Here is a personal anecdote that I cannot help but extrapolate on this sad day:
Back in 2016 I made an impossible to get replacement part [0] for the Breville BCG800XL SmartGrinder and sold it through ShapeWays. It paid for all my coffee up until ~2022 when another company popped up and began selling an injection molded copy of my part on Amazon, Walmart, etc.
ShapeWays' marketplace always let you easily see the top sellers in each category. I somewhat wonder if outside firms simply caught on, bought one of each, copied it, and made an injection mold to mass produce everything cheaply. This is great for the consumer but I have no idea how ShapeWays could have defended against it. I am thankful it lasted the few years it did. 3D printing was a fun way to make a little while helping folks keep their stuff out of the landfill.
Protolabs and Xometry for when you want the most aggressive sales, least supportive support, worst of Chinese quality and the highest of Western prices.
PCBWay and JLCPCB for when you want good quality at great prices.
Craftcloud for when you want the best quality to price ratios, and want to decide on country of origin.
We just made our London based 3D printers and CNC machines at hello@factory.london in a similar offering (much smaller, early days!)
If you have regular "making needs" (printing, CNC, electronics) it would be great to talk to you, our processes aren't defined yet and we can be very flexible to accommodate you.
Incidentally, I read it the title like Shapeways provided some files to somehow 3d print bankruptcy. I'm not sure why.