Propeller UK Availability
Coley
Posts: 1,110
This is more of a question to the Parallax staff but I would welcome anyone's thoughts.
Previously I have purchased my Propeller chips from Digikey, today I find they are out of stock on the LQFP variant and low on the others.
Does this mean that Digikey are no longer going to stock the Propeller?
What other vendors are carrying them? (I notice Mouser have them but i have never dealt with them before)
I realise that I can buy direct from Parallax but one of the benefits of purchasing from Digikey is the free shipping and seeing as there are other items in my inventory it makes sense to get everything from one place.
So my question really is can any of the European Propeller contingent recommend a competitive and reliable supplier?
Regards,
Coley
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:32:35 PM GMT
Previously I have purchased my Propeller chips from Digikey, today I find they are out of stock on the LQFP variant and low on the others.
Does this mean that Digikey are no longer going to stock the Propeller?
What other vendors are carrying them? (I notice Mouser have them but i have never dealt with them before)
I realise that I can buy direct from Parallax but one of the benefits of purchasing from Digikey is the free shipping and seeing as there are other items in my inventory it makes sense to get everything from one place.
So my question really is can any of the European Propeller contingent recommend a competitive and reliable supplier?
Regards,
Coley
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:32:35 PM GMT
Comments
If 46% mark-up over US price, £9.50 ( web site claims £9, invoice said different ), plus VAT, plus P&P ( £9.50 AFAIR ), and delivery by City Link ( a personal PITA for me, meaning a day off work ) is "competitive" ... otherwise -
Farnell ( uk.farnell.com ) have stock, with 116% mark-up at £14.01, plus VAT, plus P&P.
You might have been able to get them delivered to you at work.
Leon
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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle
Hopefully there are some UK suppliers that we have all missed thus far that will be selling the Prop for £7 each plus a small delivery charge. I thought that Milford Instruments were only ever interested in the educational market where cost is not always the limiting factor.
Might be an idea to have a cheap US holiday and have a spare suitcase to stock up on chips, just don't go BA via terminal 5 Heathrow.
I have previously purchased Prototype boards from Milford Instruments and the price charged was different from the price on their website.
Having said that I think the Protoboard offered good value for money.
Farnell were stocking the Protoboard but again they have no stock.
I would buy from Farnell but when you are buying 50 at a time £14 is far too much...
It's rather worrying that there isn't a reliable cost effective source here in the UK, what is it like in the rest of Eurpoe?
C'mon Parallax what's the state of play in the UK and Europe????
Regards,
Coley
EDIT ---- SimonL did you get anywhere with your plans to stock Parallax products???
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:32:26 PM GMT
That's perhaps the best way I've heard it described.
"Dire".
Looking at suppliers in Europe didn't seem to be a lot better than what was on sale in the UK.
I suspect SimonL ran into the same problems everyone else has who's considered this. Once one takes into account shipping, import duty, reasonable mark-up and resale P&P it's actually not that short of what Milford charge. Not worth the effort. Certainly not for individuals trying to help others out.
It really needs some effort from Parallax in conjunction with UK and European resellers to get this sorted out. Maybe Parallax don't care about the UK or European market and are happy with just the US market, I'd hope not, but I don't expect to see much take-up over here unless people can get them cheaper and not feel ripped-off.
While Microchip, Atmel and ARM are selling at straight dollar-to-sterling prices in the UK they will automatically have a major advantage. It's a real shame because the Propeller deserves to do well.
As Coley puts it - Isn't there something Parallax could do to help UK and European customers ?
I guess you are right about SimonL, I realise you can't hold an amount of stock on the shelves without it impacting upon the final selling price.
It's demoralising in a way that we are being penalised in this way
I just checked on the Parallax site before and for my 50 QFP Props and it came to $583 + Shipping of $86 = $ 669
That works out converted to sterling at £6.71 + Import duties and VAT and on the face of it that seems good value compared to Milford and Farnell
Just checked Digikey (if they had any) price was $621.60 with free shipping - (£6.23 each)
Mouser was pretty much the same $612.50 + $35 Shipping (£6.49 each)
I couldn't agree more....
Coley
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:32:19 PM GMT
Actually buying the products is the only thing I don't like about the propeller.
Graham
Coley's original question concerned me, but I didn't do anything about it til today. I went to DigiKey, and saw they had no QFP devices available. I typed in 5 for 'Enter Quantity Requested', and was informed that DigiKey expect to have them on 6 April. That's good enough for me!
The rest of this thread may be a bit of a storm in a teacup.
I don't feel too much pity for those in Europe and the UK - where the electronics industry kicks the pants right off what we have available in Australia!!
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uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=electronics/ecs&file=Parallax
Hopefully PropGFX/Lite will be something Parallax themselves might want to stock so you could perhaps be in a position to strike a deal ?
The market I currently see in the UK would mainly be for ProtoBoard and PropPlug, ( the first step on the bandwagon ). Maybe a future PropGFXLite could be modified to be a simple development platform in its own right ?
@ mirror : I feel for you, in the same or worst boat than Europe most of the time.
You may well be right about it being a storm in a teacup
The question of pricing and distribution for the rest of the world is something that Parallax need to give careful consideration to IMHO
@Graham
Nice find Graham, I must admit I turned up the same Fan result on the RS search engine lol
@Hippy
Well I do have my own business already but I am not in the market of commercial distribution nor ever likely to be.
Distribution of Parallax products for me could only be on a part time basis if at all.
It's true that I will have some stock for PropGFX Lite and I always have a Protoboard to hand ready for those quick fix apps...
I've decided that I will place my order direct with Parallax, this will give me the opportunity to purchase some other products at the same time.
If any of you fellow Brits (or Europeans for that matter!) want to take advantage and tag something onto my order then let me know before the end of this week.
I am prepared to add only a small percentage mark-up to cover my time and costs obviously I will have to charge that dreaded old VAT.
(Think of it as a Propeller Co-Operative
Best regards,
Coley
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:32:11 PM GMT
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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Even with postage, tax, VAT and clearance fee the most the mark up should be is about 21-25% AND THAT ASSUMES THEY BUY AT RETAIL which they don't.
We are being ripped off, not by parallax but by middle men who can get away with it through monopoly.
Graham
Graham has got it spot on really.
I had been buying my Props through Digikey and priced my work accordingly.
You could say I was a little disappointed when it dawned on me that I might have to pay over the odds for the centrepiece of my creations.....
I mean if Digikey can get me a Prop to the UK for £6.23(ish) and make a margin on it surely the UK based distributor can.
I guess it is as simple as supply and demand with the Distributor pushing up the price because they have a captive audience.
This is only gonna hurt Parallax in the long run.
Coley
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:32:04 PM GMT
Leon
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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle
Sounds like very nice work if you can get it.
Mike.
We send out at least 20 invoices a day, we'd be out of business in no time if it cost that much
I agree it is a niche market and will remain so until the Pricing policy is reviewed.
I realise that distributor pricing isn't the responsibility of Parallax but they do have their part to play
Coley
EIDT: Don't forget that Digikey will add the cost of their overhead onto the base cost of the chips + profit is still only equal to £6.23 + Duties per chip
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:31:56 PM GMT
"Apparently" is an excellent indicator of second hand knowledge, in this case I think it is not true.
A much larger distribution chain, to create fair competition amongst the players involved. Thus giving us a choice of who we purchase your chips (in this instance) from.
We are all now starting to call the Propeller a Niche product. This really has to be bad news for anybody involved within marketing. Less niche but hard to obtain without
paying through the nose.
Regards
Mike.
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:31:30 PM GMT
I don't have a problem with the price of the Propeller in general as the price landed in the UK from Digikey I feel is competitive.
The bang for your buck with the Propeller is much higher than with other microcontrollers.
I guess I am disappointed in the distinct lack of availability in general in the UK and a resulting lack of competition, thus inevitably driving up the cost to the end user.
It worries me that a North American company can deliver goods direct to my door at a more competitive rate than their UK counterparts.
What is even more worrying is what will happen when the Dollar rallies against the Pound and we have the distributors pushing the price up even further as a result.
Anyway, I'll just wait now for Digikey to get some more stock, hopefully it will be soon
Best regards,
Coley
EDIT - Paul's post seems to have disappeared, lol, oh well, consider this thread closed as far as I'm concerned
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:31:22 PM GMT
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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
I thought the EU included England in a common market. So why don't developers pool and bulk purchase? There must be a way to shave some of that overhead by becoming your own importer. If demand is so low, the entire operation could run on emails.
Ideally we need someone already experienced in importation, able to buy in enough bulk to get lowest cost, able to negotiate prices and import shipping costs while taking advantage of their own bulk sales to minimise mark-up and resale shipping costs - with a business plan ( unlike RS and Farnell ) which is suited to non-business, one-off and low quantity resales at reasonable prices.
An existing distributor like Rapid as Coley suggested earlier could be ideal.
Maybe we should talk to Rapid, convince them it's a good idea to stock, maybe Parallax could ? Unfortunately we're really just pawns here, it requires a pro-active stance from those who can make the deal work.
Post Edited (hippy) : 4/1/2008 12:38:55 PM GMT
I always thought the UK was a part of Europe??? Please educate this "bloody yank" who's cut off from the rest of the planet by two oceans.
Take no notice Beanie2k...
It's just us Brits, we are deluded into thinking that because we are an Island state we aren't part of Europe.....
Depending upon which side of the political divide you fall is how you consider yourself to be in the UK or Europe lol
I suppose I am a Northern English British West Eurpoean Earthling
Regards,
Coley
Post Edited By Moderator (Chris Savage (Parallax)) : 4/1/2008 5:31:02 PM GMT
Added : One particular 'quaintness' of the UK is its refusal to adopt the Schengen Agreement and the Uk's government's insistence on exercising extreme control on its borders with other European countries.
Post Edited (hippy) : 4/1/2008 4:22:57 PM GMT
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http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite
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A little late to the party here (I've been swearing at the concrete encased broken fence posts I've been trying to extract from the ground - all bl'min day!)
I still want to do something about getting Parallax and Sparkfun products to the UK - but I'm currently busy building an ecommerce website for a friends business.
Unfortunately I didn't get a huge response to my call for who would be interested in ordering, so it's on the back-burner at the mo'
Hippy's right though - it's hard to justify the effort when adding all the extra costs (I was charged £35 handling by Parcelforce on my last import!), so I'm thinking I might set-up a website where you can request any Parallax / Sparkfun product & I'll wait until I've got enough orders to cover the costs. Only problem with that is you won't know the lead-time!
There must be some way we can make this work.
c'mon Parallax; I'd like to help get your products rollin' out the door here in 'blighty'. How can you help me?
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Cheers,
Simon
www.norfolkhelicopterclub.co.uk
You'll always have as many take-offs as landings, the trick is to be sure you can take-off again ;-)
BTW: I type as I'm thinking, so please don't take any offense at my writing style
Post Edited (simonl) : 4/1/2008 8:20:33 PM GMT
I find the situation repressing, it stifles my enthusiasm greatly.
What's worse is that I feel that these people are labelling this awesome parallax product as "educational" or "academic", yes it can be used for both of those things but it is much more than that. Also Parallax made great efforts to produce the low cost demoboard which is sensational, then it is undermined by lazy/greedy pricing.