Have you seen American Hustle? It's probably the same deal. mfg.com says "we can get you all kinds of work, we just need some cash up front". Then after you have paid, "sorry, the market is slow".
Right, but each shop that tries it with no results would not resign and eventually the new signees would slow. If Bezo's and other venture capitalists were not involved I'd be thinking Ponzi scheme, but I have a hard time believing folks as sharp as them wouldn't be looking into to the customer repeat rates and other positive indicators before throwing in yet more money.
Bezo's himself is probably the busiest person on the planet, so maybe not paying attention to his MFG.com investment anymore....but one would think he has some sharp "people" looking at this with an unemotional eye and very sharp pencils.
I suppose the folks that are having success with them wouldn't be too inspired to come on here with their tales of glory as they would fear more folks signing up and therefore more competition, but from the tales of
woe we do hear about I can't see how it works for anyone. It would be fascinating for someone like MMS magazine to do a survey of the most successful shops to see if
any of them get work via their MFG.com presence.
Could it
really be all about super aggressive
telephone marketing and nothing more ? I mean, you wanna talk aggressive marketing...think BobCad and Bandsawblades.com.... but as irritating as they are, at least they are selling something that a fair number of people make good use of. And yet with MFG.com we essentially NEVER hear of anyone making good use of it. So, I say again...I don't get it.