Hey All!
Subtract is growing! We ended 2025 by shattering all previous records, doing as much business in December as we did in the rest of the year combined. Right now we have ten active shops, ranging from specialty one person operations, to midsized operations with a dozen machines. Between our shops we have 3 axis, 4 axis, and 5 axis milling capabilities, 2 axis, Y axis, and swiss turn, grinding, and a host of different finishing options.
We’re expecting to see a lot more growth in 2026. We will continue to onboard shops slowly as we need the extra capacity. Our goal remains to balance out our capacity with demand such that all of our shops are saturated with as much work as they are want to take.
At this point we have a waitlist of almost 200 shops!! I know some of you have been on the waitlist a long time, but I promise we are onboarding shops as fast as we can, while keeping all of our active shops happy. We could drive down what we are paying our vendors by bringing in more competition, but we will NOT do that. In fact, in November we increased our shop pay rate to 80% (from 70%) on each job. We still believe that the best strategy is to treat our shops exceptionally well, which seems to be working out well. On that note…..
In 2025 I am sad to say, that we had one single part rejected, putting us around 99.8% part acceptance rate. We will work hard to improve this in 2026, zero is the only number of acceptable defects. I am very proud of the work that our shops are delivering, every single shop has gone above and beyond to deliver exceptional work, but this year I want to hit a 0.00% defect rate. Quality is King.
Right now we are at about a 40% quote acceptance rate, which is a good sign that our pricing is reasonable for the market. I, of course, wouldn’t mind getting more work through the door, but we need to balance the quantity of work, with the quality of work. With our current quote acceptance rate, I think we are right on target.
Our biggest challenge right now is getting those RFQs. We’re still figuring out how to do marketing, how to handle sales, how to connect with new buyers, etc. We’ve been working on this for a few months, and progress has been slower than we had hoped, but we’re starting to see progress. We have a long way to go, but so far our customers have been incredibly happy with the parts we have delivered, and if we can keep that up, eventually we will grow regardless of our marketing skill (or lack there of).
If you want the best chances of getting selected as the next Subtract shop, then we recommend 1) be active in the Subtract Discord server. You can’t see all of the channels when you first join, but that same discord server also acts as the job board, and administrative core of the company. If you are unable, or unwilling to participate in that server before you are selected, then we see it as unlikely you will communicate well if we were to select you as a shop. 2) If you haven’t already, join Xometry and ship at least 20 jobs, and have a quality score of 100%. Frankly Xometry’s systems are better than ours right now, and if you can’t make it there, you won’t make it on the Subtract network.
Of the 200 shops on the waitlist, only about 70 have completed their vendor survey form. If you did not receive a link to the form, please reach out to [email protected]
Thanks everyone
-The Subtract Crew