Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Arduino Announces Manufacturing Partnership with Adafruit”.
Hey this is mike cindy. I’M hanging out with massimo bonzi co-founder of arduino has been a very interesting last couple months, for you guys tell me: what’s the latest what’s happening with with arduino right now, yeah so well, obviously everybody, i guess in the maker movement knows a little bit about the Situation we’re going through right now we have some. You know legal issues related to the uh, the name mostly. You know we have some disagreement with our former manufacturer, but you know i don’t want to go into details with that, because this is just the legal stuff and actually i’m a maker, i’m much more interested in about the making, and i think you know what what What is the biggest questions that i got from makers in the last few weeks? Is you know where, and when can we get arduino cc products? And now we we we’re done it? We we have it so we have actually signed a great partnership agreement with adafruit who’s, going to be manufacturing, uh arduino products in new york in manhattan, and i think it’s particularly important this, because we were there at the beginning of the maker movement. You know we were part of the community that the original community and we believe in the same genuine ideals of you – know open source hardware working with the community. So it was, it was a natural partnership.
We obviously have other partners like sparkfun and other people. We work with, but this is a big you know, step for actually volume manufacturing of arduinos in the us for the u.s market. I think that’s the biggest news. So from the beginning of july onwards, they will be available to purchase in the u.s. So all the people who want to support you know what we call the real arduino can do that and you know we call it independence day.
Well, it’s fantastic! I know that um, it’s it’s a big step because well, first of all, the with, with all the recent challenges getting that part sorted out and solved now you you’re able to get back into a manufacturing element uh, but also just in the overall arduino story, to Create a new york, american-based manufacturing setup, that’s also a big step, so um were there any major challenges that you guys had to overcome, besides, obviously the obvious ones um for putting things together with adafruit. Well, you know it was very easy in a way because our hearts are in the same place. We always you know, believed in the same idea. So that was easy, then, obviously, when you’re trying to implement such a big change on one hand, you really need to design the capacity, because the volume is high.
A lot of people want to buy arduino products in the u.s, so we had to design that and redef. It has been amazingly working with us on that and also i guess, on the other hand, in a way yeah. It’S mostly, you know the challenge of setting up the logistics and everything else so that it happens correctly and also there’s a little bit of a little bit. Maybe a lot of work that goes with talking to lawyers and making sure that everything you do is done properly, because you know one of the things that i think it’s important that i want to reflect on is the fact that, what’s happening to us right now Is actually a key moment in the history of the maker movement? I think in a way the maker movement, the open source, starter movement – is kind of losing their innocence in a way a little bit.
You know. I really want to fight this because i don’t want, like a young woman tomorrow, trying to start her own open order company having to spend 90 percent of her time to get with lawyers to get everything set set up before she can go out and get something Manufactured i don’t want to live in a world like that. I want makers to be able to go, and you know we are open source every we give away everything. So the only thing we need to protect is our name, but we don’t want to be in a place where somebody young that wants to start something is to spend most of her time on lawyers and then a little bit of time. You know working on the ideas, the manufacturer. We don’t want to be like that.
We we need to really look into this and, as a community respond so product wise, the um, the adafruit partnership. Are they going to manufacture everything that you guys are producing all the boards that you guys have so adafruit is uh starting to manufacture? What are the core products, the the classic arduino products? They have people request more often, and we are also going to uh we’re going to announce a number of other partnerships in the coming weeks in order to be able to cover the whole world so we’re working on partners in the different geographies. You know there was an immense response from a lot of people – friends, people that were not friends before we didn’t know them, but they approached us.
They really wanted to work with us. So we’re going to be announcing really a global strategy to cover all the different geographical areas and all the different product lines. There’S.
Obviously, a lot of importance for us is this: transition to the 32-bit architecture, to enable makers to really take advantage of that architecture and the connectivity. So we have a number of products that are going to be ready again towards the end of june, like this new wi-fi shield that we announced at maker faire – and you know this new – are the new arduino zero with all the debugging on board, and you know So, there’s a lot of that new products, new directions, so we’re going to be working with a number of partners. What else? Well, two very important things for me. First of all, you know we really worked to make sure that we can provide the products that we make to the whole world. So you know we went through a lot of discussions and analysis and scenarios with you know, lawyers. I don’t want to bore you with all those details, but you know we realized that you know there was this say by shakespeare.
I believe that you know a rose with. Another name has the same perfume. I don’t know you know, i don’t know exact words, but in a way we thought that, in order to make it simple for the people who work with us to avoid useless legal confrontations, we are introducing a new brand, which is going to be a sister brand. To arduino, which we’re going to be using around the world, and this brand is genuine, which in italian means genuine, which for us, yes, okay, it’s a little bit of play on word that we are the genuine arduino.
But for me it also means mostly the genuine interest in the community we work with and we help build genuine values and – and you know that we put into what we do so genuine is going to be used for us to be able to be in all The markets where, right now it will be, you know we would incur in useless discussions. We believe that if your ideas are strong enough, you can advance those ideas, even if they have a different name in a different country. Who cares you know we? Can we want to push through with our ideas? We can do it in a different name. So that’s i guess the big the big thing right now and i think for me it was very important to make this announcement.
This present this at this maker faire. This is the 10th anniversary of maker faire. Mcafee has been so important for us in general. Make has been incredibly important for arduino.
We wouldn’t be what we are now if make didn’t, really believe in us and talk to people. So we owe it a lot to to dale to sherry all the team at maker, media and and maker faire as well. You know i ended up being part of the organization of a big maker faire outside of the us, because i saw the value and i wanted that to happen in europe. So you know i can only say thank you now. You .