Tindie is approaching our 1 year anniversary. With this milestone approaching, we wanted to start highlighting Tindie’s affect on the maker electronics space.
Did you know that you can produce a batch of PCBs (printed circuit boards) as easily as a run of t-shirts? This is a monumental shift in how electronics are made.
We started Tindie only 11 months ago to be the marketplace for this community. In the process, Tindie has become the biggest marketplace of small batch electronics. Tautic Electronics is one business on the site, and this is Tautic’s story.
For the last three years, Tautic produced and sold small batch electronics. Products ranged from a lightning sensor board to a PIR motion sensor. His assembly process? By hand.
Tautic’s storefront was first on eBay, then Amazon where he received a decent number of orders. Before Tindie, makers often turned to eBay, Amazon or Etsy for selling their hardware products. The problem was that none of these marketplaces are known for their hardware communities – quite the opposite in fact.
After a few months on Tindie, Tautic closed his Amazon store and is now selling exclusively on Tindie.The biggest draw being our amazing community of electronics enthusiasts from over 60 countries. We may not be as large as Amazon, eBay or Etsy, but in our space we go head to head with all of them.
The results speak for themselves. Tautic is no longer assembling by hand and just purchased a pick and place machine (costing over $10,000) to keep up with his orders.
To put that into perspective, Adafruit Industries recently purchased a massive pick and place machine for their business which has over 50 employees and millions in revenue. I forgot to mention – Tautic Electronics consists of 1 person: Jayson Tautic, the owner.
The future of electronics and hardware is changing at a breakneck pace. It is now possible for one person businesses like Tautic Electronics to compete globally and produce products at the highest quality. As hardware becomes easier and cheaper to produce, this trend will only accelerate.
