- Sun Mar 31, 2013 3:54 am
#157684
That's what happens...someone blazes the trail, and offers what no one else does at the time (BatchPCB). They prove that it's a viable business approach, then over time more competitors enter the same market. At some point you have to decide whether you want to put a lot of effort into competition, or (as it was with SparkFun) recognize it's not the primary business and let your competition fill in the gaps.
SparkFun is good at a lot of other things, and they know their customers won't be left hanging since lots of great PCB services are out there now. I got great boards out of BatchPCB for a while, back when it was hard to find PCB suppliers for small prototype boards. It's entirely possible that we still wouldn't have good batched panel services now if SparkFun hadn't paved the way.