A little about Spark Fun Electronics. What originally started as a PCB manufacturing search turned into much much more.
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Back in the fall of 2002 a student design project of ours for waterproof sports equipment required the need for custom Printed Circuit Boards. Because of the lack of cash, our lab group was looking for an inexpensive PCB manufacturer.
We found our PCB savior way over in Eastern Europe. After a few short emails we were both impressed with their price and their quality. We maxed out the credit cards with inventory and pizza and went to work on the website.
After weeks of man hours and a few too many Red Bull's, we scraped out what you see before you. It is our first wack at online retail, so please, be gentle.
We continue to grow on a monthly basis! We've now been in business for a year and a half with around 2500 customers located in over 45 countries world wide. We deeply enjoy the emails from happy customers around the world! Our customers are very pleased with our quick service and prompt customer support. We continue to be a 'brown box' establishment so be prepared for a little learning curve and a lot of fun.
The site was designed with the electronic fool in mind. Every item we stock has large, clean pictures online just so you can be sure of what your are getting. We have plenty of links to resources and help online to get you steered in the right direction.
We add new products all the time! If you've got a recommendation or something you can't believe we don't already carry, let us know! sparky@sparkfun.com is our new best friend.
How do we keep costs so low? Cheap labor. No really! We are a student run business out of Colorado that decided we needed extra tinkering money (instead of extra beer money). We were always surprised at what we could buy locally for a lot, not at all, or else we would need to learn Italian before we could buy it online!
Updated 6-16-04: Some of us have actually graduated! We now run Spark Fun full-time as a launching point for product development and consulting. Please feel free to contact us if you need a custom design or firmware development. We've got boxes full of deployed designs. We'd love to show what we've done and are always interested in what we can do for you.
So enjoy! Take a look around. You may already have your Ph.D. in Material Physics or you may be a curious kid who's ready to wire up your first kit - we've been there and we know how to help.
Link: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php
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Back in the fall of 2002 a student design project of ours for waterproof sports equipment required the need for custom Printed Circuit Boards. Because of the lack of cash, our lab group was looking for an inexpensive PCB manufacturer.
We found our PCB savior way over in Eastern Europe. After a few short emails we were both impressed with their price and their quality. We maxed out the credit cards with inventory and pizza and went to work on the website.
After weeks of man hours and a few too many Red Bull's, we scraped out what you see before you. It is our first wack at online retail, so please, be gentle.
We continue to grow on a monthly basis! We've now been in business for a year and a half with around 2500 customers located in over 45 countries world wide. We deeply enjoy the emails from happy customers around the world! Our customers are very pleased with our quick service and prompt customer support. We continue to be a 'brown box' establishment so be prepared for a little learning curve and a lot of fun.
The site was designed with the electronic fool in mind. Every item we stock has large, clean pictures online just so you can be sure of what your are getting. We have plenty of links to resources and help online to get you steered in the right direction.
We add new products all the time! If you've got a recommendation or something you can't believe we don't already carry, let us know! sparky@sparkfun.com is our new best friend.
How do we keep costs so low? Cheap labor. No really! We are a student run business out of Colorado that decided we needed extra tinkering money (instead of extra beer money). We were always surprised at what we could buy locally for a lot, not at all, or else we would need to learn Italian before we could buy it online!
Updated 6-16-04: Some of us have actually graduated! We now run Spark Fun full-time as a launching point for product development and consulting. Please feel free to contact us if you need a custom design or firmware development. We've got boxes full of deployed designs. We'd love to show what we've done and are always interested in what we can do for you.
So enjoy! Take a look around. You may already have your Ph.D. in Material Physics or you may be a curious kid who's ready to wire up your first kit - we've been there and we know how to help.
Link: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php