It would be great if you could supply us the same chips used in the development boards you sell at reasonable prices in small quantities or singly. I am particularly interested in the Nordic semiconductor devices. You must be already ordering them in quantity to make your boards, how about selling them to us at good price? What do I consider a good price…well how about a small markup for order processing and postage. If I order a single chip, you should be able to send it, including postage in an envelope for $1 over what the price you’ve paid is. I imagine you arder in quantities of a thousand. This would make your single quantity price very attractive and gain you customers and fans from many places.
busonerd:
We have the nordics, no avr32ap’s though.
We really can’t beat digikey on price most of the time for the common parts, esp in QTY 1, just because of the overhead of packing + order handling.
Cheers,
–David Carne
Let’s see…best prices I can find for the at32ap7000 are $21.82 for singles at digikey, and $14.413 for a hundred from them as well.
For the at32ap7001, can’t find it single at all, but it’s $12.68ea for 800 at mouser, and the at32ap7002 is $12.26ea for 800 there as well.
Let’s take the simplest course, and say you were to spend the $1441.30 for a hundred AT32AP7000 from digikey. If you able to turn around and sell these for a competitive price of, say, $18.49, you’d have a gross profit of $407.70, or $4.08 per chip. Consider a cost of stuffing one of these in some bubble wrap, stuffing that in an envelope, and mailing same might cost $1, that still leaves $3.08 profit per chip, or $308 in total. That’s 21% profit. I’d call that healthy. But of course it’s only a good profit if they don’t stay in your inventory year after year.
Maybe it’s time for me to get into the electronics business.
We really can’t beat digikey on price most of the time for the common parts, esp in QTY 1, just because of the overhead of packing + order handling.
Cheers,
–David Carne
Digikey charges a $5 handling surcharge for orders under $25, which is why I’ve never used them before… I always have small orders.
I agree with the OP… it would be awesome if you could carry some of the more hard to find chips. SDRAMs would be very cool to see, because they are hard to find cheap in small quantities.