Component group buy

[PlainName]

The saving needs to be worthwhile to the buyer, and now we are trained to expect next (or even same) day delivery via Amazon, saving 50p but having to wait 3 months wouldn't do it for me

[excitedbox]

Yea but saving 98% on resistors and around 50% on chips is more than 50cents on a $50 order. It means you can get $100 worth of stuff for $50. In reality you wouldn´t be waiting much longer either. If we set deadline for 2 weeks before placing the order and the volunteers send all orders within 1 week of receiving the parts you would wait a maximum of 3 weeks plus the normal shipping time plus the time a domestic package takes (3-5 days for US and about 3 days in the EU.)

For a Digikey order that means a maximum wait of 3 weeks and minimum of 2 over the normal wait from the time you make payment.

Since we have proposed a $50 order minimum that means a savings of $45+ in return for waiting 2-3 weeks.

If there is a huge demand maybe we can do more than 2 group buys a year but at some point we would need to actually pay the volunteers but if it came to that we can negotiate better prices with suppliers to keep us from buying from their competition. I am pretty sure if we were to place a 5-10k order a month digikey or mouser would not want to loose that kind of business. If we buy enough maybe they will even ship directly like with groupon buys.


Imagine if we get some maker spaces, schools, clubs, tindie sellers to buy with us. We would have a huge selection of parts we could buy at bulk prices.

[Brumby]

You seem pretty determined to give it a shot.  It's that sort of energy which will be needed to get things off the ground and while I still believe it a Herculean task, I wish you well.  If you do make a success of it, I will offer my congratulations.

I'll look in every now and then to see what's on the menu and if there is something that takes my fancy, I might be persuaded to join in.

[excitedbox]

I hope we will have something you can use. You could also suggest something you need and maybe other people need it too.

We should definitely get get all the common resistors and caps
op amps
at least one or 2 all purpose DACs and ADCs
Voltage regulators
LEDs in all colors - maybe make that a kit
full bridge rectifiers
fuses
diodes
what else?

[PlainName]

what else?

Connectors? Molex SIL jobbies, perhaps. DC power, micro-USB B.

[excitedbox]

Is micro USB still worth it? Seems pretty soon everyone will be using USB-c and they are quite expensive. Might benefit more from buying them in bulk. Connectors is good though.

What micros would people be interested in? I would like some of the 3 cent Padouks but I doubt I would ever get arround to doing something with them. Might be worth it to do a reel of those though.

Some Pic, STM32, Atmel, AtTiny? I guess 1 or 2 of each should do.

I wish we had more people giving input on what they need because some of these things I have no use for so I don´t know what others might want.

I need transformers and they tend to be expensive but isn´t there someone working on an os power supply? We should add the components that they use to the list and maybe we can help people building them save some money.

We could make at a list of popular projects an see what parts make sense to add.

[teksturi]

Is micro USB still worth it? Seems pretty soon everyone will be using USB-c and they are quite expensive. Might benefit more from buying them in bulk.

How many do you really need. One cost $0.2045 and if you buy ten $0.1500. If you group buy you can have it like $0.1242. But who really cares? It is just 0,03$. I do not get this. Only thing I think might be a good think is that someone make jellybean parts boxes ready and people select what they wants.

https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Others_Korean-Hroparts-Elec-TYPE-C-31-M-17_C283540.html

[excitedbox]

Right but at 5k they go from 20c down to 11c. That is only 100 people buying 50 of them and saves almost 50%. I need at least 100 for my next project. Also You are going off the Chinese suppliers price and not digikey or mauser where many people buy their parts. But even buying them there would save 4.90 on 100 of them.

Also Molex brand goes from 90cents down to <60cents and I think going for the 5A connectors is better than the 3A because more people can use them even if many don´t need it. For things such as a hub or quick charger it is a must though which is where USB C becomes the most useful.

On a $50 order that is $49 - the 5% commission and 3.5-8 shipping you would still save $40 which is not a small amount.

You gotta keep in mind that some people here sell the stuff they make and need bigger quantities of these parts.

USB C cables are also much more expensive than micro USB so doing a group buy of those could save someone selling their projects a lot of money even if it is only a couple cents on each part.


I am just making suggestions. If a lot of people say they don´t need them and would rather have micro USB then obviously that is what we would order.

I will setup a script to make this whole process more organized. It may take me a week or 2 but keep an eye on this thread. In the mean time people can add their suggestions for parts.

[excitedbox]

I was just thinking. Would it make sense to have each part as a separate group buy? That way as soon as we hit some bulk limit we can order that part. We wouldn´t be locked into needing every part hitting their bulk goal until we place the order.

Pros:
- You get parts quicker
- More people might participate
- Can offer more parts
- Less work at once.

Cons:
- Multiple shipping costs (unless we figure out some kind of hold system until all your parts arrive)
- If we did some kind of order hold and combine volunteers would have parts sitting around for weeks.
- More work overall for volunteers (Some work/costs such as printing shipping labels doesn´t scale linearly.)


What do you think?