~
jimmywanger
Most community colleges.

If you develop a good relationship with the prof, he'll let you run a mill.

Take a class or two, and see how far it gets your. They are usually pretty
cool.

~~~
convolvatron
it seems really sad that these longstanding resources don't get as much
attention in the maker community as they should. the teaching staff is usually
super experienced and helpful, the costs are priced to allow people to get
themselves into regular blue collar work. most importantly for me they are
trying to train you to be a professional craftsman, not just getting you to
the minimum level that you can show up once a month and mess around and
probably not hurt yourself.

ccsf welding courses are vastly more useful and 1/4 the cost of a crucible
course

~~~
VLM
There's a political angle or herd mentality that makes it hard to go to CC. If
you can get past it, they are great places for an individual to learn, but if
the social or social media stuff is a significant fraction of being in the
makerspace, then its not going to work.

~~~
jimmywanger
What do you mean by herd mentality?

If you want to make contacts, that's different from running a lathe, but maybe
I'm oversimplifying.

I will say that people at makerspaces generally want to be there, whereas
people in CCs generally see it as more of a steppingstone to a decently paying
job. You might get more out of one or the other, but there's no denying that
makerspaces charge extortionate rates for machines that the CC provides
virtually for free, if you know the prof well enough so he lets you sneak in.

------
gaze
Eh good riddance. I recall encountering a litany of safety issues at their
first location. For instance... a properly set up machine shop has the milling
machines placed in the corners of the room, and the remainder with shields
around them. This is so that if a part is improperly fixtured, the part won't
be shot out of the vice at a neighboring operator. When a certain mill made a
terrible noise at the speed I needed to operate it at, I was told to crank the
speed up until the noise went away. This is when the location was run by the
core group of people who started it... and thus I'm not surprised that it was
mismanaged at scale as it grew.

------
sschueller
These kind of facilities should be paid for by tax dollars (which they are in
other countries). They provide a needed place for people to tinker and learn
which is beneficial to the community overall.

------
cr0sh
This is rather unexpected and surprising to me. I wonder what it was about the
business model that just didn't work?

When they opened the Chandler location here in the Phoenix area, I quickly
signed up for a year's membership, but that turned out to be a mistake. I
certainly didn't get my money's worth, but the mistake was on my end, not
theirs: They were located in the east valley (where it seems all the cool kids
are), and I live in the west valley; it was a good 100 mile drive round-trip
for me to go there. I hardly ever went as a result, and the membership was
wasted.

The space itself was amazing otherwise; had it been closer to my home I am
sure I would have used it more often than I did for the tools I didn't
otherwise have at home (like the laser cutters, for instance). I was always
impressed how they had workshops for just about everything you needed to take
an idea from a concept (CAD/design) to finished prototype.

There more more than a few startups that got their start at TechShop; one of
the more famous examples was Square (they prototyped the original swipe reader
thru TechShop).

I am now wondering what, if anything, this says (or what effects it will have)
about other maker and hackerspaces. We don't really have very many in the
Valley. For myself, I'll just continue doing what I've always done, and work
from home or over at my friend's shop.

------
Animats
Update: the founder of Square is re-opening the St. Louis location.[1]

The Deputy City Manager of San Jose has his staff looking into what to do
about the San Jose location.[2] There's a good chance San Jose and the
Downtown Development Association will make something happen. They're very
aggressive in building up downtown San Jose. In 2008, it was almost totally
empty, and they want startups to locate there.

[1] [http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/inventors-take-
heart-...](http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/inventors-take-heart-st-
louis-entrepreneur-will-reopen-maker-
space/article_31d842e2-4637-5948-b7d7-1f0b963554de.html)

[2] [http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/16/rip-techshop-san-
jose-...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/16/rip-techshop-san-jose-what-
comes-next/)

------
replicatorblog
More broadly, it's kind of sad how little actually came of the "Maker
Movement," at least in terms of startups. MakerBot sold for $400M and there
are plenty of small 3-D printer companies targeted at hobbyists. Ponoko and
Shapeways are solid if unspectacular. Arduino and Raspberry Pi are both solid
projects, AdaFruit and Sparkfun are solid businesses. Make: Magazine is cool,
but still a niche publication.

Of course, startups aren't the only measure of success. The net positive is
hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of younger hackers who may go on to
build the next hardware company based on lessons learned at a MakerFaire.

~~~
radiorental
> More broadly, it's kind of sad how little actually came of the "Maker
> Movement"

I'm not sure I agree. However I do believe the "Maker" movement was over sold
by O'Reilly media and Dale Dougherty in particular. I stopped subscribing to
Make Magazine few years back when it became apparent it was little more than a
print version of Hackaday or Instructables.

Regardless of Maker. There is a plethora Robotics Competitions, existing
Hacker spaces and STEM is huge.

The number of kids that were going to tinker at home is a fairly fixed. Where
we'll really move the needle in terms of more people getting into engineering
is in formal education (inc Robotics competitions).

Disclosure: I'm a little biased, I help design and build IDE's for some of
these comps, e.g. [http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/what-is-
zr/](http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/what-is-zr/) but I also have advocated and
help implement "maker spaces" in my local school system. There is a sea-
change, so I'll push back on the idea that little came of the 'maker movement'

~~~
replicatorblog
I totally agree — There was just this point where the Economist and other
general interest publications were covering it like the 3rd industrial
revolution. More robot clubs are great, but it's hard to think of a single
billion dollar company that came out of it.

~~~
bagels
I don't credit Techshop for any of this success, but lore had it that Square
built their prototype at Techshop.

~~~
Animats
The case. Not the electronics.

------
nwatson
I belonged to the Redwood City TechShop for a year and was surprised five
years ago seeing a TechShop planned for Raleigh, NC when we were thinking of
moving to RTP. I'm not sure that it ever opened, it didn't last long.

We ended up in Winston-Salem, NC instead, and I look forward to checking on
Mixxer when it opens, $550/year,
[https://wsmixxer.org/](https://wsmixxer.org/). Winston-Salem has a big arts
community, might be an interesting place.

~~~
grmarcil
I was a member at TechShop RDU for a couple years. It started as an
independent makerspace, got acquired by TechShop in 2011, then closed in 2013.
It was a really cool place and I miss it. A lot of interesting characters
there.

As others have said in this thread, I think TS had a tough value proposition
to build a business model around. Classes were a pain and a fairly big start-
up cost for new members, but inevitable to satisfy insurance requirements. The
monthly membership fee was fairly cheap considering the awesome equipment they
had, but expensive if you could only manage to go a few days a month. Plus
whatever storage fees for larger projects and/or the hassle of carting your
stuff around.

On top of that, management at both locations I used (RDU and Arlington) seemed
a bit chaotic. Sad to see them go out of business either way.

------
yeswecatan
For those of you in SF, you should look into Noisebridge. They don't have
nearly as many tools or machines as TechShop, but they have a lot and it's all
free.

~~~
hackcasual
Noisebridge is a cultural institution in and of itself. Such an amazing space
to spend time in

------
robbyt
The Brooklyn location just opened two weeks ago. Its fully stocked, and most
of the equipment has never been used. What a waste!

------
Animats
Discussions elsewhere concerning TechShop revival are on Facebook [1] and on
Slack (somewhere).

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/128112754534676/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/128112754534676/)

------
ironchef253
People really decided to hate Peter Thiel during the last election. But he is
right about the fact that you can’t do anything in the physical world in the
United States anymore.

Between housing and real estate prices, insurance, taxes, lack of government
support, environmental protections, requirement to pay for health insurance
for employees,layers of regulations, minimum wage laws, sexual harassment
lawsuits (it only takes one and your company is over)...you just can’t operate
a physical space with drills, laser cutters, saws, advanced electronics and
machinery at a profit in America anymore.

TechShop was the last gasp of American industry having any sort of future.
With Tech Shop, we can also probably say good bye to a good deal of real trade
skills people learn at these locations. They really tried to make it work. I
have spoken to some of their founders myself - The amount of work it takes to
set up even one of these facilities is simply staggering. If I were to show
you the spreadsheets, business plans and research these guys invest to open
ONE shop it genuinely rivals that of a full startup per location.

My heart really breaks.

There are a few companies able to survive with physical presences like this in
the Bay Area now, but they are all backed by the power of Jabil, Flextronics,
Autodesk. Some small indie chain can’t make it in these conditions.

Unfortunately, we can expect more of this as a country. We are one recession
away from a full republican route (they are doing a spectacularly awful job
and deserve to be thrown out) and all signs are pointing to a fully socialist
government being next in line.

Socialist governments are not known for their desire to roll back worker
protections, undo environmental protections and regulations, nor is their
focus on enabling businesses. Although I will say Canada seems to be doing
better than us in many ways when it comes to accelerating genuinely valuable
little companies like TechShop.

I am genuinely beginning to advise people to consider moving to Asia where
innovation is able to happen, it won’t be done in a America anytime soon.

Between Trump and his socialist successor - and the wonderful incompetent
state of California I don’t have a good feeling about American innovation
anymore.

~~~
pmikesell
People are down voting you, and yes people hate Pete Thiel. At the same time I
see this current thread (the one we're reading, abut TechShop _running out of
money_ ) full of people saying they would have joined but it was _too
expensive_.

What you are saying at least partially makes some sense and it makes me sad
people are downvoting you in a clearly reactionary way.

~~~
Jtsummers
> TechShop was the last gasp of American industry having any sort of future.

I suspect downvotes because of this, as much as the politics. The absurdity of
a small, nonprofitable company being "the last gasp of American industry" and
the odd lamentations around that.

I live in the Southeast. Drive through nearly any county in GA, NC, and SC
(the region I'm presently most familiar with) and you'll find a surprisingly
large number of manufacturing centers.

> With Tech Shop, we can also probably say good bye to a good deal of real
> trade skills people learn at these locations.

And none of the people working in them were trained by Tech Shop. They were
trained on the job or in trade and tech schools.

~~~
pmikesell
Sure, your right - I was just trying to say that something was ringing true in
his statement ... people finding it too expensive to learn stuff like this,
meanwhile the company trying to do it not making enough money to stay afloat.

