User:KrakatoaKatie/CSD/SF Electronics

Background

Spark Fun Electronics (aka SparkFun) is a specialty electronics retailer that caters to the prototyping engineer, student, and hobbyist. Created in January of 2003, SparkFun has grown very quickly with creative tutorials and unique products. SparkFun has a mix of distribution products and in-house designed products. Primarily situated in the 'embedded hardware' world, SparkFun thrives by selling hard-to-find or hard-to-purchase products and breakout boards. SparkFun's goal is to make it easier for the general consumer to play with the fun parts 'inside the box'.

History

Founder Nathan Seidle started the company in January of 2003 from his apartment on 'the hill' in Boulder, CO while attending the University of Colorado. After graduating in 2004 with a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering, he set off to grow SparkFun. Hiring a fellow rowing friend as employee number one, SparkFun soon employed 4 people and shipped a few hundred orders by the end of 2004.

In 2005, Nathan created and published the tutorial on the Cellular Rotary Phone. This won the company a landslide of free net-attention and traffic.

Shortly there after, SparkFun pioneered the basement SMD paste and reflow process. Demand for boards soon outstripped the ability of the assemblers (okay, there was really only one) to hand solder boards. Nathan and his brother Ben developed a method that mixed classic methods of SMT electronic assembly with innovative, flexible, and low-cost methods of stenciling paste onto PCBs and hand placing surface mount components. Where normal electronics manufacturers used large, expensive equipment to fabricate complex electronic devices, SparkFun used plastic stencils, tweezers, and a hot plate from Target to manufacture similarly small and complex devices. This allowed SparkFun to incrementally grow (bootstrap) without the need for large amounts of equipment and capital.

Sparkfun has been featured in prominent blogs such as Engadget, Gizmodo and Make. [1][2]

Model

SparkFun believes in the principle of sharing information and an openness towards electronic design (firmware, source files, tutorials, etc). The standard consumer electronic device is a closely guarded company secret, but at SparkFun, the schematic circuit, components and firmware are posted without restriction encouraging a learning environment. Another benefit of this model is the ability to listen and react to customer feedback - many successful SparkFun products and designs have come from customer suggestions. Likewise, the staff at SparkFun are eager to answer customer questions regarding products and projects, and their technical knowledge continues to impress. SparkFun continues this practice with their growing and evolving community of customers and users. The SparkFun forum helps general users to share their ideas and get help with their projects.

As of early 2008, SparkFun employs 35 people and maintains a catalog of nearly 1000 products.