OT STL Post-Dispatch reports "Techshop" has closed up

[J Tiers]

Yesterday's P-D says all of the "Techshop" operations in the US have closed permanently.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/techshop-shuts-down-closes-st-louis-studio/article_0fbc7d27-b968-5abd-914e-c9be4601bc64.html

[Royldean]

This will not come as a surprise to most.

[kendall]

True, not really a surprise but there was still hope that it would stick around. I thought it was a good concept.

[George Bulliss]

I attended a couple of CNC Workshops at the Detroit Techshop. It was a very nice facility and always seemed to be busy. A lot of overhead in one of those places, though. There is probably a lot of turnover in the membership as well.

Too bad for those who used it.

[JackD]

Techshop Now Closed

My son and I toured the one in St. Louis several months ago during an open house one weekend and I must say they had some nice modern equipment, BUT they must have borrowed the play book from BOB CAD. They were insanely expensive and they either emailed or called daily to get me to join. I wish I hadn't used my real name, phone number and e-mail address when we signed in for the tour. They did have some fun toys though!

Jack

[v860rich]

I read the article and most people they interviewed were using the place to make a living.
Was that the intent?
I always thought they were for getting a start to see if your concept was any good and then going it on your owh.

HANX RICH

[DR]

This will not come as a surprise to most.

Yep. no surprise here either. I followed the Techshop in Menlo Park, then the failure in Portland, then not getting off the ground in Seattle.

[R.Bolte.Jr]

The problem I had with them, I went to an open house, ran into a person I knew. I was shocked to find out he was now an "instructor" pretty sure from past experience he knew nothing about the machine he was "instructing" on, but that didn't stop them from accepting your class fee. He definitely didn't need the job, only took it to get free time on the machines. So if you were playing by the rules and paying your dues and class fees, you were basically funding a bunch of people like him.

[RB211]

Maybe I am just an A-hole, but when I am machining, or in the shop, I am extremely anti social and cannot tolerate anyone interrupting me, or trying to talk to me. The idea of a shared space, where I would have to use machinery shared by others was an immediate NO from me.

[Max McGrumpy]

I read the article and most people they interviewed were using the place to make a living.
Was that the intent?
I always thought they were for getting a start to see if your concept was any good and then going it on your owh.

HANX RICH

There were a couple of problems:

1) They were allowing companies to coopt large blocks of time for production use. Basically companies would buy blocks of time to run production... The one I am aware of there were six companies vying for time on the machinery. Each company would use up consumables and expect Tech Shop to take care of it.

2) Piss-poor training -- anyone could become an "instructor" after showing a very basic competence on a machine. What we were hearing about were people taking basic cert courses then denying access to everyone else under the guise of "not qualified/failed training" thus freeing up time for themselves

3) Enormous liability insurance -- there was literally no way around this, you are letting the ignorgrunts of society run power tools. Even if they could have overcome 1 and 2 they would have eventually had an accident and the cost of insurance would have killed the company. As it was it was basically sucking them dry from a cashflow standpoint.

[v860rich]

On this evenings news they said Tech Shop is not going to close in St Louis.
I can't find this in print anywhere and I don't know which station they were tuned to.

THANX RICH

[J Tiers]

The website has this up on it

http://www.techshop.ws/techshop.pdf

.

[v860rich]

I saw that a couple of days ago!!!!

THANX RICH

[R.Bolte.Jr]

Interesting, Third Degree runs a successful little business, their "Third Friday" parties are a lot of fun. They've been around, and definitely understand liability issues. Local ownership might be better for this model, I'll give them a second chance for sure.

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/third-degree-glass-factory-will-take-over-techshop-st-louis#stream/0

[reggie_obe]

If you can't have your own shop/hobby shop and you're not developing a prototype, $4 a day is a little hard to swallow. Add to that the costs of classes you must take for each piece of equipment. Maybe Macona will chime in on this.