eBay Sales Patterns Show That the Maker Movement is Still Growing (Video)

Video eBay Sales Patterns Show That the Maker Movement is Still Growing (Video) 24

Posted by Roblimo on Wednesday April 08, 2015 @06:55PM from the homemade-always-tastes-better dept.

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Meet Aron Hsiao. He works for Terapeak, a company that tracks sales through online venues such as eBay and Amazon in order to help merchants decide what to sell -- and how. The five 'maker' categories Terapeak tracks (drones, robotics, Arduino, Raspberry Pi and 3D printing) outsold Star Trek-related merchandise by a huge amount, namely $33 million to $4.3 million, during a recent 90 day study period. Star Wars merchandise did better at $29.4 million, but still... And as another comparison, Aron says that all Apple laptops combined, new and used, sold $48.4 million, so the DIY hobbyist movement still has a ways to go before it catches up with Apple laptops -- but seems to be heading steadily in that direction.

Drones are the hottest hobbyist thing going right now, Aron says, but all five of the hobbyist/tinkerer' categories Terapeak tracks are growing steadily at a rate of up to 70% year over year, with drones leading the way and robotics trailing (but still growing). It's good to see people taking an interest in making things for themselves. If you remember (or have heard of) the Homebrew Computer Club, you have an idea of what tinkerers and hobbyists can produce if given even a tiny bit of encouragement. And it's good to see that the DIY mindset is not only still alive, but growing -- even if it seems to be moving away from traditional hobby tinkering (cars; radios) toward concepts (drones; robotics) that weren't considered mass market 'homebrew' possibilities even a few years ago.

Slashdot: I am Robin Miller for Slashdot. This is Aron. He is a marketing guy for a company called Terapeak, and the contention here and why we are talking to Aron is his company says that DIY do-it-yourself stuff is alive well and roaring. Now we know that because you are the sort of person who does it yourself, right, so you are reading Slashdot.

Okay, Aron, has some specifics because his company helps eBay and Amazon sellers to ____ what to sell it, for how much, so he could say I learn this market very closely, so Aron, how do we say and why numerically do we say, that the do-it-yourself movement, the maker movement is growing alive and well?

Aron: Well, we recently took a look at a number of categories that seem to be trending recently in sales in electronics, computation, and other hobbyist goods, and we started out, really inspired by growing sales which were growing quickly enough that people had to take notice of this, they are in the news, and there we kind of branched out into looking at some allied and similar categories—insight robotics, 3D printing and the maker movement, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, things that are today in the news in some cases certainly interesting to technology circles but that are maybe still not quite on the mainstream public’s radar but they nonetheless represent categories of goods that hobbyists can tinker with and experiment with, that they can try to subvert in terms of going beyond the limits of the devices, seeing what they can do with them.

And we ran some sales numbers initially over the past year, to see how they seemed to grow, we wanted to know are drones selling more because this is really a growth market, or is it a flash in the pan? And the same thing with 3D printing, the maker movement, Arduino and so on. What we found is that across these categories of goods, uniformly there are strong and relatively continuous increases in sales, so people are buying the stuff and they are buying more and more of them.

Slashdot: Okay. Sizeable, do you have any numbers for me?

Aron: Combined, these five categories, just before this interview I spoke to somebody who in the last 90 days who gave us the most up to date information and in the last 90 days for these categories of goods, so drones, robotics, Arduino, Raspberry Pi and 3D printing/making we see about $33 million in total sales on eBay in 90 days about 1.5 million units shipped. That’s, for context that is a pretty good number. The entire market, global eBay market for Star Trek as a brand is only about $4.3 million over the last 90 days.

Slashdot: No! That doesn’t include Star Wars, that’s just Star Trek, right?

Aron: Star Wars, but Star Wars is also the market for Star Wars is ______ over the last 90 days is about 29.4 million. There is still less than this, with fewer shipped items. With something to a more mainstream comparison, the entire market for Apple laptops this is MacBook Air, MacBook Pros, new and used globally is about 48.4 million over the last 90 days. So these categories of hobbyist and tinkerer products are nearly 68% the size of the entire market for Apple laptops at the moment.

Slashdot: New and used?

Aron: New and used.

Slashdot: Amazing. And growing?

Aron: And growing.

Slashdot: Wow! So High thee to a Maker Faire, eh?

Aron: Indeed.

Slashdot: Now give me a comparison; I am sure you have the percentage comparison at your fingertips from last year or the year before.

Aron: Well, we are talking, depending on the category which one of these categories we look at, we are talking about increases on the order of 60% or 70% year over year. The strongest growth is happening in drones, where we see that 60% to 70% increase. Probably the weakest is in robotics. I am not talking toys here.

Slashdot: Yeah, we understand.

Aron: Or kids radio control. These are servos and embedded logic boards, those kinds of components, and even that category is up around 10% to 15% year over year. So we are seeing growth across the board in each of these areas.

Slashdot: What are you seeing shrinkage in within this generic do-it-yourself universe? Or is there any?

Aron: It is really hard to identify something right now that is clearly shrinking. I think the best comparison where the shrinkage is to traditional personal computing and computation which was once the province of the hobbyist market maybe 20 years ago, 8-bit computing was one such thing, people bread boarded up their own logic and systems using discrete logic components, they experimented; they tinkered. And sales in personal computation and desktop computing and components discrete logic components are either flat or in the case of computing systems, things that used to be big and obvious including PC components, the sales are declining year over year on the order of 5% to 10%. So they are seeing a fall.

And I think what’s happening is there is a kind of a transition going on as hobbyists have moved from computing systems that are increasingly difficult to work on -- their more and more specialist tools, they are more compact, there are physical barriers to tinkering with them, which has become an issue. So computing in general, which was once the place for tinkering and hobbying that ruled the day in large circles, has become less of a space for that kind of activity, and I think rather than disappearing interest has moved on to new product categories.

Slashdot: Drones, drones, drones, I saw a thing on the TV news last night about a drone flying over a helicopter and way too close according to the helicopter pilot, so obviously we are getting ready for lots more drone regulations. On the other hand, I know some guys that have an IT service company in St Petersburg Florida or is it Clearwater, but one of those towns that are interlocked, and their big company hobby is drones, I mean excuse me, not drones, radio controlled model helicopters. Because drones are bad things that evil terrorists have or evil governments anyway, while radio controlled model helicopters are just fun things that some guys use at lunch. Right?

Aron: Right. And it has been interesting to see the marketing on this shift. At one point, drones were this kind of government thing, they cost millions of dollars, they were flying over Afghanistan, and the indication is that companies are increasing the marketing of products that used to be helicopters like quad copters, or multi propeller helicopters, they are increasingly boxed and sold as drones and people are buying them as drones. Now there is a big difference between a predator drone and a drone that you fly in your backyard. Five years ago, that might have made a difference; today people are pursuing the term drone in their marketing, and people are actively out there searching for drones buying them, hitting them out, modifying them, and having a lot of fun.

Slashdot: Okay, so drones are hot stuff. Can you pinpoint something else that is hot stuff?

Aron: The second most popular category in this group is 3D printing and the maker movement, who makes some models of 3D printing license proliferate, we have open source or open moves in this area like the RepRap, there are lots of RepRap kits being sold on eBay and they represent a mini segment of their own, and there is a big disparity, drones over last 90 days represent a market of about $18 million globally about 320,000 units. 3D printing is smaller -- about $6 million, it is still fairly sizable, when you think about this in terms of the specialized knowledge required to create artifacts that are printed in 3D, do the digital preparation, create the files, operate and maintain the equipment, back in the 90 days we are seeing 6 million in sales which again is bigger than Star Trek as a brand. That’s pretty good. That indicates a lot of interest and there are a lot of takers out there who need to possess the skills to do this or actively working to possess them, because they want to make cool stuff.

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