Our goal at OEMsTrade.com is to involve the community and let them have a say in what we do. After all, the community is what makes or breaks a site and in our case we have listened to the community and tried to keep our site as clean as possible. We have plans for new features to be added this year and to revamp the site a bit to make the experience for our visitors even better.

If anyone is interested in making suggestions or comments, I encourage you to visit our site at http://www.oemstrade.com/pages/contact/ and let us know what you think and any features you may want to see.

I want to thank Colin for the unbiased comments as he is an owner of a competing site and still sees the usefulness of OEMsTrade.com.

BTW, if anyone is interested, one of the first additions to OEMsTrade.com this year will be a forum where the community can get together and share ideas, look for that real soon!

TOM

http://www.ipod-mp4-converter.com

What’s wrong with proving it can work in the place first before everyone crowns them as the ‘next thing’?

Yup, call me a skeptic but I’d like to see this play out a bit before getting excited.

I suggest reading some of Paul Graham’s (of Y Combinator) essays in order to see his philosophy on startups and their products. In essence, he advises to get something functional out there NOW, even if it’s temporarily limited, just as a proof of concept. You have been harping about Octo only having 3 vendors. You fail to consider that more vendors will probably come. Octo is trying to prove its concept, not be an all-out search engine just yet.

Where did I say any of them had good design? I said they had good functionality and ease of use, which trumps design every time as evidenced by Google, MySpace, YouTube, etc. etc. etc. Substance without design is passable. Design without substance is not.

The “Design” in search results on Chip Index is taken directly from the vendor’s websites since that is how they like their results presented. The “Design” in OEMstrade uses the vendor’s company logo and a standard format. The “Design” in FindChips is like Chip Index, using the vendor’s own display for results.

Like I said - I don’t think there is anything “bad” about Octopart save 2 things:

- First, they only have 3 vendors showing. Find fault in the other 3 sites all you want, but they each have nearly 10 times the vendors. If you use Octopart and the 3 they show are sold out of a specific part (a frequent occurrence), do you put your project on hold? Or go look somewhere else?

- Second, I still don’t know how they plan on making any money, which is kind of the point when someone funds you.

1. The 3 vendors they have listed are going to charge you $50 min regardless. Price means nothing in terms of comparison shopping for small quantities.

2. How on earth do you get around the internet without scrolling down? ; )

3. Good point. I certainly do agree that photos would be of great help to a hobbyist. Business class users know exactly what they want via the part-number they are sourcing.

4. It WAS designed in 2001. It cost less then $3k and 4 weeks to build. If YCombinator put in the standard “3 months salary plus some other costs” investment of 15-25k, they are likely overvaluing the product from the get go.

I realize that for a hobbyist, Octoparts may be an excellent choice. However, as many sites can attest, hobbyist users don’t drive a lot of cash flow and business users want more info (in this case, more vendors to choose from), not less. Even if a hobbyist user chooses to use Octoparts and is happy to pay a bit more per part from these three vendors, they will still be hampered by purchase minimums. Meanwhile, Octoparts is still lacking a way to make cash.

We monetized our site by creating paid newsletters to keep people informed about new releases and updates in the industry because the ad model didn’t even cover hosting fees and the vendors we list weren’t the least bit interested in sponsorships/partnerships/affiliation.

I just have a hard time seeing how Octo is going to make any money without adding features, and any added features will likely move them from “hobby” class to “business” class, at which point they have a minimum of 20 entrenched and experienced sites with significant market share ready to swallow them. My second venture in to this field is well-financed and full of experienced semiconductor veterans, yet it is proving to be every bit the challenge.

I understand my points here seem contrary to encouragement, and for that I am sorry. I applaud the efforts of Octoparts and, frankly, would LOVE to see further innovation in this industry as a rising tide helps all boats. That said, the semiconductor industry is very cut-throat due to (1) limited stock/availability (2) ridiculous profit margins and (3) ease of inventory and shipment due to small product size. You can ship 200K in parts in a shoebox, seriously.

Good luck to Octoparts. I will be paying close attention to see if they can find a way to generate revenue without alienating the hobbyist users they state they are wanting to cater to.

I wish them well, but think they have an uphill battle ahead of them.

You got to most of my points before I got a chance to respond. Thanks for saving me the post.

“Almost exactly the same UI”?

How about:

1. Grouping by part instead of by company. This makes price comparison not just easier - but possible.

2. On 1024 x 768, a search on FindChips shows me a (useless) list of manufacturers above the fold with only 2 parts. For more I have to scroll. At OctoPart, I get to see about 14 parts before scrolling.

3. Photographs! This speeds up the part selection process immensely - I don’t have to read as many 9pt descriptions.

4. FindChips is, well, ugly. And a site that looks like it was designed in 2001 doesn’t inspire me to think that new features will be coming any time soon.

As for speed, let’s see how fast Octopart is after the TechCrunching is over.

I think Octopart is already way nicer than the sites you’ve listed and it is likely to continue to improve.

I’m failing to see what is hard to navigate using FindChips, OEMsTrade and Chip Index? Enter the part number in the box and the results come up…

FindChips and OEMsTrade are faster, Chip Index has more vendors listed. Considering FindChips has almost exactly the same UI as Octopart, you’ve lost me on the “ease of use” argument.

Those sites you listed are so freaking hard to navigate. What is going on w/ them? Octopart got it right where those other sites go dreadfully wrong, getting the information to the user faster a with far less fuss than those other sites.

Octopart is not as robust as some of the other services out there, but it’s in an early stage. If my daily job involved shopping for parts I’d be befriending these guys and trying to help push the service in the right direction.

Anyone out there have word on their business plan?

I agree there is a market for it, but for the most part it is filled by Radio Shack and similar retail spots. Stocking distributors have order minimums because the time it takes to pull inventory, count the quantity, box it, ship it, and charge the customers credit card simply isn’t worth the smaller dollar amounts when there are lots of bigger orders to fill. If the bigger orders didn’t exist, maybe, but even new companies that start with no order minimums quickly add mins in for efficiency’s sake.

1. It offers pictures of the part.
2. It has about 22 fewer vendors listed.

Check out the GoPart widget, btw (referenced above). A very unique implementation of search…

R

You have no idea. They don’t compete on price, they compete on availability. The profit margin on semiconductors and board level components is so high it would make you cry. Furthermore, there are enough board shops and contract manufacturers out there that availability is always a concern for the customer and on a long enough time line, everything in stock will be sold. No need to worry about price since when everyone else sells out, you can charge whatever you want.

I realize my posts are sounding crass, and for that I am sorry. But Digikey et. al are not little mom and pop electronics shops. They choose their partners wisely because they can. They have so many customers (as do the roughly 4,000 independent distributors in this country) that they can have order minimums of $100 or more (as most distributors do). The notion of picking up a $20 order from someone in a university lab is more trouble then it’s worth because it gets in the way of the long list of $1,000 orders that need to get pulled and shipped.

As I said, OCtopart is a nice product but not nearly as robust as a number of solutions out there.