NEWS

I have good news and I have bad news.

The good news first!

Sunday 13th Feb marked 8 years since I first opened the shop in Southbourne!

I am very proud of this achievement and looking back over the years on all of the projects that I have worked on for customers such as the BBC, Lush, Muc-Off, Carnival UK, and Colten Care to name just some of the better known.

I have helped many people bring their ideas to life, many of which have gone into production and one of the prototypes I made even made it onto Dragon's Den, and got funded by Peter Jones!

There have been countless requests to model and make replacements for broken parts, which has helped increase the life-span of many discontinued products.

I have had several work experience school kids over the years and a University under-graduate placement student, who I tasked with designing and making a 3D printer, which he kept at the end of his placement.

It is difficult to recount all of the projects that I have had the pleasure of working on but every now and then, one will pop into my head and I remember the fun I had with solving the problems to get things to work as desired.

Now the bad news.

The last two years have been very difficult. With the majority of my work historically coming from companies, the difficulties of working from home, disrupted worldwide shipping, a shortage of microchips, and some of our customers bringing 3D printing in-house, have all meant a huge drop in demand.

With my current lease coming to an end in March, I have made the decision that it is time to close the shop and look for new opportunities.

I have told some people already and had some really kind comments back.

I am no longer taking orders for bespoke parts, mainly as I have 8 years of stuff to go through (Engineers make for great hoarders) and the current jobs I am working on will take me into next week.

I have created an Etsy shop to sell some of my own designs in, which I will be continuing. It can be found here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Shed136

To all of my customers over the last eight years, thank you.

Mike