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Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

blog.adafruit.com

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Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#111

Post by jacobolus »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102
spoonjim wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you have a valid point but did you experience the "friction free" experience of walking into an electronics store idly and then walking out with all of the parts to build a project that afternoon? Most mixed HW/SW hackers accumulate a "stash" of components, and from that stash one can sometimes build new projects, but for me, there is a huge impediment when I have 90% of the parts and then have to wait for th…

> Kickstarter [...] has put more people into bankruptcy than MLM in my opinion.

I don’t understand what this means. The creators of kickstart projects overcommit and then bankrupt themselves trying to fulfill orders? Backers of kickstart projects bankrupt themselves supporting more projects than their financial resources allow?

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#112

Post by cushychicken »

ptorrone wrote: post #63
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 will be interviewing them, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, feel free to post them here. (i work at adafruit, founded hackaday)

Thanks for starting hackaday, Phil. Has made for great reading for me for many years, from a no-nothing kid in the aughts to a professional EE now.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#113

Post by roland35 »

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?…

Do you think some sort of automated storefronts could replace the old hardware stores like RadioShack? I would love to have a place I could drive to and pick up some components that I need TODAY, and I always thought a giant vending machine might be good for that!

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#114

Post by snapetom »

tomcooks wrote: post #110

Am I the only one being surprised that what I perceived where the last bastions of pop DIY culture were in fact just farming for corporate acquisition? This is a bummer, time to forego http and switch to nicer realms. > This will help customers to reduce costs, increase agility and make highly informed decisions. Thanks for informing me about how to make decisions and somehow "increase agility" whatever the f that is…

I think shopping for an acquisition for many businesses, especially in tech, is to be expected. It's hard for owners to say no to the sort of money being thrown around not only for themselves, but for any employees with equity.

If there's a platform created by someone who's already struck it rich once and truly doing it out of love, then maybe you've found a super rare unicorn.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#115

Post by phendrenad2 »

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?…

The "makers market" works just fine if you're selling Arduinos from China. The rest, all of it, adafruit, sparkfun, hackaday, supplyframe, tindie, all seem to have been acquired based on user count. I don't think Supplyframe or Siemens has any idea how to monetize them, but maybe there are juicy sales leads to discover in the userbase. Probably not, but you never know.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#116

Post by ChuckMcM »

jacobolus wrote: post #111
ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a valid point but did you experience the "friction free" experience of walking into an electronics store idly and then walking out with all of the parts to build a project that afternoon? Most mixed HW/SW hackers accumulate a "stash" of components, and from that stash one can sometimes build new projects, but for me, there is a huge impediment when I have 90% of the parts and then have to wait for th…

> Kickstarter [...] has put more people into bankruptcy than MLM in my opinion. I don’t understand what this means. The creators of kickstart projects overcommit and then bankrupt themselves trying to fulfill orders? Backers of kickstart projects bankrupt themselves supporting more projects than their financial resources allow?

Yes, they price their product without understanding what it costs to manufacture something and then find themselves shipping units at a net loss, or not shipping at all and carrying around a burden of guilt. At least four 3D printer kickstarters failed in this way and three or four drone kickstarters that I watched but didn't participate in also failed in this way.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#117

Post by ptorrone »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #115
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?…

The "makers market" works just fine if you're selling Arduinos from China. The rest, all of it, adafruit, sparkfun, hackaday, supplyframe, tindie, all seem to have been acquired based on user count. I don't think Supplyframe or Siemens has any idea how to monetize them, but maybe there are juicy sales leads to discover in the userbase. Probably not, but you never know.

adafruit was not sold to siemens

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#118

Post by phendrenad2 »

roland35 wrote: post #113
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?…

Do you think some sort of automated storefronts could replace the old hardware stores like RadioShack? I would love to have a place I could drive to and pick up some components that I need TODAY, and I always thought a giant vending machine might be good for that!

There isn't a single electronics store in the SF Bay Area where you can drive up, walk down a row of capacitors, and find one that isn't (1) holdover stock from the 1980s or (2) a no-name capacitor brand that will fail to deliver on it's specifications.

And even the stores with 1980s holdover stock or bottom-barrel crapware are going away. People would rather just wait 2-4 days for Amazon or even wait 10 days for Mouser/DK. It's that bad.

I think there's a sweet spot where a brick and mortar store can sell components. In fact I think the potential there is huge. It'll have to do a lot of things exactly right:

1) Knowledgeable, non-snooty staff who can answer a question quickly and effectively. "My daughter is making an LED circuit" "Okay, LED kit is here, buy some roughly 330 ohm resistors here, these LEDs can't handle 3v directly so they need something to take up the overage, thank you, next customer"

2) Sell parts people want. If your warehouse is full of parts made in 1982 that should fill you with existential dread. Scour Amazon and ebay for electronics parts to determine what is popular. Follow maker sites to determine what parts people are using in hobby projects.

3) Resist the urge to sell high-margin items like phones, Remote-control cars, casio keyboards, or to start your own line of personal computers. That's what did Radio Shack in. You can get such things cheaper online, and no one needs a casio keyboard TODAY the way they need a handfull of 470mocrofarad capacitors TODAY.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#119

Post by caf »

michaelt wrote: post #65
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 suspect hobby electronics has faced stiff competition from hobby computing, among people inclined towards tinkering. The people who, in the 1980s might have been using a 555 timer to blink an LED? These days they've got a computer, and they're making a web page or writing 'hello world' in javascript. Oh sure, a few of them might get an Arduino and blink an LED from time to time - but nowhere near enough to support…

The PCB thing is huge.

Back in the 90s I was carefully tracing out circuits with a resist pen, etching them with a ferric chloride bath and hand-drilling the component holes. Not only was this extremely finicky and time-consuming, it was expensive! I only ever made a handful of boards of my own design.

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