New Xometry requirement to purchased material from Xometry?

Hi guys that are looking at Xometry jobs,

I've started to see this called out on some job offers:

"By accepting this job, you agree to purchase material through Xometry Supplies, material quote attached. A link to a live shopping cart will be emailed upon job acceptance and material will have a guaranteed arrival within 2 business days. If needed, please reach out to [redacted]."

WTF is that all about?: This job is straightforward 6061 that could be made from material I have on the rack,. with MTR's. Having to get it from Xometry would be an unnecessary bother, and delay.

If it was something exotic, or with a unique heat treat or something like that, fine, but regular 6061?

Regards.

Mike

Finegrain said:

WTF is that all about?

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That can't be too hard to figure out.

DavidScott said:

That can't be too hard to figure out.

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I know, but I'm giving room for a more generous explanation . Might not be one.

If it's the obvious, and they expand the usage, it's gonna make an already difficult arrangement much harder.

Regards.

Mike

I haven't looked at Xometry in a month, I may never again. Especially forcing us to use their material, that will cut into profits and add time. Also it seems UPS is the preferred shipper of industrial supply companies and they are very unreliable here during foul weather. Get a few creeks overflowing or a couple inches of snow and they get USPS to complete delivery which can at up to a week.

On the positive side they sent me a box of promotional items.
As a bald dude in the summer hats come in handy as sun burned heads suck and you would not believe how cold a hairless head gets in winter. The large banner they sent made a nice cover for the lawn tractor I leave outside. The T-shirt was way too small but great as a rag to stuff around a leaky hydraulic pump to keep the drips off the floor. The graph paper books will make great scratch pads. No use for the mechanical pencil, I like the old fashioned kind.

DavidScott said:

That can't be too hard to figure out.

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Yeah, there's the obvious. But if the part has to be certified by Xometry, or if additional operations are needed, Xometry may want to ensure compliance/documentation/good quality material.

Still, its ridiculous to put this on the backs of the service provider. If you have to use their material, THEY should supply the material. I could easily see a situation where you are forced to buy their material, theres a glitch, and you actually get paid less than the material costs.

Whatever the reason, it appears to have been done quite ham-handedly. Doesn't inspire trust, does it?

You could call the number and ask if you can use your own material. Then bid accordingly.

My Dad was a salesman in the 60s, and he had a "customer" that kept calling him for bids. After 6 bids and no sales, he mailed back the RFQs with "Decline to Respond". The "customer" called him and asked WTF? My Dad told him "you're using my work to give you three quotes and have no intention of buying from me. Get someone else to do free work for you". The guy called my Dad's boss who backed him up. "In looking at our records, Mr. Blowhard, I see 37 quotes furnished, and no sales. This tells me that our products don't match your needs. We're saving everyone's time by not bidding. Thanks. Bye".

So, if Xometry forces you to buy their material, can you quote machining cost plus material cost, and if you have to deal with their material, add a PITA factor the machining cost? (Not on the bid, just as an increase in cost per piece). And if, after a few declined bids, just stop bidding? Fire them, like my Dad did.

I'm a small change (one man shop) consultant. The big Pharma companies outsource their services procurement. I generally have to factor in the extra 5-10% or so into my bid. It's ridiculously immoral for the VP of Procurement to go the CEO and say "Boss, I saved 300 employees and 5% on bid work by outsourcing!". Because suppliers figure this out and up the bids by 10% to cover their lost revenue and the hassle of dealing with idiots. But if that's the system they want, I'll work with it in a way that I can survive.

BTW, I think that the procurement agent my Dad was dealing with got fired. Turned out he was steering all the work to a company owned by a family member.

This really seems to cut into the argument for doing work Xometry. I have been keeping up with the argument on both sides of the isle (for/against Xometry) and one of the strong points of argument was one in which a shop that has material on-hand could easily save time/money on the Xometry job by getting the job out the door quicker to meet the overreaching timelines, by using what is on the rack. This seems to just put that arguing point to sleep. I have several shops around me that were doing small jobs for Xometry, however, within the last few months they have all gotten away from it. The idea of Xometry in the beginning was a good thing but now it has morphed into a s*!&-show that no one wants a ticket to. I can't imagine a reason other than just moving the profit-line farther to demand that shops use their material. From my point of view I would go as far as to say that this "NEW" demand has been part of the strategy the whole time. Just another way to lure shops into relying on Xometry then to add this demand to the pot to ensure more revenue.

So if the parts go out for plating, and come back looking like crap because of the material, is it your problem or theirs?

Are their material prices reasonable?


Most of my customers supply material, and I don't have to buy it
from them, they just give it to me, they even pay the shipping.

And a few of them, I've even trained them to cut it for me.

Deburring the blanks on the other hand..... But at least its cut.

I don't get it. I looked at their web site. They advertise instant quotes. But from what you guys are saying, then they have to go out and find someone to actually do the job. And now that shop has to use materials from their suppliers who would then have absolutely no reason to hold costs down. And they expect this business model to work.

I don't get it.

...

...

Or perhaps I do.

Bobw said:

Are their material prices reasonable?

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Not bad, but the couple times I looked, they were a little higher than I would have paid my regular supplier.

But that's not the worst of it. The delay in getting started, while waiting for the material, would be painful. Most Xometry jobs have 4-8 day deadlines. 2-3 days delay getting material means that much less time to make the parts.

Regards.

Mike

Finegrain said:

Not bad, but the couple times I looked, they were a little higher than I would have paid my regular supplier.

But that's not the worst of it. The delay in getting started, while waiting for the material, would be painful. Most Xometry jobs have 4-8 day deadlines. 2-3 days delay getting material means that much less time to make the parts.

Regards.

Mike

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I don't use or like any of these quote aggregators (just more leaching off the work of others), but what about using your material if it's common (i.e. 6061), and just taking the stock that comes in as replacement? Not ideal if you wanted to clear the shelves a bit, but saves the wait.

If it's something exotic or that you'd have to buy anyway then I wouldn't suggest the above.

Have you reached out to [redacted] to ask if you have material on the shelf for a job, would you would still be required to purchase material that is not needed for that job?

It is interesting about many new firms today, those based upon new and (supposedly) more efficient ways of doing things. Turns out, a lot of them are based upon becoming what businesspeople call a "value driver" in a supply chain. The value driver gets to set the pricing and such.

I know of a small steel brokerage that tried to become the value driver in steel sales, using e-commerce a while back. Their business model seemed to have a little in common with Xometry. They'd have a website for suppliers who could list surplus lots, and so forth. Their other website was for users, who could bid on those lots. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to realize that the US Steels of the world were never gonna let a little pissant company running out of a floor of a Madison avenue midscraper become a dominant force. They got VC funding, but within a couple years they had no business. Rather than calling it quits, they "repurposed". The president and the VP fired everybody except the lowest paid coder, declared to the VC that they were creating a killer B-to-B app, and drained the corporate funds paying three salaries: two exorbitant, and one pretty piddly.

I've often taken the Amtrak Acela up and down the Eastern seaboard. Amazing conversations you hear. There's an awful lot of app companies whose business model is based upon a belief that they can make their _______ app "so compelling, that people will WANT to get our popup adds and intrusive and frequent emails" (I'm translating for you).

Xometry appears to have a model that assumes that they are so important and compelling and cool "that machinists will WANT to do work for us at less than market, or maybe even less than their cost!".

I think that if I were a VC or a Private Equity manager, my first tests for a business would be "Does the business model assume that human nature will change?", and "Does the firm's success depend upon people acting against their own interest?".

I suspect that a lot of mistakes could have been avoided when companies were funded that shouldn't have been.