It would be a shame to see the
paparazzi vendors' business greatly impacted,
so I wonder why none of them are yet
stocking Umarims or (to a lesser
extent) Lisas with reasonable
availability?
I can't speak for the other vendors, but from my (aerofu)
perspective,
people that order in quantity and wait through a manufacturing
lead-time are not core business.
The reason I don't stock Umarims or Lisas right now is that
it would
be an expensive gamble, given the new hardware in
development, current
sales volumes and the batch size required to get the cost of
manufacturing down. The hardware changes faster than the
small retail
market can support (with a stovepipe manufacturing model).
If we-the-market could collaborate to eliminate duplication
of risk
and cost, the supply chain might be able to keep up with the
fast
hardware development cycles a little better. Vendors are just
buffers
in a much larger system, a kind of financial capacitor. The
rest of
the system enjoys many benefits from being collaborative,
transparent
and open. The proprietary, opaque and closed matter-compiler
is a
bottleneck that limits the whole system's (communities)
capacity to
thrive.
I can speak for PPZUAV in that if you don't order 100+ it's
expensive. 10k for Umarim BOM cost alone. Just cost not shipping to get
them in hand and get them to the assembly. You need 2% greater than BOM to
account for PnP drops and losses. Stencil fee, prog fee, risk of
assembly being wrong (they give guarantees but actually getting it
exchanged is another matter with them)... How many out there have 15k
to risk? I can't sell YAPA2 at my cost and have about 75 left. What
assurance is there to sell 100 Umarims?
Yes, without any coordination that a big flaw in Umarims exists
or that another version isn't due soon it's too much risk. My
experience is as soon as I could have 100 of them something new comes
out.
I envy DIY where the guy planning assembly can be sure a new
model isn't due or that BOM parts can be shared. And that they do
in-house PnP and reflow.
I am not saying I'm not going to. I however think we all need to
learn from DIY and not compete with each other, share costs,
communicate, support and grow together is required. I think
JobyRobotics, Quadshot are included. Im in California and if they want
to make Lisa and I want to make Umarim maybe we can share BOM costs,
assembly costs. Some risks. We all need to communicate and act like a
single entity. Please realize I'm very open and if you have ideas (all
current vendors) contact me. I want to see Paparazzi become all it can
be. Let's work together.
David Conger
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