<story><title>Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie</title><url>https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/05/17/siemens-acquires-supplyframe-hackaday-tindie-too/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>This is great news for Supplyframe.&lt;p&gt;But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The &amp;quot;makers market&amp;quot; of today doesn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x2F;Tandy&amp;#x2F;Dick Smiths&amp;#x2F;Marples(sp?)), a host of retail outlets, and several equipment manufacturers selling into the market.&lt;p&gt;In the &amp;quot;modern&amp;quot; era, there are no profitable magazines or web sites or blogs or ANYTHING with respect to this hobby, there are NO brick and mortar retail components stores, and no equipment maker sells into this market.&lt;p&gt;So why is this? I suspect that a large chunk of that is money. In particular, the &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot; of things has gone so far down that the money selling those things is a mere pittance of what it was before. But salaries of people to run these businesses, offices, etc hasn&amp;#x27;t changed. Nor has postage or warehouse space etc. But the interesting follow on effect is that it makes no sense to pay $8000 for an advertisement (the full page price of an ad in Modern Electronics in 1980) when you might generate an additional $4K in revenue. Similarly for blogs or podcasts where 70 to 90% of the ad revenue goes to the ad network (Google, Bing, Etc.)&lt;p&gt;Open source is great, but without money people have to work other jobs and so their ability to contribute quality time to their hobbies, much less full time to them, is that much harder to do.&lt;p&gt;I used to write free lance articles for Byte, Dr. Dobbs, and others and they would pay me $600 - $800 per article. A recent article suggests that the editors for Hackaday get paid but the places they link? They just get &amp;quot;exposure.&amp;quot; (cue the Oatmeal comic on spending &amp;quot;exposure&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;There are some standouts, like Adafruit, but even there the margins are tight and the operations are small. They are certainly not a &amp;quot;Radio Shack&amp;quot; level of enterprise.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know what the &amp;quot;fix&amp;quot; is, but there is some re-imagining, re-inventing that needs to go on here to pay these people who put in their time to make the &amp;quot;maker movement&amp;quot; work. Or it will continue to struggle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spoonjim</author><text>I disagree with your take on the &amp;quot;makers&amp;quot; market. The maker world is far more interesting today than in 1985.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are no &amp;quot;brick and mortar&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;t need brick and mortar stores. The experience of shopping for parts online is much better than at a Radioshack -- it&amp;#x27;s not like you need to physically inspect a 555 timer to gain any information about it before you buy it, like you would with a winter jacket. The only thing lost is the ability to get a part &lt;i&gt;today&lt;/i&gt; which sometimes sucks but that&amp;#x27;s life. We don&amp;#x27;t need 6 magazines anymore because people put their code on Github and their projects on YouTube, and for &lt;i&gt;free&lt;/i&gt;. Profits in the industry are probably lower but that&amp;#x27;s because there&amp;#x27;s more competition from other vendors and from people just sharing this stuff with no profit motive, which maybe sucks for the industry but is fantastic for the hobbyists of limited means.&lt;p&gt;Today, hobbyist makers are building stuff that actually does something useful, that has no commercial substitute. With Github, YouTube, forums, people are inspiring each other to make more interesting things than in 1985. Back in 1985 people were usually building stuff that could be bought. Today people are building stuff that can&amp;#x27;t be bought, and if there&amp;#x27;s enough of a market for it they productize it with Kickstarter or Tindie. People are sharing code and board designs and projects, and whether at the high end like Mark Rober or the low end like some guy&amp;#x27;s homebrewing controller the maker world is really bursting with success.</text></comment>
<story><title>Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie</title><url>https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/05/17/siemens-acquires-supplyframe-hackaday-tindie-too/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>This is great news for Supplyframe.&lt;p&gt;But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The &amp;quot;makers market&amp;quot; of today doesn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x2F;Tandy&amp;#x2F;Dick Smiths&amp;#x2F;Marples(sp?)), a host of retail outlets, and several equipment manufacturers selling into the market.&lt;p&gt;In the &amp;quot;modern&amp;quot; era, there are no profitable magazines or web sites or blogs or ANYTHING with respect to this hobby, there are NO brick and mortar retail components stores, and no equipment maker sells into this market.&lt;p&gt;So why is this? I suspect that a large chunk of that is money. In particular, the &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot; of things has gone so far down that the money selling those things is a mere pittance of what it was before. But salaries of people to run these businesses, offices, etc hasn&amp;#x27;t changed. Nor has postage or warehouse space etc. But the interesting follow on effect is that it makes no sense to pay $8000 for an advertisement (the full page price of an ad in Modern Electronics in 1980) when you might generate an additional $4K in revenue. Similarly for blogs or podcasts where 70 to 90% of the ad revenue goes to the ad network (Google, Bing, Etc.)&lt;p&gt;Open source is great, but without money people have to work other jobs and so their ability to contribute quality time to their hobbies, much less full time to them, is that much harder to do.&lt;p&gt;I used to write free lance articles for Byte, Dr. Dobbs, and others and they would pay me $600 - $800 per article. A recent article suggests that the editors for Hackaday get paid but the places they link? They just get &amp;quot;exposure.&amp;quot; (cue the Oatmeal comic on spending &amp;quot;exposure&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;There are some standouts, like Adafruit, but even there the margins are tight and the operations are small. They are certainly not a &amp;quot;Radio Shack&amp;quot; level of enterprise.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know what the &amp;quot;fix&amp;quot; is, but there is some re-imagining, re-inventing that needs to go on here to pay these people who put in their time to make the &amp;quot;maker movement&amp;quot; work. Or it will continue to struggle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>worldmerge</author><text>I miss going to my local Radio Shack and getting components. When they went under I could really only get components online. Sure, there is a commercial supplier near me but they are only open 9-5ish M-F and don&amp;#x27;t have a website. It would be great if they were able to digitize their inventory and ship orders. I wonder why some commercial focused companies make it so hard for non-commercial customers to access their business (I&amp;#x27;m including companies that have websites but make it clear they only sell to contractors)?</text></comment>