Once upon a time, there was a company called Shapeways, where you could buy and sell physical 3D prints. This doesn’t sound very noteworthy in an age where 8-year-olds are getting ToyBox 3D printers for Christmas. But Shapeways started in 2007, five years before Josef Prusa sold his first 3D printer in an empty pizza box.
Shapeways is an industrial print farm that began in the Netherlands, rapidly grew, moved its headquarters to New York, and by 2012 had a manufacturing plant in Long Island. In 2014, Marleen Vogelaar, one of the original founders, left to pursue other ventures. She said Shapeways lost its way. In 2024, buried in bloat, Shapeways went bankrupt.
Vogelaar and Robert Schouwenburg, another Shapeways co-founder, gathered a group of investors to save what they could of their old company. “It’s your baby. It was sad to see,” she said. Vogelaar said they tried to save as many jobs as possible, but Shapeways fell into two legal jurisdictions: the US and the Netherlands. Their team was able to scoop up the European factory, plus all the intellectual property and naming rights in both countries. They could not recover the American manufacturing side of the business, which was sold off in parts to clear the debt.
Vogelaar said the core 3D printing business was still profitable, and that’s where the new Shapeways has started over. Proud of their efforts to save jobs in her homeland, she still regrets the loss of the Shapeways Shops marketplace. She knows many creators earn a living by selling their designs through Shapeways.
The marketplace – and all its digital data – was lost during the bankruptcy. That data belonged to individuals who used the Shapeways platform, and it could not be sold, even to well-meaning investors like Vogelaar.