If you are not familiar with etsy.com, it is one of the first and most successful marketplaces for arts, craft hobbyists.
They follow (or used to) a strict policy of “is it handmake enough” to have a storefront. So mass production products or cheap foreign goods were not allowed. An awesome place to create a custom coffee cup or made made jewelry or some wooden showpiece. I don’ work for etsy btw!
Got to thinking “is there a place like etsy for makers of electronics projects/products”?
Is https://www.tindie.com “the easiest way to buy and sell indie hardware” the sort of thing you were looking for?
I guess this opens up the question is their anything more the imp environment could do to best serve short-run/bespoke/indie products
Try https://grandst.com/ there are about 6 imp based products listed. And they have just been brought by ESTY as they share sames vision & values. Also GS allows you to flog Beta products which is a great for product development.
I’m the founder of Tindie, and that is exactly what we are. We’ve helped launch over 2,000 maker electronics projects. More than happy to answer any questions @tsinghimp or anyone else has!
Also if you’re going to MakerCon in a few weeks, Tindie & Electric Imp have a panel together. We’re huge fans of imp!
PS Thanks @back_ache for the shoutout!
@emilepetrone We are adding all of the MakeDeck development boards to TIndie. Could you add Electric Imp as a platform? Thanks!
I knew of Tindie. Grandst.com is new to me. Yeah this is good but it makes me wonder how come the pace of products are so limited on these new marketplaces. Maybe arts and craft is easier or more people are doing that versus making hw/sw products …
@MakeDeck \o/ We’re updating the entire product create process so changes are on the way!
@tsinghimp We’re an open platform so either work on Tindie, however I think you’re right that arts/crafts products are easier for a variety of reasons.
On your point about pace - we’ve been around 22 months. Last month, we passed 2k products, and this month 209 products have been listed (~10%). Our pace is only accelerating which is why we aren’t for sale, and only getting started 