From a business perspective it didn’t make sense for Stratasys to acquire Makerbot. Especially not with the hefty price tag of $400+ million.
That is the reverse of what we saw last decade with, for example, IBM divesting itself of its low-margin, high-volume PC division by selling it to Lenovo. Both IBM and Lenovo are stonger for the exchange, because the markets they service are so very different.
In a similar manner, the high-margin, low volume business-centric products of Stratasys require a totally different business and marketing model compared to the low-margin, high-volume consumer-centric market they bought into with the acquisition of Makerbot.
That acquisition was a very poor business decision by Stratasys, and was bound to end in tears.
Exactly. What were they thinking?!
They couldn’t buy their way into success when they purchased Makerbot.
It seems like they thought Makerbot had a huge future in 3D printing. If it did, they just made sure that it won’t.
Unless I missed something, the article doesn’t make a peep out of how badly they handled their 5th generation designs. It was bad enough that Jenny Lawton acknowledged problems with the smart extruder, but no word as to whether the problems were ever addressed in the form of design improvements, much less the problem truly solved.
According to the author the loss of goodwill was due to makers unfairly accusing them of IP theft. His Gen 5 works fine, so that isn’t the problem. Stratasys is just being a big mean corporation that squashes the little guy, rather than grabbing the wheel before the car drives off a cliff.