About a year ago, Josh Sharpe noticed that the parts shelves at his automotive hardware company were starting to fill up. As an engineer and manufacturing manager, he was well aware of how often products get redesigned, updated, and even outright canceled before full production even starts. If production parts are ordered prior to manufacturing, there is a good possibility that at least some brand-new, never-opened components will end up abandoned on the parts shelf. Josh was determined to regain that warehouse space and recoup some of that investment.
It wasn’t until Josh had a few manufacturing projects canceled early in the production phase that he realized how difficult it was to return new parts to component distributors. After very limited success reselling parts on eBay and being offered pennies on the dollar from brokers (if they responded to his emails at all), he was left with shelves of brand-new components he could either 1) sell for a small fraction of their market price or 2) leave to collect dust on the parts shelf until he 3) gets hassled by accounting to write off the parts and chuck them in the dumpster.
Josh wasn’t the only one complaining about this problem. Like-minded CMs, OEMs, engineers, and makers had lamented for years about this issue with colleagues and on social media. With a little extra time during the throes of the COVID pandemic, Josh finally decided to do something about it.
Josh talked to his old friend, Scott Cousins, who had a career in part sales with huge component distributors, and together, they decided to solve the problem once and for all.
They developed an online, peer-to-peer marketplace where CMs and OEMs could list their new, excess electronic components and per unit price at no cost. They registered the XScomponents Marketplace as an Octopart distributor, ensuring every listing would be included in matching Octopart searches just like parts from traditional distributors, increasing visibility and returning these components to the market. And like eBay and other online marketplaces, XS collects a small seller’s fee only when parts sell, and sellers ship directly to buyers.
Our founders envisioned XScomponents as the ideal marketplace for reselling new components, finding hard-to-find or obsolete parts, and buying new components at competitive prices. Fast-forward six months and the world is facing the greatest semiconductor shortage in history. Our platform hasn’t just connected component sellers with buyers—it has saved entire manufacturing runs. Our collective efforts are getting more electronic parts into the marketplace and keeping manufacturing facilities up and running.
As a hungry new startup, we want to welcome you to the XScomponents Marketplace. We look forward to getting your parts back into the market and connecting buyers with the components they require.