Hi,
I am living in the Netherlands. There are several distributors in the neighbourhood. They do not sell the modules like the XBee expansion. Now can I order directly with you but the send costs are 50 dollar (!). When I buy a product of 15 dollar it is out of proportion…
Is it possible to send with US Mail. This costs 10 dollar.
Roel
Hi Roel
This has been the subject of a discussion before and something that a lot of us are interested 
Please read the following thread, there is a talk about a user group in Netherlands that shares shipping :
http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/1/378/
-Rajesh
Hi Roel,
Here is the Xbee shield:
http://www.antratek.nl/Shields.html
They have shipping costs of 15 euro (Netherlands, incl. administration costs) and this is a good distributor. Always with ESD bags and nicely sent to you.
Here is a link from Germany
Shipping cost 10 Euro
It’s also the official distributor of GHI
Surfing the FEZ products is great for whetting the appetite.
However it isn’t only whether there is a local national distributor AND if they stock the component. I used a UK FEZ distributor (link from FEZ) and its taken the distributor over a month to ship an item. No explanation - just awful service.
Do FEZ actively check how well their ‘distributors’ perform?
Mike
If you have a complain about a distributor then you should email GHI directly and let them know. A good and professional business transactions is a must for all our resellers.
I dont want to make a big deal out of the delay I experienced. However I am surprised as I would have thought GHI would expect to have distributors supply KPI. One being order to shipping time. Why should the customer have to be driven to the point of being upset before GHI take an interest?
Some distributors seem only to stock one item from your whole catalogue. To my mind that’s hardly a distributor.
As a buyer I would prefer GHI to require distributors to supply the majority of your catalogue. That would enhance FEZ / GHI name and reputation in local countries.
Why not offer your products to Maplin in UK (www.maplin.co.uk)?
GHI doesn’t usually seek distributors. If you know if a reseller you like and you think FEZ would be a good product for them then please let them know about FEZ.
They will need to fill this out http://www.tinyclr.com/distributors/form/
The other thing to think about is the “supply” model that most of these “retailers” will use. (certainly this is based on my experience in AU, so YMMV).
They won’t be large enterprises with hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in stock. They’ll be more “enthusiast” focussed local ditributors that have links to other cool and supporting products, from retailers that can ship to them using a more cost effective and timely manner. Not sure if Marcus from Little Bird is on here (hi Marcus if you are) but they’re a great example, they can aglomerate the order from places like GHI or SparkFun and get better shipping rates, and then do local distribution within their local area. Helps us, because we get “bulk” shipping rates, and helps them because they get good turn around from vendors.
I think sparkfun started that way and now they are over 10million/year business I think 
We have a LOT of components/devices/boards so it is difficult for distributor to stock them all but if you have a local distributor then give them a call and tell them what you need…they may add what you want in next shipment and you wouldn’t have to pay much for shipping.
Sparkfun hasn’t gotten to $10 mil just yet. I think I heard Nate say that they were at $6 mil now and their business is growing by about 100% every year.