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In the beginning everything was fine, there was a great community about 3dprinting enough orders for everybody. Then after 1-2 years 3dhubs started to kick out several hubs. On the 11. of june 2016 there were 31,298 hubs online then some month later after kicking out the hubs - where just 7,363 left (31 July 2016). Before and after there was no communication about kicking out the hubs, the reason where always different, what was your reason? The storie contiued Many hubs reported that they don’t get any orders any more and so on. On one site I understand 3dhubs, because of there financial goals on the other hand, all the hubs supported in there communities (each city) to grow 3dhubs and what 3dhubs did? They kicked exactly this hubs out…So which trust you have in a business partner, if they do this kind of things? I would say zero trust, because you don’t know what they will do in the future! You can’t base your business on a partner like this… what is your experience with 3dhubs?

I was reading this article about 3dhubs

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Hi @marcmiller3d,

Thank you for sharing. So what was your story?

The number is counting different things. It used to also include Hubs who are offline or have created duplicate Hubs. Over the years we’ve introduced many verification steps to avoid this and today we’re showing the number of actual online services. We’ve also introduced a wait-list for the new suppliers to make sure we manage to get enough orders to our current community first.

Also, only the very lowest performing online suppliers were suspended (less then bottom 10%) to ensure the improved customer experience.

Best,

Arnoldas

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I think you are voicing the concerns many Hubs operators have at this very moments.

I also think that, as often, there are different sides to the story.

I agree with some of your statements.

Yes, the communication between 3D Hubs and the Hubs could be better. Especially when if comes to making changes in the way the 3D Hubs website works and the impact this may have (or has) in the amount of orders you may or may not receive.

On the other hand, 3D Hubs is for many customer a kind of a black box. Sometimes this is convenient, other times it is not. Meaning that if a Hubs delivers a bad customer experience, that customer would be lost of 3D Hubs.

Being a profit oriented business (I assume), 3D Hubs will try to improve the number of customers & orders in several ways.

Their decisions would be based on this assumption. Probably, decisions will not always work out in the way they were intended and only time will tell if they have made the right decisions or not. I certainly do not agree will all the changes they have made from my point of view, but, having talked to several people at 3D Hubs face-to-face, I can understand their point of view as well.

For example, there is now a waiting list for new Hubs. The reason for this is simple.

3D Hubs knows exactly how many Hubs they have and the kind of services these Hub can provide.

Optimally, in order to give customers a wide variety of options, all existing techniques should be available in every geographic area.

If you are going to be Hub number 127 in a specific area with just another iPrusa i3 (clone) FDM-printer, how much business do you expect to get?

Would adding another small FDM-printer add anything to the value of 3D Hubs to customers or to you in such a case? Or would it only confuse things for customers and actually reduce the number of order any Hub will get.

There are only so many order going around per geographic area and with an ever growing number of Hubs, this would mean less orders per Hub for everyone.

Does this makes things difficult for new Hubs?

Definately! But I do not see how things could be both improved for already existing Hubs and for new Hubs as well.

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