We Have It In Stock

Come on guys, the whole point of the blog post is that Sparkfun provides a service by curating a list of parts, and maintaining a high stock level to assure availability. Not to mention the vast store of knowledge on how to use these parts. To beginners like me, you begin to realize that this is a small price to pay for a successful project. As you advance in skill, you may not need this additional service, but don't discount it for all of us just because you don't need it.

I'd just like to add, that man I love this blog. I'm a design engineer, I love DigiKey/Mouser...buy stuff for designs and product manufacturing all the time. But they don't have a blog explaining how they do things. it's just so refreshing. Thank you,

For me, buying from SF, isn't about knowing you have it in stock. It's about the great support you have for every item you do stock. From the basic data sheet to fully documented use via your loving customers. I use Mouser when I need a 1/2 watt .75 Ohm 1% SMD resistor. These are one off things that you wouldn't normally need. I do like the reassurance that the products I've previously bought will more than likely be stocked if/when I need them again. Or a substitution is supplied.

Thanks for the graphs. I love graphs. It's funny seeing 11/29/12 section of each graph taking dips. What happened here? Was it a free day or something? ;')

Here's an anecdote for you (hopefully I don't get anyone in trouble over this). I ordered the Audio Amplifier Kit - STA540 about a year ago. During the soldering process I accidentally lifted a pad. I asked about a bare PCB so I can continue (I made the mistake early on). While Sparkfun does not offer bare PCB's for that kit, Mike sent me out a completely new replacement! I still owe him a video of my MAME machine working with the STA540 :). You would NEVER get that kind of customer support from digikey / mouser. I'm just another number to them - a small number at that. Sparkfun treats you the same whether you have ordered $20 or $2000 worth of parts. For my DIY fix, Sparkfun is the go to place for me.

Both Digikey and Mouser list parts that are "special order". Some expensive development kits are stocked in quanties of single digits and they don't reorder them until someone puts one on backorder. Some suppliers (such as Atmel!) often had long lead times for parts as anyone trying to buy Xmegas well knows. (Though the shortage of these parts has eased recently, it could resurface at anytime). I suspect they even list stuff that they never ever had in stock, but would order them for anyone who was willing to wait. Certain helical filters come to mind. At least their websites give you a clear picture of what you CAN order and not have to wait on backorder for, though I did once get burned by Mouser when their stock ran low on an item and their website was a few minutes (hours?) behind reality. I hope yours is kept in sync with the available stock!

As a Principal Design Engineer who, amongst other things, designs electronics (I've only done one schematic today, but the day is still young), I use DigiKey on a daily basis (and Mouser frequently). My first observation is that both of their websites provide the ability to show only in-stock parts. Also, the same part is frequently shown 3 times: once for U.S. "small quantity", once for U.S. "full reel", and once for "overseas pricing". So if they happen to have 3 reels and a few loose parts, it'll show up on all three as "in-stock".

I generally look at Spark Fun's web site daily, as it is both entertaining and enlightening, and I buy from them frequently for my "home projects", and once in a while get some stuff for use at work.

BTW, there are a number of other suppliers around that can be useful, but I don't get on their websites nearly as often.

I've been told about this stock system previously, but these graphs and the explanations make me giddy. Honestly, love this data and this approach and really enjoyed the blog post.

I call statistical shenanigans. Many of the parts listed by Digikey & Mouser are variants of the same part and are not intended to be normally stocked, so the in-stock rate of parts that Digikey & Mouser intend to actually have in stock is much higher than 30%. And I'd expect the Sparkfun stock rate would have to be even higher because many of Sparkfun's products are unique and don't have alternatives, so if it's out of stock you're out of luck.

This is an interesting article with facts to support it. Well done. I really like ordering things from Spark Fun because I really like to support companies that do what you guys do.As many others have stated the tutorials and discussions are fantastic and that's not going to happen on these big electronics sites. Have you guys thought of doing something similar on Newark Electronics? Many times if I need something fast, I go with them since I am East Coast and they ship from SC, I get my stuff in about 2 days. I think they stock a lot of items. Keep up the great work here. Although I do deal with a few sites when it comes to my electronics, Spark Fun is definitely the most, well, fun and the site stays fresh with new stories everyday, etc.

I realize SF provides a community and culture to its customers. I respect that. But if you're going to start making comparisons at the business level about stocks or whatever... well, I'm going to list the alternatives and why they're better in many other important respects. As for the stocks themselves, these are pretty lame comparisons. It's like comparing a country like Denmark to China (not saying Denmark is lame). Stock is okay, but most of those unstocked parts at Digikey/Mouser are products you wouldn't even buy anyway. Some weird variant chip that is military grade. A strange heatsink for some odd chip. Some obsolete amplifier that was phased out a year or two ago. These things won't matter to Sparkfun people. For everything else, they have an excellent selection. Plus, when it comes to delivery, Mouser/Digikey probably have more stocks of just particular resistors than Sparkfun has of total products.

You guys shouldn't concentrate on your stocks however, or for that matter anything that you could compare directly with these big companies. For me, I really only buy from Sparkfun when I want a hard-to-incorporate/source chip in a breakout-board, protoboards, or nifty esoteric products such as nifty buttons, LCDs, or vending machine slots or all that kind of cool stuff. Sometimes your tools are nice too, and I'll buy wire from you if I'm getting something else, but I can get most of that stuff them in larger, but cheaper multiples from Chinese stores or from Amazon.com.

However, for most parts that Mouser/Digikey/eBay/Amazon may also carry, Sparkfun is not even on my list. Sparkfun charges way too much for what are predominantly bulk components. $0.25 for a 1/6th Watt resistor? $0.15 for diodes? That's too much. Add the cost of shipping and often you're paying a dollar each or more for what is a $0.03 component. Your example of the LEDs "we need" is also a perfect example: what many of us "need" (or want) are LEDs in quantity at good prices. It's no fun with one stupid LED. What do we get at Sparkfun? RGB LEDs at $2/LED. No thanks. I turn to eBay. For the price of about 5x RGB LEDs on Sparkfun I can get a hundred. Don't try to compare quality -- they're all these no-name Chinese brands anyway. Hell, even Mouser generally charges less, and they're at least name-brands.

Where Mouser and Digikey truly shine is in bulk purchases. I can get thousands of diodes, capacitors, and resistors for few tens of dollars. They're in nice boxes, ready to use, and shipping is no more than SF. Sparkfun is like a much better online Radio Shack. That can be both good and bad. Good because of the nostalgic legacy of Radio Shack as the (historical) place to go for hobby electronics. Bad, because these days you only go to Radio Shack because you need parts in an emergency and realize you'd get a much better deal if you had more time. Still, at least Sparkfun is nowhere near Radio Shack in terms of being just a cell phone shop.

Another thing keeping me from buying more from SF for small purchases is the cost of shipping. That extra $7 or something to get parts to my door makes any small order expensive. What used to be an overpriced $2 LED is now an extremely overpriced $9 LED. To compensate, one must either consolidate orders -- which makes less expensive, but slower shipping shops more attractive -- or buy in bulk. Unfortunately, Sparkfun's bulk prices are not very cost-competitive, so I look to the big parts shops for big orders, or buy products from China or Amazon where I don't have to take a hit on shipping. Even ignoring eBay, shops out of China are also extremely competitive these days: a huge glut of breakout boards, parts, and other goodies that matches and often surpasses Sparkfun's selection. They lose out on shipping time, but at least their shipping is free -- courtesy of Chinese subsidization. Fortunately, I can create a big order of bulk parts and be set for a while.

So for Sparkfun, I'd concentrate less on competitive things like price, stock, or shipping, and instead concentrate on things like service, community, and engagement. The latter are what sets Sparkfun apart from the rest. The former have generally been equaled or surpassed by others.

What I personally love about this site isn't it's shipping (which sucks here in MT even when you guys ship it same day.) It's the amount of thought and explanation that goes into each and every product post. It's extremely helpful to us beginners and in general if you don't know exactly what you need, or if they make an IC to replace a circuit, etc. I really appreciate what you do here, thank you.

It is better to keep is small and simple. Gordon Ramsey method. I have worked for a major retailer in the inventory and freight departments and I can tell you it is hard to predict what will be popular out side of the normal seasonal items. There is also a system called CAR (Computer Automated Replenishment) this can reorder inventory based on trends and trigger levels. It is a bear still to keep it working properly because it doesn't know if you have damaged or dented products.. or if someone sent out the wrong items and you shrank in some area.. so there is a lot of maintenance. So my point is simple is better and profitable.

The moral of the story is to do what you say. You have 1 million parts, then list 1 million and not 10 million.

I found this news article by looking for a place to get a rant about DK of my chest and not a comparison to it and SF.

I have used Digikey and the like for over a decade. I have grown tired of the Stock Wars. This concerted effort of advertising the number of parts you have in a catalog has gotten out of hand. These pointless large numbers blasted on their website does not help me one iota. As said here by others, 1/2 the catalogs are variants which are not kept on stock but are listed just for show. 1/2 of the 1/2 that is stocked are just a different package such as cut-tape and reel. I need no deception when I place an order. By the time I get down to narrowing the criteria for parts new and for parts used over the years there ends up being 5 to 6 to actually select from. If I take it a step further clicking on the show in stock option, I get list of 3 to 4 parts. Of course each is a different pin package, qfn, dip, ssop, in effect my choices are morphed to a lucky charm as I cross my fingers hoping the package I need is in stock.

I can appreciate QTY of 0 when in fact parts were ordered and await for manufacture re-up. What I dislike is the search for a part I have not used before which usually ends with a QTY of 0, all 4 pages of listed parts. Time gone to waste. Not talking about parts exhausted. Talking about parts that never again are restocked or frankly as I suspect NEVER were stocked but used to keep up the troop count in this stock war.

According to this article Digi-Key at least tries to maintain a 95% stock rate on those things that are considered "Stocking." Interview with Mark Larson

Thank you for keeping your active products in stock. This is part of the reason our company uses your equipment and products. We can get duplicates of boards and widgets to solve our engineering needs without fabricating boards. I also like the standardization of development environments for your sensors. For example the IMUs that use Arduino dev environment. This saves me time.

I'm sorry, but I can't take this blog post seriously. SFE is great at lots of stuff -- but stocking components isn't one of them. Just look at microcontrollers. SFE only carries 16 different MCUs. No, I don't mean 16 different families -- I mean 16 different chips. 7 AVRs and 9 Microchip PICs. Where are my MSP430s? Where are my HC08s? 8051s? And what about ARM microcontrollers (which are cheaper/faster/better than any 8-bit MCU they carry)? No STM32s, no Freescale Kinetis, no NXP LPCs -- not even Atmel ARMs.

And look at the microcontrollers they do carry: almost all of them are ANCIENT. They're selling old PIC16F877s and 18F2520s, for example. Who would possibly use those in new designs? Where are the LF series? Where are the newer ones, (something like the highly-useful, and very cheap PIC16LF1825)? I would expect DigiKey/Newark/Mouser to stock old MCUs for old production designs, but why does SFE bother?

SparkFun seems to be oblivious to the heavy-duty war raging on between the 8-bit proprietary designs and the 32-bit ARMs. Microchip is rushing to keep pumping out cheaper/better/faster 8-bit MCUs (none of which SFE carries) while the Cortex-M0 is taking over the entry-level market, while 72 MHz Cortex-M3s (again, not stocked by SFE) are cheaper/better than Atmel AVRs.

SparkFun's stock makes me feel like I'm living in 1998.

Please stop bragging about your component stock, and instead, brag about stuff you're actually good at -- like your awesome community and open-source development boards.

I've been an electronic hobbyist for quite some time now, and for parts I'm familiar with and/or buy in quantity (like blue rectangular LEDs for a Ghostbusters proton pack), I'll order from Digikey/Mouser/whoever. But when I'm less familiar with a part (for example an I2C current regulated LED driver IC), I happily go with Sparkfun's pre-chosen popular parts with solid support. Additionally for many surface mount parts, I'll buy the breakout board from Sparkfun to get started. I get a lot of value out of all my suppliers, but different ones serve different needs. Even though I'm pretty high on the learning curve by now, Sparkfun's approach is a big help to me when I'm working on something new and different. Because of this, I can fully appreciate how they're even more helpful for beginners who (like Nate said) just need a red LED or two and could be overwhelmed by the available options. I just checked on Digikey - there are a dozen categories for LEDs, and for in-stock, through-hole, discrete, red LEDs in reasonable quantity alone, there are over 350 different choices.

How does their in-stock rating compare to yours on the items you have in stock? THAT is the true comparison. The vast majority of the stuff your "competitors" don't have in stock are items that are rarely ordered by anyone unless they need a huge quantity of them, in which case some manufacturing needs to happen to fill the order. Chances are just about nobody who shops here would ever order those items.

These pretty graphs are nothing except a good exercise for a student reading this: http://tinyurl.com/n9ocj3e

Thanks Nathan for pointing out some alternative sources to Sparkfun, I have not had faulty parts or designs from many thousands of dollars bought from Adafruit, PJRC, Digikey, Mouser and others. I do however have quite a few boards with design flaws or poor manufacturing from Sparkfun so most of my business now goes elsewhere. In the early days I would tell others that Sparkfun was great because, although they do make mistakes, they will respond well to your feedback. I now feel otherwise. I would rather pay a few dollars more for better , more thoroughly thought through and tested designs. This TLC is an engineer's way of expressing care and that they value their customer's time. Recent examples of this every expanding choice of quality engineering with the customer in mind include the Seeedstudio grove ecosystem or this very well integrated wifi sensor/actuator system: http://www.x-io.co.uk/products/x-osc/

I do appreciate knowing this information and seeing the graphs.

Cool, thanks for this insight. I'm curious though, do you have any info you can share on the number of stock turns for SF's inventory? Has that been improving over the years?

445000 LED is simply BS. There are 445,000 products with the string "led." Anything "RED" would be counted. Maybe you might consider items only in the "opto-electronics" category. Off by at least one order of magnitude.

Being in stock is great, but it also has a cost. Hope you're looking at other metrics like turns, cost of operations/replenishment and gross profit on your road to continued success.