picdude777,
many of your comments are pretty mean-spirited, since this is your first time posting here please know that we try to have a positive tone here. this forum is for people who want help with their open-source hardware business and/or customers of ours. you implied you are neither and against open-source hardware.
we're not going to address many of your statements, but we do have some questions about some of the good ones if you are willing to participate in a polite, constructive way.
picdude777 wrote:
The second and absolutely critical path to success in this marketspace is a vibrant, personal, and extremely engaging website. The idea that you sell widgets should almost be secondary to the potential for learning that your visitors can have. If you sell a widget, you better be prepared to explain in many ways how much fun it will be to use said widget. Examples, photos, videos, tutorials are an absolute requirement to gain loyalty, and get conversion to product buys.
how do you plan to do this for your product? do you have any examples of photos, videos and tutorials you've created?
picdude777 wrote:
After a certain critical mass has been hit, the whole open-source/closed product concept is actually a non-issue, more of an ethical choice rather than a business decision.
maybe for you, but not for everyone.
for your product, what are the ethical choices you've specifically made? do you think it's possible to make both good ethical and good business decisions?
picdude777 wrote: I'd say that as a very small start-up, immediately moving your designs to open-source puts you at a grave disadvantage. It may be presumptuous to the extreme, but when someone like SparkFun decides to produce your design, how can you add more value than they can?
again, can you provide a specific example of sparkfun doing this? why pick on sparkfun if there isn't any evidence that they've done this?
picdude777 wrote:I bought every recent variant of Arduino from China, all worked 100%, with very good quality boards, soldering, component placement. etc. Given they use exactly the same components, dunno how you can say an official version is somehow "better". (they could try to cheap-out on the discretes, but that's a pointless risk given the utterly trivial cost compared to the IC's, a bad cap simply isn't worth the risk of a dead board...)
you're supporting the purchase of trademark infringing products? why?
zero, as in 0, of the ones you linked to are less than $16.00 with shipping. one of them was even shut down for copyright violations!
some of the feedback on the sellers...
not working
THIS IS NOT A REAL ARDUINO UNO!! FAKE!
"Can't be bothered with returns, this is a piece of Junk!"
"It has been almost 2 months and I have not yet got the item delivered."
BAD SELLER DIDNT SEND ME ITEM!!!LIERRRR
WARNING AVOID! Never recieved. postage so long no eBay after 45days
item recieved did not match item description at all!! very disapointed
everyone who makes things usually agrees a few random auctions here and there on ebay do not matter at all, never did - never will. everyone who makes things has this as a minor annoyance. none of these are $16.00 shipped as you said, it's a common trick to put the price to nothing and then charge more, sounds like you fell for it and it sounds like you'll have some paperweights soon
many people looking for a seemingly cheap deal go to ebay, or ones that don't care about support or quality - ebay.
do you think a school or a company in the usa that teaches students is going to buy hundreds from some random ebay seller, no. ever sell to a school or any company? you need to fill out w9s, paperwork. we do this each day. so does sparkfun, so do many arduino resellers.
we do think the official arduino is better, but it's possible that there are good clones, sure! the arduino is just more than hardware though, something that you do not realize or care about based on all the things you've said.
can you post high-res photos of these boards? linking to old auctions isn't what we asked
you said you're "new to the board biz" how do you know how good they are? have you had a student use them 50 times a day? or really test them? no, of course not.
we've seen first hand arduino clones that fall apart after unplugging the usb cord a few times.
we're willing to buy what you consider a "better" one and check it out. we'll pay for it, the shipping and even give you a real arduino in return. email
[email protected] and we'll gladly do the pepsi challenge! AND share the results! we'll do this on live video too!
we spend extra $$ on our PCBs, we know beginners will be abusing them. we get large orders from schools and companies because of our attention to detail on things like this, so does the arduino team. things like this actually matter.
have you visited the arduino forums and read the hundreds of posts about cheap clones that break after a few weeks or never work at all?
what you "may" get is always very different than a photo on ebay. the arduino team has been getting good about shutting down the ones that use the name on the board or as the product. every company has this issue with ebay that makes things, we routinely have auctions stopped. it's a very easy process. will it ever stop? of course not, but a few auctions compared to the 300k legitimate sales isn't even 1%.
picdude777 wrote:
As I said before, you really don't want to be in any kind of business where you need to compete at this level! The only thing saving Arduino LLC is the dealer network they have, and more importantly, the naiveté of the average buyer with respect to getting a better deal than at a recognized regional supplier.
it sounds like -you- do not want to be in a business where there is this type of competition, that's cool - all electronics are fast paced and very challenging businesses, ask HP!
we're in that business and we love supporting the arduino team and open-source hardware. our customers value the service and support we provide as well as our tutorials. it sounds like this type of business and community just isn't for you.
do you feel the average buyer is "naive"? that's a pretty low opinion of people.
picdude777 wrote:
and after a while it becomes impossible for the originators to distinguish themselves, other than by over-reaching, politically-correct, statements like "sustainable production", "fair wages", etc.
that's good to know that this doesn't matter to you - is it safe for all your customers to assume you went the cheapest way possible,that you do not support fair wages or sustainable production?
we're positive you will not be willing to say the name of your product here with statements like this.
thanks,
adafruit