The clearest sign that a print shop has changed its customer base is the size of the truck at the door. For Makelab, the New York on-demand 3D printing studio run by industrial designers Christina Perla and Manny Mota, that truck was 53 feet long. In an exclusive interview with Designboom published 2 October, the company said it has secured a new 3,840 sq ft facility at MADE: Bush Terminal, a reimagined 140,000 sq ft industrial campus on Brooklyn's waterfront, and that the move is about one thing: being physically able to serve tier-one industrial clients.
"The other day a 53-foot truck came to pick up an order," Perla, Makelab's CEO and co-founder, told Designboom. "That could never have happened at our previous location." The truck had been sent by a tier-one auto supplier, and according to the company it was the only transport option that customer had. At the old site, in Perla's words, limited access restricts the types of companies you can work with.
The Move, by the Numbers
Two outlets have now covered the expansion, and their figures look different at first glance but describe the same space. Designboom gives the new facility as 3,840 sq ft and the campus as 140,000 sq ft. VoxelMatters, in a 5 October report by Joseph Caron-Dawe, uses metric units: a 357 m² facility on a campus of roughly 13,000 m². Converted, 3,840 sq ft is about 357 m², and 140,000 sq ft is about 13,000 m², so the two accounts agree.
The campus sits in Sunset Park, a district that the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is developing for industrial design and urban manufacturing, according to Designboom. VoxelMatters frames the purpose of the move plainly: Makelab took the space to scale production for tier-one clients.
Neither report, at least in the material verified for this article, details what equipment Makelab will run in the new space, how many people it employs, or what the lease costs. The story the company is telling is narrower and, for anyone running a print business, more useful: in this telling, the limit that mattered was physical access to the site, not the printing itself.
Why Logistics Gate Industrial Work
Hobbyists and small studios tend to think about capacity in terms of machine hours and build volume. Those matter. But the anecdote Perla chose to lead with is about something more mundane. A tier-one automotive supplier works inside a supply chain with its own logistics arrangements, and when that supplier sent a 53-foot truck because it was the only transport option available, the question of whether Makelab could do the work became, at least in part, a question of whether Makelab's site could accommodate the pickup.
That is a constraint many urban service bureaus will recognize, though the sources do not describe Makelab's old premises in detail. Shops that start in lofts, storefronts or shared studios often gain proximity to designers and fast walk-in turnaround, but they can give up the loading access that larger manufacturers take for granted. The trade-off is easy to ignore when the customers are agencies, architects and product startups picking up boxes by hand or by courier. It becomes decisive the moment a customer's shipping department, not its design team, sets the terms.
Perla's own framing points the same way: the old location's limited access restricted which companies Makelab could work with. That is an access problem, which is a different thing from a shortage of printing capacity.
From Explaining Gravity to Talking Manufacturing
The expansion also comes amid a shift in how product designers think about manufacturing, according to Perla. "When we started almost 10 years ago, 3D printing was painted as this magical thing," she told VoxelMatters. "We were explaining gravity!"
The joke lands for anyone who has fielded a customer request for a part with an unsupported horizontal span floating in mid-air. In the early years, a good deal of a service bureau's work was education: walking clients through what a printer can and cannot physically do. Designboom describes the misconception that 3D printing was an effortless alternative to traditional production, one that led to unprintable screen models and structural failures. Perla says she has noticed a shift toward people thinking more about the manufacturing side of product design, and she hopes designers can better visualize how things actually get made.
That matters for the business model. Perla and Mota are both industrial designers, and both outlets report that they position Makelab as a partner rather than a vendor. A partner relationship works best when the client already speaks some of the same language: tolerances, orientation, material behavior, production quantities. A customer who understands design for manufacturing is plausibly easier to scale with, and tier-one industrial clients are, almost by definition, customers who think in those terms. That last point is the article's inference, not a claim from either source.
A Service-Bureau Growth Story
Viewed from a distance, Makelab's move is an ordinary real-estate decision. Viewed from inside the small-print-shop world, it is a case study in growth stages. Perla frames it herself: every time you hit a new milestone or a new stage on the growth trajectory, there is more to figure out, and she calls that the nature of manufacturing. Makelab launched about a decade ago and has now taken on a facility sized for tier-one work.
The choice of site also matters. Moving into a campus that the city is actively developing for industrial design and urban manufacturing keeps Makelab in Brooklyn, while giving it a facility that, by the company's account, can handle a 53-foot truck pickup. Designboom adds that the move reinforces a broader mission of bridging digital workflows with physical manufacturing literacy.
What It Means for Makers
For makers running print farms, side businesses or small bureaus, the lesson here is less about Makelab's square footage and more about what it reveals regarding the ceiling on growth.
- Audit your access, not just your capacity. If a larger customer's freight arrangements cannot reach your door, your machine count is irrelevant to that customer. Know what your site can physically receive and dispatch before you pitch industrial work.
- Customer sophistication is changing. Perla's observation that people are thinking more about manufacturing is a signal worth heeding. Bureaus that differentiate on design-for-manufacturing expertise, rather than on simply owning printers, may be better placed as clients become more literate.
- Partner positioning has to be earned. Makelab's founders built their pitch on industrial design backgrounds. For smaller shops, the equivalent is documented process knowledge and the ability to advise on a part, not just print it.
- Urban manufacturing districts are worth watching. Sites being developed specifically for industrial design and manufacturing, like the one Makelab chose, may offer small shops a way to gain industrial-grade access without leaving the city.
Bottom Line
Makelab's new 3,840 sq ft (about 357 m²) home at MADE: Bush Terminal is not a story about a breakthrough printer or a new material. It is a story about a truck, and about how a design-led print studio reached the point where site access shaped which customers it could serve. For small shops with industrial ambitions, that is the more practical lesson.
