Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

blog.adafruit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 175 posts

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#91

Post by kragen »

rasz wrote: post #84
kragen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben Krasnow and Simone Giertz are pretty great, but they're hackers : the kind of people who used to shop at Radio Shack and read Modern Electronics. There's a world of difference between watching Simone Giertz build hilarious contraptions and building those contraptions yourself. Chuck is saying that 40 years ago there were so many hackers doing these things that there was a whole workforce—partly, but not entirely,…

Whole workforce supplying hackers is still here and thriving, its just based in Shenzhen.

Shenzhen (and Taipei, Wuxi, etc.) supplies the electronics for the entire world economy, which it turns out is mostly boring incompetent greyface stuff like General Motors and Cemex. They supply hackers too, but hackers are a minority of their customer base. Shenzhen's customer base isn't comparable to that of Radio Shack or Byte.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#92

Post by ajdude »

worldmerge wrote: post #59
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?…

I miss going to my local Radio Shack and getting components. When they went under I could really only get components online. Sure, there is a commercial supplier near me but they are only open 9-5ish M-F and don't have a website. It would be great if they were able to digitize their inventory and ship orders. I wonder why some commercial focused companies make it so hard for non-commercial customers to access their b…

I had this very same issue yesterday. I needed one particular component now, not “x days from now, Online.” I knew it was something that radio shack would have had, but I had to drive an hour and a half to the closest microcenter.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#93

Post by antattack »

Siemens could expand HaD to be like Github for makers.

Maybe even compete with Autodesk by making it easy to use their PCB and CAD software on the platform.

And, compete with AWS IoT and other cloud services by offering Siemens' own, compatibile with Adafruit modules.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#94

Post by SQueeeeeL »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #66
worldmerge wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss going to my local Radio Shack and getting components. When they went under I could really only get components online. Sure, there is a commercial supplier near me but they are only open 9-5ish M-F and don't have a website. It would be great if they were able to digitize their inventory and ship orders. I wonder why some commercial focused companies make it so hard for non-commercial customers to access their b…

> I wonder why some commercial focused companies make it so hard for non-commercial customers to access their business (I'm including companies that have websites but make it clear they only sell to contractors)? Too much effort for too little revenue. The probability of a customer spending only $50, but also needing 2 hours of customer service might be too high. Once you engage in a transaction with someone, there’s…

Entry level consumers tend to be complicated. People order the wrong part and want a return, or drop an order after they're provided an invoice. It's just easier if you're a very small shop to cater towards the straightforward customers

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#95

Post by maxerickson »

kiba wrote: post #71
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?…

Is 33 million dollars of revenue per year considered small?

A single fast food place might have several million dollars of revenue.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#96

Post by adolph »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?…

I don’t think this is universally right about brick and mortar. I don’t remember MicroCenter having a RadioShack-like section before but it is there now with a bunch of Adafruit, Raspberry, Pimori, BBC Microbit, etc. In a large metro like Houston, there are also local stores like EPO and regional chains like Altex. I can see how smaller metro areas can’t support the same actual stores as before, but online serves the long tails of specialized demand and supply better anyway.

https://epohouston.com/

https://www.altex.com/Tech-Supplies/Electronic-Parts/Mechani...

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#97

Post by kasbah »

atatatat wrote: post #64
ornornor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious to know what Siemens’ plans are for HaD, if they’re looking to monetize it or just keep it as is. Basically I want to know how long it’ll be before HaD is ruined. I still hope it won’t be because I love HaD but it really doesn’t look good. When has such a corporate takeover ever gone well for the product?

This seems like a good place to ask: who's interested in building a competitor?

Not a direct competitor but https://kitspace.org is our take on electronics project sharing. Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in taking part.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#98

Post by somethingwitty1 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #72
robert_foss wrote: post #17

That's all very unfortunate. Having worked with German behemoth companies before I can't think of any positive outcomes.

Eh, no need to be that narrow: What fraction of all acquisitions end well for the acquired company? I'm sure it must happen, but (at the risk of availability bias) I can't actually think of any.

Depends on what you mean by "well for the acquired company". But if you just mean where the product (or possibly even the brand) went on to be successful, a bunch jump to mind: Pixar, Marvel, Google Maps, Ring, Zappos, Android, Woot!, Gatorade.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#99

Post by skybrian »

ta988 wrote: post #78
ipsum2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like Adafruit, but even there the margins are tight and the operations are small I'm surprised, Adafruit has a 50-100% markup on most items compared to Aliexpress/other Chinese electronics.

Yes, but you get it fast, with service and no random customs problems. Sometimes for things that don't scale ($20 vs $10 one time) it may not matter much for some.

I assume Adafruit is fast for people on the east coast or if you pay a lot for shipping. I looked into Adafruit's west coast distributors but they only have a few of their products. (Jameco carries some Adafruit stuff but typically not what I'm looking for.)

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#100

Post by brysonreece »

spoonjim wrote: post #77
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?…

I disagree with your take on the "makers" market. The maker world is far more interesting today than in 1985. Yes, there are no "brick and mortar" stores because in 1985, brick and mortar was the only type of store that existed. Nowadays, Internet shopping is so developed that Adafruit, Sparkfun, Digi-Key, etc. don't need brick and mortar stores. The experience of shopping for parts online is much better than at a Ra…

This hits the nail on the head.

I've been an active community member for over ten years (from age 12, I'm 24 now) and the truth is that with the availability of parts — combined with all the benefits of traditional open source — the hardware/"maker" scene has absolutely been flourishing for the past few years.

With rapid prototyping becoming more commonplace it's completely reasonable for your run-of-the-mill maker to own a 3D printer or be able to turn around a custom PCB within a week, tools that massively accelerate the development phases of early ideas or business ventures. We'll definitely start seeing more companies taking advantage of the community spoils as technology continues to advance at a faster and faster rate over the coming years, especially when those same tools are just as easily employed by your competitors.

(Hardware based startups are in a unique position as the tools to compete with larger companies or scale product are more readily available than ever before. At this moment for a few hundred dollars it's completely possible to produce thousands of PCBs through online overseas services, ready to ship to customers.)

Aside — it's also a community that is heavily invested in the history of computing/technology and how we got here - in a way it's comforting to be able to replicate a circuit from three decades ago, circuits that used to cost thousands, and experience first hand computing history for pennies on the dollar.

Post reply on HN