The business problem with maker spaces is that the "gym model" didn't work. The gym model is that you pay some fixed fee per month, and don't come very often.
People who bought TechShop memberships showed up too much. Many were using the place as their day job.
There are some successes. Maker Nexus in Silicon Valley pivoted to after-school activities for teens. Humanmade in San Francisco is mostly a job training center, and gets some government funding. There are some library-based maker spaces, but they're mostly basic 3D printing and crafts.
There's also pricing. Techshop started at $100/month and rose to $125 before they went bust. Humanmade is at $250. That's too high for casual users. If you raise the price too much, you mostly have customers who are there all the time, and now you don't have enough capacity.
The financial numbers just didn't work out. Most of the remaining maker spaces have some degree of public financing, as part of a college or work training center.
Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if a more transactional model might work better.
Perhaps something like FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos). No membership. You go in and you pay to use equipment and resources. Of course, there would have to be levels of qualification someone would have to pass before being allowed to touch certain equipment. I suppose you could have classes (Solidworks, 3D printing, CNC machining, welding, etc.).
Writing that, at some level, it starts to feel complex. I say this in the context of my stated objective, which would be to stay busy at a low stress level after retirement. I am not sure that what I just described fits that model.
There's also a reality most don't want to think about. While, for the most part, dealing with the public is fun and interesting, there's always a very small percentage of people who behave badly. It's the old Tragedy of the Commons story. That's the part that none of us enjoy at all.
Noisebridge was a free, open maker space in San Francisco, and they had too many people just hanging out there. Twice, they had to shut down for over a month, clean out all the crap, and start over. The maker spaces that charge don't have that problem.
At TechShop, the big operational problems were tool deterioration and staff burnout. Tools tended to stabilize at the point where they're just above worn out. The drill bits and milling cutters were dull. The sandpaper on the belt sanders was worn almost smooth. The CNC mill needed a coolant change. The laser cutters had laser systems performing at about 50% of rated power, and you had to halve the feed rate. In a commercial shop, you'd fix things before they got that bad, because you're losing production. The same business logic does not apply to maker spaces.
The staff problem with TechShop was that they paid slightly above minimum wage, which is nowhere near enough to keep people with a broad range of shop skills. The big employee benefit was that you could take classes for free, so it was sort of an apprenticeship program.
Over time, the staff tended to become the ones who couldn't get a job in a real shop.
Those are some of the operational problems you have to beat.
Yeah, this is why I never moved on this idea. There's a lot of potential for it to derail into something that isn't pleasant at all (or self-sustaining/profitable).
There are some successes. Maker Nexus in Silicon Valley pivoted to after-school activities for teens. Humanmade in San Francisco is mostly a job training center, and gets some government funding. There are some library-based maker spaces, but they're mostly basic 3D printing and crafts.
There's also pricing. Techshop started at $100/month and rose to $125 before they went bust. Humanmade is at $250. That's too high for casual users. If you raise the price too much, you mostly have customers who are there all the time, and now you don't have enough capacity. The financial numbers just didn't work out. Most of the remaining maker spaces have some degree of public financing, as part of a college or work training center.