The End of Make: What Does That Mean for Us?

Yesterday, Maker Media (the company behind MAKE: magazine and Maker Faire) announced that it has ceased operations and laid off all 22 employees. This is certainly a sad day for us involved in the maker community. What will become of the inspiring festivals and gorgeously formatted print magazines that showcased other people's creativeness and ingenuity?

The answer is we don't know, but it does create opportunity for others to take up the mantle of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) cause. Maybe Dale Dougherty and the leadership at Maker Media will find a way to evolve, move through this hardship, and find new growth. Maybe not.

"Maker Faire Detroit 2011 10" by Michael Barera is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

DIY in Modern Times

The need for humans to create their own devices or repair equipment dates back to at least 6th-century BC Greek culture with ancient IKEA-like structures. Dale Dougherty, in his speeches, often talked about the need for American settlers and farmers to repair their own equipment. In the 1970s, North America witnessed the rise of DIY culture through mostly home improvement TV shows and magazines.

One could also make the argument that each wave of DIY corresponds to a downturn in the economy as individuals become less likely to spend money on newer items. Finding an exact correlation is difficult, but the point about necessity also stands.

"Dow Jones 100 Year Historical Chart" from Macrotrends

From all of this, we can see that there will always be a DIY culture of some sort, but the form it takes will continually evolve: word of mouth, radio, television, Internet, Faires.

For the rest of this discussion, I'd like to focus on DIY electronics, as that's mostly the world I live in. Home improvement and mechanical devices will certainly have their place (I just don't know them that well).

Electronics in the Maker World

Many of us think fondly of Heathkit and Radio Shack selling bare electronic components and kits. Both of these companies eventually closed their doors in the 1990s and 2000s, which gave rise to Internet-only businesses, such as SparkFun and Adafruit. The creation of Arduino in 2005 paved the way for many non-engineers to incorporate embedded systems into their projects.

Let's look at how this played into the Maker movement.

In 2017, Maker Media put out this infographic celebrating the growth of the Maker Faire. The bottom portion of that graphic shows a 12 year growth chart that was very telling:

This is indicative of a classic S-curve (the green line) that almost all successful businesses face. It showed that the number of people attending Maker Faires all around the world was reaching a saturation point. Very few businesses can survive on doing the same thing forever, so it's important for leadership to recognize this trend and begin asking the question: what comes next?

It should come as no surprise that the Internet has decimated the sale of printed media over the last couple of decades. The MAKE: magazine is no exception. The first issue rolled off the press in 2005, and if it even remotely followed the trend of much larger publications, the revenue certainly declined as less people subscribed to magazines in general.

The inflection point in Maker Faire attendees coupled with declining magazine sales were two red flags. Certainly, Maker Media tried other avenues, such as selling online subscriptions and kit retail, but neither seemed to pan out well enough to save the ship.

Money in the Maker Movement

There was a time when all the big companies wanted a piece of this newly minted "Maker Movement" (the culture that encompassed Dale Dougherty's definition of DIY, which included mostly Arduino-based electronics, 3D printed objects, and CNC produced goods). In 2014, the likes of Disney, Chevrolet, Intel, and Microsoft could be seen with impressively large booths at Maker Faire. This seemed to fly in the face of the open-source nature of the Maker Movement, but I suppose it's hard to turn down large bags of money from sponsors.

A few years later, all of these companies pulled out of the Maker market. Intel's departure received the most fanfare, as it was one of the few large companies to offer maker-focused products with the Arduino 101, Galileo, Edison, and Joule.

Most Makers were interested in producing only one device or project. They would build it, Tweet about it, and show it off at Maker Faire. That's it. Making was closer to art than business. I believe that fostering this mentality of "making something for the heck of it" is still a very good thing for people to learn about technology, gain new skills, or express themselves.

"LED Pong Table" by SparkFun Electronics is licensed under CC BY 2.0

However, for the larger companies, this likely proved to be a very difficult subculture to market to. What was Chevrolet's supposed ROI on showing up to a DIY-inclined Maker Faire with a shiny new pickup truck? How was Intel supposed to put the Edison into its mass production machine if only a few people wanted one of them?

As a result, most of these large sponsors pulled out of Maker Faire. Since Maker Media upped their booth prices in 2012 to capitalize on these companies, smaller companies simply could not make up the difference.

Making the Future

So where does that leave us? Making and DIY will continue, but probably not in printed magazine form. Instructables has already picked up where MAKE: magazine left off. The Faires will likely be fractured and localized (at least for now). Go to Burning Man if you want to see flame-throwing art cars or come find me at Hackaday's Superconference if you want to chat electronics.

In my opinion, I believe that more Makers will begin forming their own small businesses. The barrier to entry for hardware businesses has been coming down every year. Producing electronics in low quantities is relatively easy (SparkFun started by soldering with a skillet!). Turnkey manufacturers can be found in China for cheap. Crowdsourcing is now mainstream. Billionaires like Steve Case are roving around the country to help startups outside of Silicon Valley and New York.

The desire to make one-off art projects will still exist, but smaller, niche markets have already started to emerge for handcrafted parts and electronics (think Etsy and Tindie). Additionally, the learning side of making will likely be institutionalized in STEM education for K-12.

If you are part of a company that sponsored or profited off the Maker Movement, you should start to think about how you can add value to this new breed of startups or helping schools integrate the idea of making.

This is obviously speculation on my part, so what do you think will become of the Maker Movement?

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Shawn Hymel helps companies develop engaging technical content through a variety of media and teaches electronics and programming to people of all ages. He engineered devices for SparkFun Electronics before appearing in videos and working as a marketing advisor. He started Skal Risa, LLC in 2017, which produces videos, blogs, and tutorials for a variety of clients. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnHymel and visit shawnhymel.com.