For over 15 years in the electronics design and manufacturing field, I’ve seen many projects canceled or drastically changed late in the cycle. Several key components were already purchased as NCNR, and as a result, brand new components just sat on the shelf, waiting to be chucked in the dumpster.
My attempts to sell our excess components (brokers, eBay, etc.) were rarely successful, so I, along with some other industry veterans, decided to take a different approach.
We created the XSComponents Marketplace to connect vendors with excess component inventory to the end customer. Most importantly, component listings are free, you set the price and all listings show up in Octopart searches. All vendors are U.S.-based companies, and all parts are new and in the original packaging. We’ve already seen some success finding buyers for unused STM and UBlox ICs.
This is a new marketplace and we’re working hard to implement features that make it even better. If you have any thoughts, suggestions or words of wisdom, we’d love to hear them.
Well, it’s too bad that it’s so easy to get parts right now… < /s >
Welcome Josh! I’m very excited about XScomponents, hopefully you’ll have some of the parts that are woefully lacking in the supply chain right now.
I am curious about how you’re dealing with potential fake components, as that has the possibility of being a problem with parts offered on a marketplace type site. The original packaging will definitely help build trust.
Regarding counterfeit parts - we are encouraging our vendors to make their best attempt at proving the authenticity of their inventory by providing evidence such as photos of original packaging, OEM labels, invoices, date codes, etc. It is up to the vendor to prove to the buyer that what they are selling is, in fact, genuine.
In addition, we’re limiting vendors to “established businesses” in the United States for now.
After purchasing and receiving the components, the buyer has 5 days to review and validate the part. Only after that time period has elapsed and any issues settled, will we transfer payment to the vendor.
This looks promising. I’ve listed a tray of 50 expensive Analog Devices ADCs I have not been able to get rid of for years and a few less expensive things like some STM32s that I couldn’t stand to trash.
Hey All, thought I’d follow up here with an update.
Over the last few months, we’ve been able to help out a lot of folks - both buyers and sellers, large and small. In one interesting case, a major medical device manufacturer purchased 20K of STM32 processors a consumer electronics CM no longer needed. Buyer could finish a critical production run, seller was able to unload some expensive inventory - win win!
We’re talking with a lot of CMs/OEMs out there who are just sitting on quite of lot of inventory, even if not immediately needed. We’re trying to convince them to release parts back into the marketplace. An example of a recent addition (60K pieces!):
Let me us know if you are looking for anything specific and we’ll add it to our “most wanted” list.