It's Microduno Studio, we has been working on the small, elegant boards over one year. We love Microduinos and are putting much time and effort to improve and balance Microduino’s performance, usability and appearance. Microduino is made very small and elegant without sacrificing its functionality. Sometimes we revised the PCB, just because there were components not aligned well on PCB board. We want everything to be perfect so you would love it. We enjoy every minute we design/test/use Microduino and want to share Microduino with more people, which is why we go to Kickstarter. There many great makers/geeks like you can share brilliant ideas and designs together.
To clarify things regarding the agent or distributors, there are some basic facts of Microduino:
1. Since we set up Microduino Studio in 2012, Microduino studio has NEVER authorized any agent or distributor to sell any Microduino product.
2. Microduino started to promote Microduino brand and products since May 2013. Initially we were targeting to start Kickstarter project on Aug 22, 2013, but finally launched it on Sep 9, 2013. We paid special attention not to contact or authorize any agent or distributor before and during Kickstarter campaign, to avoid any potential issue.
3. From May 2013, we had provided some Microduino samples to our community members with prices equal or even lower than our cost. That was for Microduino modules testing and user experience purpose only, never for resale. Those early versions have some problems and bugs (check details in our product wiki history). And thanks for the feedback from community members, we have modified our design many times to improve everything. Seveal revisions have been made since then. Actually many potential distributors and agents have contacted us. Our answer has always been: we're not ready. We must focus on design itself so that we can provide perfect products to all community members.
4. We don't know from which channel Hobby Components got some samples of Microduino. We checked our sample distributing record. There is a Microduino Chinese user, who bought 20 Microduino sample sets in June 2013 from us, and finally sold them to a “Europe user”. This user had never told us any detail about this Europe user before. Until now, we guess that was “Hobby Component”.
5. We have sent message to “Hobby Components” to ask them stop selling any Microduino modules without our authorization.
Many statements of “Hobby Components” are not true at their website. Below please find our comments:
“Hobby Components has been selling Microduino products since the beginning of June this year and these products were manufactured and purchased from by Microduino Studios. That Microduino Studios were fully aware that these boards were purchased for the purpose of resale. At no point has Microduino ever conveyed that their products were not intended for resale.”
[Microduino:] It’s not true! The boards are made by Microduino studio, but they were not directly purchased from Microduino Studios. We didn’t know why and from which channel “Hobby” got these samples.
“It is the belief of Hobby Components that Microduino Studios have been producing batches of module, have knowingly sold them for resale, and that they changed this policy as a result of the Kickstarter project. That Microduino knowing that existing availability of its products would have a significant effect on its ability to raise funding via its Kickstarter project, consciously decided to hide this fact by denouncing our website as “fakes”, “frauds” and “scams”.”
[Microduino:] It’s not true! Since we began to promote Microduino, our goal was to launch Microduino Kickstarter project. We made a very clear schedule/milestone and task assignments, and we followed it step by step.
“Microduino Studios have also made contact with us several times in the past via our supply chain prior to the kickstarter project regarding placing of orders, availability of their products and feedback.”
[Microduino:] It’s not true! We didn’t know who their supply chain was. We didn’t even know the “Hobby Components” name before. We just heard this name after we received a message from a backer on Kickstarter.
After all, if Hobby Components wants to sell Microduino products, it should have directly contacted us to get authorization, not the other way around.
We strongly request Hobby Components to stop spreading untrue statements against Microduino Studio. We hope this issue can be resolved as quickly as possible. However, if it continues, we will take every action we see necessary to protect ourselves.
If you still have any question regarding this issue, you can contact us directly at [email protected].
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Please check some snapshot of it from our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.158118377715808.10...