5 ms·

Tell HN: An update from the new Tindie team

85 points by altairprime 6mo ago

Received by email tonight about two hours ago: Dear Tindie Community, My name is Gongyu Su, and I am writing on behalf of the new Tindie ownership team. First, we sincerely apologize for the recent downtime and the disruption it caused. We understand that many buyers and community members were left without clear information during the transition, and that this created frustration and concern. Tindie is now owned by EETree LLC, a Washington State company. Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world. The recent transition was more complex than expected. Tindie runs on an older technical framework with many connected services, and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted. We know this was not the experience the Tindie community deserved. Our immediate focus is to stabilize the platform, resolve payment and order-related issues, and support sellers and buyers through the transition. If you have an order-related concern, please contact Tindie support so the team can review your case directly. WHAT WE ARE FOCUSED ON Stabilizing the platform Restoring reliable access for buyers, sellers, and the community. Resolving open issues Working through payment, refund, and order concerns case by case. Investing for the long term Renewing attention, support, and improvements for the community. We also want to be clear about our long-term intention: we did not take over Tindie to let it fade away. We took it over because we believe it deserves renewed attention, investment, and support. Tindie has always been more than just a marketplace. It is a place where independent creators, makers, and hardware enthusiasts can share useful products, tools, kits, modules, and ideas with the world. We want to preserve that spirit while improving the platform step by step. Over the coming weeks and months, we will share more about our plans and will listen carefully to feedback from sellers, buyers, and the broader community. Thank you for your patience and continued support. We know trust must be earned through action, and we are committed to doing that. Sincerely, Gongyu Su On behalf of the Tindie Team

mdrzn 6mo ago
It's not clear to me WHY it was taken over.. Were there issues with the previous owners? Also WHO are the new owners? The "About us" page has ZERO info on them. I wouldn't touch the new platform with a 30foot pole, so I guess it's time to find a new alternative marketplace. Edit: on https://www.linkedin.com/in/gongyu/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/gongyu/ it claims that the company name is "EEree LLC", in the email it's magically "EETree LLC"
somemisopaste 6mo ago
The lack of clear communication and transparency around this whole issue has been appaling. I've moved to Lectronz and will wipe out my store on Tindie as soon as they resolve payouts.
pushedx 6mo ago
I can't think of a worse first impression for the new owners of a marketplace that relies on buyer and seller loyalty than taking down the entire platform for weeks without any clear timeline or reasoning. It also gives the impression that they have no idea how to set up a staging environment or seamlessly migrate to a new backend with a double write approach. Just spells trouble all around.
ai_slop_hater 6mo ago
context?
ramon156 6mo ago
If there were a time to compete, it would be now ;)
- irdc 6mo ago
  https://lectronz.com https://lectronz.com
  - BirAdam 6mo ago
    Thanks. I didn't know about this site. I've been browsing for a bit, and I actually think it's a better site than Tindie ever was.
  - myself248 6mo ago
    Ooo hey, I recognize some of my favorite Tindie sellers right on the Lectronz front page too. Excellent, thank you.
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  Honestly, I would just sell off my own site if processing payments were simple to add. (And I suspect they are easy to add but that I'm just lazy and wouldn't know which service to wire up in the HTML.)
  - jan_Sate 6mo ago
    It depends on your scale. I sell on my own site at a very small scale and I just made a webform that let the user select the quantity of product on their own and get the quotation and the order would be created automatically. After that the user would be provided a link to my Paypal and they'd have to manually enter the amount and the order ID on Paypal as a remark and make the payment. Then they'd have to click on the "I paid" button on their order on my website. Then I'd receive a notification on the payment, manually verify if it's paid and fulfill the order. The payment processing is done without the being technically integrated into my site. Since my scale is small enough, even if the user forgot to enter the order ID, it'd still work because I could just map the order and payment manually by timing. If you don't want to create your own order handling website, even a Google Form would work for that. Just get the user to pay you on their own and fill in a form. Then you'd do the payment mapping manually and send them the product.
MIL-STD 6mo ago
Personally, I trust EETree LLC, a Washington State company, a digital powerhouse to the information super highway foster technological innovation and progress to digital future bridging to the electronic divide.
- neya 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
    Take 1 banana add 140 flours 0.5 eggs 4 walnuts 55 sugars 1 butter and mix it. Cook in the oven for not too long not too short. Enjoy
    - neya 6mo ago
      Haha thx :)))
  - voicedYoda 6mo ago
    mash 1 pound banana with 1 pound ground walnut with 1 pound uranium-235 until smooth and no bubbles. /s
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish-shaped crackers Fish-shaped candies Fish-shaped solid waste Fish-shaped dirt Fish-shaped ethylbenzene Pull-and-peel licorice
      - gzread 6mo ago
        you have 85 minutes to delete "(what is it with fish?)" which ruins the joke
      - pona-a 6mo ago
        Also: * fish shaped volatile organic compounds * sediment shaped sediment * a 20-foot thick impermeable clay layer
orsorna 6mo ago
>and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted I mean, this is unacceptable by any metric. Downtime for a platform like this means lost revenue. If Amazon was down for weeks at a time how do you think that would affect them as a retailer? So at this point I can't imagine what the mystery purchasers are getting, certainly not a steady revenue stream? I can't imagine the user data is that valuable for such a niche market focus. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be delighted to observe more embarrassing fumbles from your nameless owners, and whoever you are because I suspect your given name is false as well.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
sen 6mo ago
EETree LLC seems to be a shell company owned by EETree Info & Tech Limited in China (https://www.eetree.cn https://www.eetree.cn). I'm not sure what that means as far as payment processing etc, apparently sellers were all cut off with money owing and still have no explanation. Also the AI-generated blog post on the Tindie site (under the name/account of assumedly-previous staff?), and the post above that says absolutely nothing about what's actually going on... It looks from the outside like a Chinese tech blog just randomly bought Tindie, broke the site while moving it to their own servers, and now are trying to figure out how to run it?
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  Yeah, pretty sure there is a better way to make a transition—even a complete stack rewrite. Get your new stack operating before you make the switch—and you could have even staged the switch-over starting with one region first. If they purchased the site, I get it, new servers, etc. But part of the purchase agreement should have stated that the site continues to be run/maintained for 6 months or so until the new owners have a replacement ready. (I feel like someone reading HN could have (vibe?) coded a replacement for Tindie by now. I mean Tindie does have the name recognition… kind of?)
keremimo 6mo ago
> Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world. How does this even explain why they "TOOK OVER" Tindie?
feverzsj 6mo ago
Scam or spy?
RossBencina 6mo ago
Found this statement from Alexander Rowsell, Tindie social media manager and editor of the Tindie Blog (link expires in one day): https://privatebin.net/?db6418554d9d5728#3NjbsSUYzw227zG5P1kwH77U443RbJ17Ti8jTNGGtzog https://privatebin.net/?db6418554d9d5728#3NjbsSUYzw227zG5P1k...
- fragmede 6mo ago
  What's with the expiration? > # Announcement After much back and forth with the community and the team internally, we can reveal a bit more of what's happening. Tindie transitioned to new ownership on April 14. Due to circumstances beyond the control of the new owners, the site was immediately put into maintenance mode. Since then, the process of transitioning the site to new infrastructure and upgrading the aging codebase has been ongoing. The intention was, as I originally thought, to do this seamlessly with no downtime. However, once the site was put into maintenance mode and the transition happened. it was decided to take the time to work on the site and get things up to modern standards. The new owners are genuinely excited about Tindie and what the platform can be. After a year or so on cruise control, we're finally going to make substantial investments in the platform and community -- something which in my humble opinion is long overdue. # Timeframe Again, I still don't have an exact timeframe for the completion of this work. I know that is what the community wants to know more than anything, and it's very frustrating that I can't satisfy your answers about that. I know that the new tech team is working hard with the Supplyframe team to complete all the transition steps and ensure things are done properly. # Who Am I? I figured many of you already know me, but my name is Alexander Rowsell. I'm the editor of the Tindie Blog and the social media manager. I've been with Tindie for a few years, and I'll be around for the foreseeable future. I do embedded development work, but I also really enjoy writing about what the community is up to. It's always a blast to go through the newest listings on Tindie to see what people are creating! I'll be honest with you, I was worried about Tindie over the last few months. I could see that the site needed attention from a professional dev team and was worried the site would break totally before that happened. Well, there has been downtime, but the upside is that the site will be refreshed and ready for the long term. Short-term pain for long-term stability -- that's where we're at. I wanted to write a longer statement, and seeing as how the Tindie Blog itself is down I figured this was the next best thing. To verify this statement is actually from me, I've signed it with my GPG key - B5CFBEB4EE9FE813. You can verify this signature by getting the raw text of this post, and verifying the signature using GPG.
pjc50 6mo ago
Nobody seems to be using the word "bankrupt", but I'm getting the impression that's what happened here? Sudden un-announced sale?
g5pw 6mo ago
This is probably a good reminder that the EU-based alternative https://www.lectronz.com https://www.lectronz.com exists!
- gzread 6mo ago
  A site that hijacks the back button. Pressing back takes you to the loading screen, which takes you forward to the site again. Ouch.
  - JKCalhoun 6mo ago
    Appears not to take over Safari for me.
    - frereubu 6mo ago
      Or Firefox.
adampunk 6mo ago
This is the kind of statement that gets made when everything is awesome.
sinqlo 6mo ago
[flagged]
l-one-lone 6mo ago
Disclaimer: I’m the founder of Lectronz, a hardware marketplace based in the EU. This email leaves a lot of questions unanswered, especially regarding the long-term stewardship of the maker community. While I wish the new team at EETree LLC luck in modernizing the stack, "stabilizing the platform" after a two-week blackout is a tough starting point for earning back seller trust. For makers who are concerned about the current uncertainty or the move to a new ownership structure, I want to reiterate that there are independent alternatives. We built Lectronz specifically to provide a modern, stable home for the OSHW community with a few specific goals in mind: Data Sovereignty: We have a built-in Tindie importer. You can use it to rescue your product data, photos, and stock levels right now so you aren't "locked in" while waiting for the new team to stabilize their infrastructure. Transparent Payouts: We use Stripe for daily payouts. There are no "disbursement windows" or mystery ownership of your funds. Regulatory Focus: Being based in the EU, we’ve already solved IOSS/VAT. This allows sellers (inside and outside the EU) to keep shipping without their customers getting hit by surprise fees. Our focus is on being a lean, developer-led platform. We aren't backed by large parent corporations or shell companies—just a dedicated team and a Discord/GitHub where you can talk to us directly. If anyone needs help backing up their Tindie store data or has questions about EU shipping compliance, I'm happy to dive into the technical details here.
dbl000 6mo ago
Some background and other details are on the Adafruit blog: https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/29/tindie-is-back-online-and-now-owned-by-eetree-llc-a-suzhou-fpga-tutor/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/29/tindie-is-back-online-a...
micoul81 6mo ago
interssting
JensRantil 6mo ago
What is Tindie?
- nerdsniper 6mo ago
  Too lazy, didn't google: it's "Etsy for electronics". It was a huge part of the DIY maker scene in the 2010's, alongside pioneers like Adafruit, Hackaday, and SparkFun. It meant a lot to people back when 3D printers and drones were something you built, instead of bought. You know, back when "men were men" and The Register (yes, that one) send homemade UAV glider-planes to the edge of space launched by rockets that were themselves launched from high-altitude weather balloons: https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/29/lohan_concepts/ https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/29/lohan_concepts/ It was a place to buy the things that didn’t exist on any major marketplaces yet. Today, the electronic DIY scene is dominated by Chinese hackers and most things people want are available from China so Tindie got squeezed out over time.

85 points by altairprime 6mo ago

mdrzn 6mo ago

It's not clear to me WHY it was taken over.. Were there issues with the previous owners? Also WHO are the new owners? The "About us" page has ZERO info on them. I wouldn't touch the new platform with a 30foot pole, so I guess it's time to find a new alternative marketplace. Edit: on https://www.linkedin.com/in/gongyu/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/gongyu/ it claims that the company name is "EEree LLC", in the email it's magically "EETree LLC"

somemisopaste 6mo ago

The lack of clear communication and transparency around this whole issue has been appaling. I've moved to Lectronz and will wipe out my store on Tindie as soon as they resolve payouts.

pushedx 6mo ago

I can't think of a worse first impression for the new owners of a marketplace that relies on buyer and seller loyalty than taking down the entire platform for weeks without any clear timeline or reasoning. It also gives the impression that they have no idea how to set up a staging environment or seamlessly migrate to a new backend with a double write approach. Just spells trouble all around.

ai_slop_hater 6mo ago

context?

ramon156 6mo ago

If there were a time to compete, it would be now ;)

irdc 6mo ago
https://lectronz.com https://lectronz.com
- BirAdam 6mo ago
  Thanks. I didn't know about this site. I've been browsing for a bit, and I actually think it's a better site than Tindie ever was.
- myself248 6mo ago
  Ooo hey, I recognize some of my favorite Tindie sellers right on the Lectronz front page too. Excellent, thank you.
JKCalhoun 6mo ago
Honestly, I would just sell off my own site if processing payments were simple to add. (And I suspect they are easy to add but that I'm just lazy and wouldn't know which service to wire up in the HTML.)
- jan_Sate 6mo ago
  It depends on your scale. I sell on my own site at a very small scale and I just made a webform that let the user select the quantity of product on their own and get the quotation and the order would be created automatically. After that the user would be provided a link to my Paypal and they'd have to manually enter the amount and the order ID on Paypal as a remark and make the payment. Then they'd have to click on the "I paid" button on their order on my website. Then I'd receive a notification on the payment, manually verify if it's paid and fulfill the order. The payment processing is done without the being technically integrated into my site. Since my scale is small enough, even if the user forgot to enter the order ID, it'd still work because I could just map the order and payment manually by timing. If you don't want to create your own order handling website, even a Google Form would work for that. Just get the user to pay you on their own and fill in a form. Then you'd do the payment mapping manually and send them the product.

MIL-STD 6mo ago

Personally, I trust EETree LLC, a Washington State company, a digital powerhouse to the information super highway foster technological innovation and progress to digital future bridging to the electronic divide.

neya 6mo ago
[flagged]
- 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
  Take 1 banana add 140 flours 0.5 eggs 4 walnuts 55 sugars 1 butter and mix it. Cook in the oven for not too long not too short. Enjoy
  - neya 6mo ago
    Haha thx :)))
- voicedYoda 6mo ago
  mash 1 pound banana with 1 pound ground walnut with 1 pound uranium-235 until smooth and no bubbles. /s
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish-shaped crackers Fish-shaped candies Fish-shaped solid waste Fish-shaped dirt Fish-shaped ethylbenzene Pull-and-peel licorice
    - gzread 6mo ago
      you have 85 minutes to delete "(what is it with fish?)" which ruins the joke
    - pona-a 6mo ago
      Also: * fish shaped volatile organic compounds * sediment shaped sediment * a 20-foot thick impermeable clay layer

orsorna 6mo ago

>and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted I mean, this is unacceptable by any metric. Downtime for a platform like this means lost revenue. If Amazon was down for weeks at a time how do you think that would affect them as a retailer? So at this point I can't imagine what the mystery purchasers are getting, certainly not a steady revenue stream? I can't imagine the user data is that valuable for such a niche market focus. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be delighted to observe more embarrassing fumbles from your nameless owners, and whoever you are because I suspect your given name is false as well.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

sen 6mo ago

EETree LLC seems to be a shell company owned by EETree Info & Tech Limited in China (https://www.eetree.cn https://www.eetree.cn). I'm not sure what that means as far as payment processing etc, apparently sellers were all cut off with money owing and still have no explanation. Also the AI-generated blog post on the Tindie site (under the name/account of assumedly-previous staff?), and the post above that says absolutely nothing about what's actually going on... It looks from the outside like a Chinese tech blog just randomly bought Tindie, broke the site while moving it to their own servers, and now are trying to figure out how to run it?

JKCalhoun 6mo ago
Yeah, pretty sure there is a better way to make a transition—even a complete stack rewrite. Get your new stack operating before you make the switch—and you could have even staged the switch-over starting with one region first. If they purchased the site, I get it, new servers, etc. But part of the purchase agreement should have stated that the site continues to be run/maintained for 6 months or so until the new owners have a replacement ready. (I feel like someone reading HN could have (vibe?) coded a replacement for Tindie by now. I mean Tindie does have the name recognition… kind of?)

keremimo 6mo ago

> Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world. How does this even explain why they "TOOK OVER" Tindie?

feverzsj 6mo ago

Scam or spy?

RossBencina 6mo ago

Found this statement from Alexander Rowsell, Tindie social media manager and editor of the Tindie Blog (link expires in one day): https://privatebin.net/?db6418554d9d5728#3NjbsSUYzw227zG5P1kwH77U443RbJ17Ti8jTNGGtzog https://privatebin.net/?db6418554d9d5728#3NjbsSUYzw227zG5P1k...

fragmede 6mo ago
What's with the expiration? > # Announcement After much back and forth with the community and the team internally, we can reveal a bit more of what's happening. Tindie transitioned to new ownership on April 14. Due to circumstances beyond the control of the new owners, the site was immediately put into maintenance mode. Since then, the process of transitioning the site to new infrastructure and upgrading the aging codebase has been ongoing. The intention was, as I originally thought, to do this seamlessly with no downtime. However, once the site was put into maintenance mode and the transition happened. it was decided to take the time to work on the site and get things up to modern standards. The new owners are genuinely excited about Tindie and what the platform can be. After a year or so on cruise control, we're finally going to make substantial investments in the platform and community -- something which in my humble opinion is long overdue. # Timeframe Again, I still don't have an exact timeframe for the completion of this work. I know that is what the community wants to know more than anything, and it's very frustrating that I can't satisfy your answers about that. I know that the new tech team is working hard with the Supplyframe team to complete all the transition steps and ensure things are done properly. # Who Am I? I figured many of you already know me, but my name is Alexander Rowsell. I'm the editor of the Tindie Blog and the social media manager. I've been with Tindie for a few years, and I'll be around for the foreseeable future. I do embedded development work, but I also really enjoy writing about what the community is up to. It's always a blast to go through the newest listings on Tindie to see what people are creating! I'll be honest with you, I was worried about Tindie over the last few months. I could see that the site needed attention from a professional dev team and was worried the site would break totally before that happened. Well, there has been downtime, but the upside is that the site will be refreshed and ready for the long term. Short-term pain for long-term stability -- that's where we're at. I wanted to write a longer statement, and seeing as how the Tindie Blog itself is down I figured this was the next best thing. To verify this statement is actually from me, I've signed it with my GPG key - B5CFBEB4EE9FE813. You can verify this signature by getting the raw text of this post, and verifying the signature using GPG.

pjc50 6mo ago

Nobody seems to be using the word "bankrupt", but I'm getting the impression that's what happened here? Sudden un-announced sale?

g5pw 6mo ago

This is probably a good reminder that the EU-based alternative https://www.lectronz.com https://www.lectronz.com exists!

gzread 6mo ago
A site that hijacks the back button. Pressing back takes you to the loading screen, which takes you forward to the site again. Ouch.
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  Appears not to take over Safari for me.
  - frereubu 6mo ago
    Or Firefox.

adampunk 6mo ago

This is the kind of statement that gets made when everything is awesome.

sinqlo 6mo ago

[flagged]

l-one-lone 6mo ago

Disclaimer: I’m the founder of Lectronz, a hardware marketplace based in the EU. This email leaves a lot of questions unanswered, especially regarding the long-term stewardship of the maker community. While I wish the new team at EETree LLC luck in modernizing the stack, "stabilizing the platform" after a two-week blackout is a tough starting point for earning back seller trust. For makers who are concerned about the current uncertainty or the move to a new ownership structure, I want to reiterate that there are independent alternatives. We built Lectronz specifically to provide a modern, stable home for the OSHW community with a few specific goals in mind: Data Sovereignty: We have a built-in Tindie importer. You can use it to rescue your product data, photos, and stock levels right now so you aren't "locked in" while waiting for the new team to stabilize their infrastructure. Transparent Payouts: We use Stripe for daily payouts. There are no "disbursement windows" or mystery ownership of your funds. Regulatory Focus: Being based in the EU, we’ve already solved IOSS/VAT. This allows sellers (inside and outside the EU) to keep shipping without their customers getting hit by surprise fees. Our focus is on being a lean, developer-led platform. We aren't backed by large parent corporations or shell companies—just a dedicated team and a Discord/GitHub where you can talk to us directly. If anyone needs help backing up their Tindie store data or has questions about EU shipping compliance, I'm happy to dive into the technical details here.

dbl000 6mo ago

Some background and other details are on the Adafruit blog: https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/29/tindie-is-back-online-and-now-owned-by-eetree-llc-a-suzhou-fpga-tutor/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/29/tindie-is-back-online-a...

micoul81 6mo ago

interssting

JensRantil 6mo ago

What is Tindie?

nerdsniper 6mo ago
Too lazy, didn't google: it's "Etsy for electronics". It was a huge part of the DIY maker scene in the 2010's, alongside pioneers like Adafruit, Hackaday, and SparkFun. It meant a lot to people back when 3D printers and drones were something you built, instead of bought. You know, back when "men were men" and The Register (yes, that one) send homemade UAV glider-planes to the edge of space launched by rockets that were themselves launched from high-altitude weather balloons: https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/29/lohan_concepts/ https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/29/lohan_concepts/ It was a place to buy the things that didn’t exist on any major marketplaces yet. Today, the electronic DIY scene is dominated by Chinese hackers and most things people want are available from China so Tindie got squeezed out over time.