Selling cool stuff

We sell loads of stuff, much of the small PCB stuff on Amazon, and even though Amazon as a fucking minefield, and charge a fortune, they still make sense for things like Faikin boards sold all over the world.

We sell very little of the small PCB stuff direct on the A&A web site - I mean we have tried, and many boards are listed and in stock at the office for staff to ship out - but the A&A site just does not have the clout of Amazon.

But I actually get quite a lot of other cool stuff that never makes it to Amazon, or the A&A site, that is mostly not quite a commercial product - it is a result of loads of R&D. We record when we scrap stuff as part of R&D work, but in some cases we make small run prototypes that work perfectly, but they have no good home to go to, and not worth listing on Amazon or the A&A site. In some cases staff get bits.

This can happen as part of trying to evaluate an idea, consider new technology, or on the road towards making a product we do sell on Amazon and the like. Some things are a dead end. Some things have different features along the way to a final product. One recent example was my audio recorder - as I added a speaker driver to the initial prototypes, which are on Amazon now, but dropped it as not sensible to include at the extra cost. Other times are devices that have fewer than the final features, or different devices or configurations (e.g. LED controllers with PDM microphones).

What I need is a way to sell some of these - even if only just above cost price. It is way better in many ways than scrapping or hoarding them. If low quantity I can do shipping myself, and so handle international shipping as well.

What is nice is that payment used to be a pain, but these days we have sold several things (like the ASR33 boards listed on the A&A site) directly with shipping to US, but paid by transfer to IBAN which was complete within hours. So I think it is sane to sell some things.

What I need to come up with is a site / forum to list what shit I have to sell.

The latest, as a good example, is some illuminated coasters. The idea came from making coasters for my Son's wedding, but he has used them in videos on the tok of tik, and people actually asked if they can buy. So I have 10 prototypes. One is staying under my glass here. It may be that when he posts some stuff on these they do sell, he may sell, even. But for now I have 9 more here.

The board, as you can see, if pretty neat, and has 124 LEDs, which could be used for compass type stuff even. Arranged as 4+8+16-32+64 LEDs in rings (yes, the code to make that in KiCAD was fun).

With two spacer boards, and a diffuser, you get a coaster. Of course it runs any ESP32 software like WLED, or ESPHome, etc. It has a microphone even (for sound based effects).

It is cool! I am really amazed with the overall solid disk construction. I'm adding some feet on the base tomorrow.

Now, I think we can sell for £30+postage. Obviously if we made 100s of these it would be somewhat cheaper, except once we list on Amazon and they take a cut.

But for now, I have a few, and it is just an example of some of the stuff I have.

So I am pondering a web site and maybe just an email address, but any other suggestions for how to list these things - low quantity, ad hoc, sales of things?

Suggestions welcome.

And just to be clear - if I can sell stuff (that works) even if around cost, I'll be more happy to keep making these things :-)