5 ms·

> I’m considering ordering 18,000 oscillators and reselling the excess as singles via Crowd Supply I've often wondered why no one offers something like this as

> I’m considering ordering 18,000 oscillators and reselling the excess as singles via Crowd Supply I've often wondered why no one offers something like this as a service. People who want to order a small quantity of some item with a large minimum order size could register their interest somewhere, and others who are interested could add themselves to their order, until the necessary threshold was reached. Presumably the problem is one of scale, as the service would need millions of registered users in order to have a chance that enough of them all wanted the same thing at the same time. For that reason, though, I'm surprised that Amazon hasn't offered this yet. If there's a product that sells as a box of 100 identical items, and you only want 1 or 2, you should be able to click a button that says "Let me join a group to order this product", and Amazon could charge a fee to split open the box for you and re-ship the individual items to the various members of the group.

ghusbands 5y ago
Consumer rights laws in various locations might make this tricky; you have to handle repair/refund, fitness for purpose, etc. When things are sold for retail, the manufacturer will have a support route for this. You'll also potentially fall afoul of how regulations differ between business sales and consumer sales.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  Sounds like FUD. There are plenty of electronics distributors, small and large, that you can order individual ICs from as a consumer. How are they all pulling it off if it's so tricky? Some parts have MOQs, I guess distributors don't see the business value in buying reels to sell a chip or three if it's reasonable to expect that the rest of the reel will sit on shelf for months (or worse).
teddyh 5y ago
Wasn’t this what Massdrop was for? (Now apparently at drop.com)
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > "Drop is designing products differently." It looks like it's more about enthusiasts buying specially designed niche products, rather than casual consumers buying a small portion of a large batch of low-value items, but it's an interesting site nonetheless, thank you.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    > enthusiasts buying specially designed niche products Well, it might be that now, and that might be what they show on their front page, since it’s very striking. But IIRC, that’s not what Massdrop was originally for. See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120307051310/http://massdrop.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120307051310/http://massdrop.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20120403101317/http://massdrop.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120403101317/http://massdrop.c...
bradfa 5y ago
Digi-Key and Mouser already do this for many many parts. Both offer to sell you a short bit of tape-held parts re-reeled and ready for insertion into a pick and place machine. Granted that's just for electronics and it sounds like you want it for more general things. Part of the problem for doing it with other things is likely regulations and labeling. Back near the start of COVID I heard stories about how there was lots of cheese in bulk packs which couldn't easily be repurposed into consumer-friendly sized units (most normal consumers don't want to buy in units of cubic feet of cheese in the USA). Part of the reason it couldn't easily be repurposed was simply that no one had ever created a consumer-sized package label for it. So not only did the cheese need to be handled again, packaged again, but it also had to be relabeled and approved by what ever agencies approve or rate cheeses.
- bluGill 5y ago
  In the case of sour cream, the issue was the line making 5 gallon buckets couldn't fill smaller containers, and even if they could there weren't enough smaller containers. Whole factories are optimized for a package format and can't switch. This is a trade off - some factories are more flexible than others. However if you can fill both sizes of containers (in reality there are more than two sizes, but for simplicity I'll use two) that means half the time the jigs needed for the one size are not in use - but they still need to be cleaned and such. You can't even skip cleaning because harmful bacteria doesn't care that it wasn't use much - in fact you might need to clean more often if the constant movement isn't flushing insignificant amounts away.

ghusbands 5y ago

Consumer rights laws in various locations might make this tricky; you have to handle repair/refund, fitness for purpose, etc. When things are sold for retail, the manufacturer will have a support route for this. You'll also potentially fall afoul of how regulations differ between business sales and consumer sales.

foxfluff 5y ago
Sounds like FUD. There are plenty of electronics distributors, small and large, that you can order individual ICs from as a consumer. How are they all pulling it off if it's so tricky? Some parts have MOQs, I guess distributors don't see the business value in buying reels to sell a chip or three if it's reasonable to expect that the rest of the reel will sit on shelf for months (or worse).

teddyh 5y ago

Wasn’t this what Massdrop was for? (Now apparently at drop.com)

dane-pgp 5y ago
> "Drop is designing products differently." It looks like it's more about enthusiasts buying specially designed niche products, rather than casual consumers buying a small portion of a large batch of low-value items, but it's an interesting site nonetheless, thank you.
- teddyh 5y ago
  > enthusiasts buying specially designed niche products Well, it might be that now, and that might be what they show on their front page, since it’s very striking. But IIRC, that’s not what Massdrop was originally for. See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120307051310/http://massdrop.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120307051310/http://massdrop.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20120403101317/http://massdrop.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120403101317/http://massdrop.c...

bradfa 5y ago

Digi-Key and Mouser already do this for many many parts. Both offer to sell you a short bit of tape-held parts re-reeled and ready for insertion into a pick and place machine. Granted that's just for electronics and it sounds like you want it for more general things. Part of the problem for doing it with other things is likely regulations and labeling. Back near the start of COVID I heard stories about how there was lots of cheese in bulk packs which couldn't easily be repurposed into consumer-friendly sized units (most normal consumers don't want to buy in units of cubic feet of cheese in the USA). Part of the reason it couldn't easily be repurposed was simply that no one had ever created a consumer-sized package label for it. So not only did the cheese need to be handled again, packaged again, but it also had to be relabeled and approved by what ever agencies approve or rate cheeses.

bluGill 5y ago
In the case of sour cream, the issue was the line making 5 gallon buckets couldn't fill smaller containers, and even if they could there weren't enough smaller containers. Whole factories are optimized for a package format and can't switch. This is a trade off - some factories are more flexible than others. However if you can fill both sizes of containers (in reality there are more than two sizes, but for simplicity I'll use two) that means half the time the jigs needed for the one size are not in use - but they still need to be cleaned and such. You can't even skip cleaning because harmful bacteria doesn't care that it wasn't use much - in fact you might need to clean more often if the constant movement isn't flushing insignificant amounts away.