"Electrocomponents Creamed by Raspberry Pi" -- Motley Fool

Pretty much agree with that, it's less sales of higher margin stuff. Surely a shed load of sales of small margin items still creates profit.

I also wonder if it is RS mucking up the order quantities, seems to be so many people waiting for Pi units from RS, whilst Farnel and CPC seem to have them in stock. A colleague was waiting around 3 months for his Pi from RS, cancelled that and got two from farnel in 48 hours.

Steve

> I also wonder if it is RS mucking up the order quantities

There's an amazing story yet to be fully explained about how RS has

gone for I think at least a month from 27 Aug to 27 Sept without shipping

any RPi's, while Farnell has had minimal delays.  These orders

apparently include people who registered their interest in March, and

finalized their orders in June, including having their credit cards charged,

which was well before quantity orders were accepted starting on 16 July.

But I don't think that has anything to do with the latest RS financial statement.

They are showing an estimated pre-tax profit for 6 months, April to September,

of 40 Million pounds, compared to 59 a year ago.   Even if they had no

disruptions to their RPi shipping, there's no way they could have come close

to making up the 19 Million pound difference in profit.

The only way I can see that the RPi might have had a significant effect on

their profit is if management was focused on the RPi and its logistical issues,

and marketing was focused on advertising the RPi, to the exclusion of focusing

on higher-margin products.  Of course, that wouldn't be an explanation you would

want to give to investors. 

Liz claims to be in constant contact with RS management, and certainly they

have serious RPi logistical and other issues to deal with, but it doesn't appear

that they are actually giving RPi issues top priority.

also, I might add, this article is just one recent sign of a fraying relationship

between RS and RPF.  JamesH has been publicly critical of RS, saying

"RS are simply a distributor who have got it wrong"

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=15956

and

"Now, the Foundation can give advice etc, and do, constantly, but if RS or anyone else do not take that advice, there is nothing the Foundation can do without breaching their contract. And that would be a very foolish and costly thing to do.The Foundation is as frustrated as any one would be with the situation (and not just the stuff that visible to the general public, but that's a story for the book of the film of the play)."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=8786&start=703

On September 6, 2012 at 10:57 am JamesH told an RS customer:

"I’d suggest reordering from Farnell, that should be much quicker."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1929#comments

And now RS is publicly blaming the RPi for its lower profit margins,

to the amusement of the financial press.

It reminds me of the partnership between RPF and Seneca that

neither party appears happy with.

coder27 wrote:

 

Liz claims to be in constant contact with RS management

It's clearly helping a lot.

It's a shame we don't know why RS is not receiving stock. I ordered from three locations (Tandy, Farnell and RS) and am only waiting on the RS one. I ordered the RS one on 23rd August, and the estimated ship date given to me at the time was within 14 weeks, so I don't expect it till January.

I probably will cancel and order elsewhere, although I don't want to (kinda feel sorry for RS - they do sell lots of stuff at competitive prices, so I suppose they have good relations with their suppliers, sometimes items not available from Farnell, and they have a presence near me). Anything else I've ordered from RS has always arrived just as fast and reliably as Farnell, i.e. next-day, so possibly the Rasp-pi is an exceptional circumstance for RS, but I don't know what.

> It's a shame we don't know why RS is not receiving stock.

Indeed.  They knew from day 1 that interest was very high, but apparently

were very conservative in the number of SoC orders they placed.

Maybe Farnell listened to Morgaine, but RS didn't.

As of April 18, the press was reporting that RS had a waiting list of 250,000.

http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-waiting-list-hits-250000-4010025909/

On August 29, JamesH wrote:
"It takes a couple of months minimum to get increased demand through the fab, Broadcom would only be blinded as far as supplying to the distributor - Brcm can only make what is asked by them. If the disties under/over estimate demand, then that's their problem, Broadcom will supply what is asked for."

So Broadcom apparently didn't ramp up production of the SoC based simply on

press reports of huge interest, they waited for actual orders from the distributors.

It's hard to tell exactly how many RPi's RS has shipped so far.

They claim to have shipped orders with order numbers up to about 100,000.

But a number of people with order numbers between 80,000 and 100,000 claim

not to have received them, or are just now receiving them.  We also don't know how

many people with order numbers under 100,000 have cancelled, or how many

orders such as from Allied may use a different numbering system.  But I think

100,000 is in the general ballpark of how many they have shipped so far,

compared with the 250,000 on the waiting list in mid April.

regarding how many units RS has shipped so far,

On June 19, Mike at RS wrote

"We have 75,000 Raspberry Pi’s coming into stock in batches from the beginning of June to early July"

...

"Our next 100,000 Raspberry Pi’s will arrive into RS in batches between mid-August and the end of September."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=8786

My interpretation is that the 100K due to arrive starting mid-August is what

has just now started to arrive, and the implied planned hiatus in shipping

between mid July and mid-August is what happend from Aug 27 to Sept 27.

So it looks like RS has shipped 75K plus their half of the first 10K.

According to their August 28 chart here:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15879

it looks like there is another implied planned hiatus in shipping

between October 14 and November 12.

coder27 wrote:

But I think 100,000 is in the general ballpark of how many they have shipped so far,

compared with the 250,000 on the waiting list in mid April.

I had the impression that the 250k number was "total orders at farnell + RS". Not RS alone.

The article explicitly says 250K for RS alone.

Let me say it like this then....

Back in april numbers like 200k to 250k orders taken were doing the rounds. Different sources sometimes mentioned that this was combined for RS and Farnell, while others were confusing the issue by not clearly mentioning if it was for one or both. It could very well be that this escalated by someone writing an article using one of the "doesn't say" sources and thinking it was just for RS.

Also, note that "order numbers" at RS for those who are getting their 'pi now are on the order of 80k to 100k, and that those people claim they ordered after april (june or even july).