Tindie entered a new chapter this summer with our 2nd birthday. Much has been happening since then – but all behind the scenes. To give you a window into Tindie HQ, here is the State of Tindie!
The marketplace is humming!
- Over 3,000 products listed
- All-time 27% month over month growth
- This month (September 2014) we’ll pass 15,000 orders
We’re incredibly happy to have helped over 600 inventors get their ideas to over 80 countries around the world. We’re clearly building something together that is incredibly special.
Changing face of hardware?
Year after year more and more people are interested in hardware. Investors have put in over $848m into hardware companies in 2013 alone. The vast majority of that went to large companies, but we think that will be changing. As hardware gets easier to manufacture, more companies will emerge. The result will be a surge in specialized hardware that has never been possible before – similar to what AWS facilitated for web development.
It’s a very simple premise with one giant unknown: “When? When will hardware development get cheap and easy enough for small teams to make a massive impact?” We’re getting closer by the day, but we aren’t there yet.
Why do you say that? Let’s take a look at our waiting list
- ~50% of Tindie products have at least 1 order
- 367 products are sold out (20% products with an order)
- Potential revenue on the waiting list: $489,714.41
To clarify: products that are sold out can have a waiting list for customers to add their email and desired quantity. We then email those customers once a product comes back in stock. The result is mad rush to grab up the inventory that was posted. One customer in New Zealand missed out 3 times in a row because of his time zone, prompting him to email us, “What happened!?”
There is overwhelming demand on Tindie – but there is a universal problem among small companies: it is still incredibly difficult to keep products in stock. Many products go months without inventory.
So what? You’re launching Tindie U right?
In May, we announced “Tindie U” as an project to help educate makers on scaling their project. And then June hit; in that month alone potential revenue on the waiting list grew by $100,000! It became very clear we needed to solve this inventory problem – and, with sellers in over 40 countries, do more than what we had originally planned with Tindie U.
Tindie & Manufacturing
We are now working on a solution to better connect manufacturers and hardware companies. From our two years of data, we see this as a critical problem that is holding back small hardware businesses. We don’t want to announce exactly what our solution is just yet; this is a big project and the reason we haven’t released any major features in the last few months. But stay tuned…
PS
You are probably wondering – what’s the breakdown between maker-made products and supplies? Good question!
- Between 93-97% of orders are for maker-made products
- Supplies only account for up to 7% of sales
Therefore, if you are reselling bulk components, you probably aren’t very happy – and that is a bit by design. This summer, we moved supplies into their own section of the site. We purposefully minimized their visibility and it had little impact on their sales.
However that still raises the question: should there even be supplies within the marketplace? It’s a good question and one we’ve bounced back and forth on. The data definitely opens that conversation back up.
