Shapeways has been resurrected, sort of.
The venerable 3D print service declared bankruptcy recently, much to the dismay of its long time customers. Shapeways was a leading service for many years. It was the first 3D print service that addressed consumer needs at the dawn of the desktop 3D printing era.
Started many years ago in Eindhoven, the company eventually received significant VC investment and moved its HQ to New York City. Those were the good times.
However, as people obtained their own equipment, that consumer need diminished, and Shapeways had to compete with other established companies for professional and industrial markets. It didn’t seem to work, and the company declared bankruptcy last month.
Now it seems Shapeways, or rather the operations, will rise again.
In a surprise LinkedIn announcement, a group has taken control of the bankrupt company’s assets and is restarting operations under a new name, Manuevo. They write:
“We are thrilled to announce that under our new name, Manuevo, the former Eindhoven Shapeways team together with two co-founders have successfully acquired the Shapeways assets out of Dutch bankruptcy.”
They have restarted operations and hope to provide pretty much the same services as Shapeways. Not only can you place orders, but also the system APIs can be used to reconnect apps to the system. They will continue to operate with the same ISO standards, something quite important to certain customers.
Manuevo COO Jules Witte said:
“The Eindhoven team has been delivering high-quality parts with personal service for many years, and our customers have missed this service over the past month. Supported by the intention of many of our customers to return, we are pleased that we can make a restart; the unanimously positive responses from our regular customers are heartwarming. The team is particularly motivated to show that we can be independently successful.”
The big question here is whether they can recover original Shapeways customers. The bankruptcy announcement was quite sudden, and caught many customers by complete surprise.
Some of the Shapeways customers were busy users, frequently ordering parts for their own operations. With the sudden absence of Shapeways they were forced to find alternative print services.
It’s almost certain many of them did find alternative services for their businesses. But with Manuevo now emerging, would these customers switch back to Manuevo?
Switching suppliers is a bit of work to do, as there would be administrative changes and perhaps even programming changes to adapt to the API. Would customers be willing to spend all that switchover effort and money to go back to Manuevo if they’ve already switched?
My guess is that only a portion will do so. This puts Manuevo in a position where they will have fewer customers than Shapeways did at the point of bankruptcy. They’ll have to take special efforts to grow their customer base, and that starts with awareness: most of the former Shapeways customers likely have no idea Manuevo even exists. They may continue switching to other providers even now, simply because they don’t know about Manuevo.
As for Manuevo itself, one has to ask the question: if Shapeways was bankrupt, and Manuevo is apparently doing the same functions with the same assets, then will they become bankrupt, too?
While the operations are the same, the ownership structure is quite different. Shapeways was a public company with demanding shareholders that had invested massive amounts of cash into the company. That’s no longer the case, as the new owners operate Manuevo as a private company that surely has far less investment: they most likely obtained the Shapeways assets at a discount.
Welcome Manuevo, and good luck in the future!
