After much thought we have decided to list PCBs.io for sale. We will not sell just the domain, we will not sell it to a large company (though I doubt any would be interested), we will not sell your past order data, we will not sell it to someone we don’t think is a good fit, and if we don’t find someone to take over we will continue to run this service, and continue to improve it.
We have a lot on our plates here at Digistump – two kids, 30 something animals, the Digispark (and Pro), the Oak, private contracts (which pay most of the bills), and sometimes even day jobs. We started PCBs.io for two reasons 1) We developed great connections with people in the PCB industry and through them found out that PCBs could be offered even cheaper then they were. 2) We were ordering panels of PCBs anyway, why not share the space and make the market a bit more competitive.
Well PCBs.io has taken off, in a modest but profitable way, with absolutely no promotion – and for that we thank all of you who have ordered and supported us – and who have been understanding about bumps in the road early on.
At this point we feel like we are purposely preventing PCBs.io from growing due to a lack of time, we have free marketing oppurunties we aren’t taking, we’ve never tried to get press from HackADay or any thing like that. And it doesn’t seem right to hold back something that can only improve with growth (turn times improve greatly with more orders!), nor to spend our time on something that we can’t dedicate ourselves to – but we have too many other projects!
Interesting, we wrote about this the launch in June, just 2 months ago – “Digistump launches PCBs.io – Custom PCB Service” – it was/is an OSHPark competitor (and/or DirtyPCB competitor). And in March we posted about the update and overview of the low-cost DirtyPCB business @ Dangerous Prototypes. Sounds like Ian is saying tutorials and documentation mattered the most on this effort.
