Tindie "market" for Teensy

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PaulStoffregen

PaulStoffregen

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If anyone has a Tindie account, or is willing to create one, can you help with this?

https://www.tindie.com/m/Teensy/

Honestly, I'm not sure what these Tindie "markets" are all about. Maybe just product categories?

Also, I'm curious what everyone here thinks of Tindie? Have you used their site much? Actually bought stuff?

My own experience (or really Robin's) was this: about 1 year ago, we tried listing Teensy 3.0 on Tindie. At the time, their fee was comparable to Paypal and credit card transactions. Over several months, I believe we sold exactly 1 board through Tindie. I guess that's not too surprising, since most people buy direct from our site or through major distributors like Sparkfun, EXP Tech, etc. When they raised their fees, we removed Teensy.

Tindie does seem like a pretty good site for makers not yet running their own stores to sell small quantities of stuff they've made. I'm actually curious to hear from people who've really used it.
 
I did a couple of purchases. I gathered that it is a startup, a fulfillment house for Asian geeky stuff.
One item I bought was data radio board similar to the HopeRF boards (which are also from China but of good design). The ones I ordered did arrive promptly from the seller (not the manufacturer and not Tinde). They shaved every penny off by sending no docs, no schematic, a fuzzy pinout. I was able to figure it out. And it worked, but was oddball, e.g. antenna TX/RX switch was opposite polarity of logic level that HopeRF.

So I guess I'd say Tindie is a small headcount startup wanting to be the Amazon for techie gear from Asia.
Shop carefully, they're probably OK.
 
I find the terms and conditions a bit restrictive especially when marketting a product somewhere else.
From thier terms,
If a product is for sale on Tindie, promotion or links to another marketplace or retail channel are prohibited for products. It is ok to promote retired products that can now be purchased elsewhere.
Click to expand...

To me that would restrict where you can sell your product, So you can either sell it on tindie and no where else or sell it multiple places, but not on tindie.

The trouble with Tindie (and I suppose a lot of other place like Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc) is that there is so much stuff on it that potentially your product gets lost in the ubundance of other products on offer.
 
I just listed a few items for sale at Tindie. I'll let you know in the next few weeks if I get any sales and what the experience is like.
 
johnnyfp said:
I find the terms and conditions a bit restrictive especially when marketting a product somewhere else.
From thier terms,


To me that would restrict where you can sell your product, So you can either sell it on tindie and no where else or sell it multiple places, but not on tindie.

The trouble with Tindie (and I suppose a lot of other place like Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc) is that there is so much stuff on it that potentially your product gets lost in the ubundance of other products on offer.
Click to expand...
To me, that says you can't entice Tindie web site viewers to buy from somewhere else by content on Tindie's website.
That's reasonable, and doesn't limit the seller to Tindie-only.
 
I've bought several things from Tindie. Generally, the items have arrived, and I have had few issues with quality (though with some of the things I bought, I wasn't expecting a slick finished product, but that is fine, not everything needs to be slick).

Until about 6 months ago, it seemed to be populated with mostly maker made stuff. I.e. somebody designs an add-on board, or trinket and sells a few items. In that sense, I think it was successful in that it would allow people to find more unique items. It sort of reminded me of where people might go after an initial kickstarter project (back before KS itself became too big) that was mildly successful, but not enough to found a company with. I.e. a place to buy/sell hobby boards.

However, I suspect it wasn't as successful in terms of revenue for the owner. Somewhere around 6 months ago, things changed. Suddenly, there were more big players, and not everybody seemed to be making their own products. Two companies seemed to show case this for me. One is bbtech (black box tech) is a Chinese manufacturing company, and most of their products look like knock offs of other products. Now, the products generally do look well designed from the photos (and the protoboards I bought which seem to be knock offs of the Adafruit perma-proto boards), but I felt it changed the focus of makers selling speciality items, to just a place the big vendors can sell their stuff. I am reminded of the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where the sheriff gathers the crowd, and the salesman then starts trying to hawk his snake oil to the crowd assembled.

The other telltale sign of change was when Schmartboard started selling there. Schmartboard sells and designs prototype boards, and sells them all over (at Radio Shack, Amazon, and their own store). Again, it felt like the small guys were being pushed out.

I complained about these two things in the forums (that had very little traffic), and the owner came off to me as sort of glib, and saying they would monitor things, but I didn't notice any change.

In the last month, things have changed even more. There are now many more categories. The problem is with many more categories, it makes it hard to find unique things that you didn't know existed without following every group (which to me was the appeal of tindie). Also, you have the general problem of picking categories, etc.

Previously, they had a place where you could ask questions of the seller, and the answers would be public, including answers if any (and one of my dings against bbtech was I asked a question about their board, and it never got answered). Now, questions/answers are done via private mail, and you can't see all of the questions asked previously. As I mentioned there was a forum area, and now it seems to be missing.

There are several Teensy related products on tindie.

So I used to be very happy with tindie. I am less happy now, but I still scan the site once a day for new shiny's.
 
I bought a couple of things from BBtech also and I don't agree totally about their products being knockoffs. For example the new protoboard they sell has holes for a standard dc jack and a usb connector, they seem to have ideas on their own.
The WS2811 matrix they do is quite original also, you can cut it the way you like or assemble several of them to make a big panel.
 
Yes, they have ideas. However, it was the new protoboard that I was asking for additional pictures or at least better description of the board, and they never answered my question. And in the last month or two, the board has not been available for sale. I was thinking of buying 1-2 just to try them out, even if they didn't answer the question.

Compared to the Adafruit boards, the v1 board is less forgiving of soldering heat (my bbtech boards have various stains where the soldering iron came too close, while the Adafruit boards still look nice). I haven't ordered the ws2812 matrix, so I can't say much about it. I was looking at the various sensors, which look a lot like other similar sensors.
 
We found the Teensy 3.x development board on Tindie for the 1Sheeld.
It was high quality, low cost but high shipping cost from Japan.
Wish PJRC had this proto shield so we could buy American.:D
 
To answer Paul's initial questions, the Markets are just a way for sellers to categorize their offerings. This may or may not make it easier to find a given product, that has never been really easy.
I've bought from Tindie several times and offer my own High Power RGB LED shield for sale.

A User can create a new Market/Category and when enough people ( 5 I believe) join the market (which I just did for "Teensy") then that market becomes active. That will allow Sellers to add that category to their product so when people filter for that Market they will be able to see those products. So a Teensy breakout board or shield or product that works with Teensy such as my LED shield can be added to that Market.

I welcomed the latest push from Tindie to get resellers out of their stores and focus on the Maker made things. It is a nice platform for people like me that don't want to run their own web store.
 
Hi all & Paul! I founded Tindie and came across this thread and figured I’d help answer some of the questions.

@Paul yeah I think the reason Teensy didn't do well on Tindie is that it can be found in so many other places. It would be hard for someone to not have run across it sooner on another site. That's what we've found with products that get going and picked up by other sites. We're still the youngster and when a larger site picks up a product, generally their sales will dry up as we aren't as big as the other sites out there.

@OneHorse Thanks for giving us a try!

@johnnyfp You can sell elsewhere (we aren't trying to lock anyone in). We just don't want someone to say “go buy it here.” Thanks @Stevech for helping to clarify

@MichaelMeissner we’re an open marketplace with sellers in over 40 countries. As we’ve grown we’ve definitely gotten more diverse. We definitely aren’t trying to push out little guys - far from it.

The reason for Markets was to help solve this diversification of products - to give smaller companies room to work together & grow together. As Markets grows, we'll definitely be adding market recommendations to help with discovery. It’s the Twitter problem. As you grow, more noise - so now how can we help you cut through the noise?

But I think you are right about the general take, as the site grows, it will only expand into new areas. We hope Markets & letting you create a personal feed will make it a much better experience. Specifically Market moderators can remove supply/bulk products, and as everyone gets a hang of it, I think it will sort itself out in a way that wasn't previously possible.

@Headroom you nailed it - thanks! Maybe it would be good to add Paul as a moderator? Just an idea..

But I'm happy to answer any other questions or ideas. To give more info on Tindie, we are a 3 person team with a few part timers. I founded the site 2 years ago while I was still living in Portland. Paul I'm not sure if you remember we met at DorkbotPDX a few years ago. Anyway we are a small startup, so far over 13,000 orders, 500 sellers, and Tindarians in over 80 countries at last count.

Hopefully thats help answer a few of the questions, but feel free to ask more!

Emile
 
It's been a little over three weeks since I listed my first product on Tindie and I have sold 12 items to eight customers. I count this as pretty good success since if I scale up to an entire year at this rate I will gross over $3000 in sales. For a one-maker, part-time effort I say Tindie.com works well!
 
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