3 ms·
the "kit" business model as a side-gig is really attractive to me. hardware designers who create some neat cartridge or modchip, order a few thousand blank pcbs
by woodrowbarlow 6y ago
the "kit" business model as a side-gig is really attractive to me. hardware designers who create some neat cartridge or modchip, order a few thousand blank pcbs, and sell the blanks along with a link to order all the components from digikey. the overhead for this business model is very low; pcbs don't take much room to store and managing orders at that scale is relatively simple. best of all: due to economies of scale, you can open source your hardware design without making much of a dent in your sales. since you bulk-ordered the pcbs, you can sell them cheaper than it would cost someone to make their own from your schematics (and you still turn a profit).
now if only i knew more about hardware design...
- ddingus 6y agoI have been learning. Have help. Mostly buying others kits, but have exchanged boards and collaborated a few times. That is another fun electronics / retro thing. It is cheap to get, say 10 of something. Mail 'em off to friends for group tinkering.
- charcircuit 6y agoIt also saves you thousands of dollars from having to get something certified in the US. A few years ago I wanted to develop a hardware product, but I gave up once I learned how expensive certification and licensing can be. If you want to sell a rasperry pi with an LED and resistors attached to one of the GPIO pins you are looking at 5 figures worth of costs just to be able to sell a single unit in just the US.