Marketing Strategy for Sparkfun

Mini-Case 1 Analysis - SparkFun

SparkFun is an untraditional online electronics retailer started in Colorado, United States, founded by Nathan Seidle, 33 - electrical engineering undergraduate. It sells stuff like microcontrollers and printed circuit boards. As of now, this company is in good position and it has a set competitive advantages in the marketplace it’s operates in.

Valuable: SparkFun was able to exploit an opportunity where traditional electronics stores like Circuit City, Best Buy RadioShack has failed to do so.

Rare: When it was started, they virtually did not have any competition in the space of this business except one of overseas seller (Olimex) with cumbersome ordering process.  

Hard to Imitate: SparkFun business and process is not difficult to imitate. It is also not expensive for any other firm to obtain, develop, or duplicate the resource/capabilities.

Organizationally Supported: Even though only founder was doing all the roles initially when it was stated, it went through successful basic strategic transformation and developed very solid People, Processes and Technologies through its internal (firm level) & external analysis (Industry level), strategic choices, and strategic implementation.

Based on VRIO framework analysis above, the current competitive implications for SparkFun enjoys unexploited competitive advantage (Valuable, Rare and Organizationally Supported – but easy to imitate).

Since it is relatively easy to imitate, SparkFun does not have sustained competitive advantage. The firm relished its monopoly for a while, but there are other companies started popping in this same business. New York–based Adafruit launched in 2005; by 2013, its revenue hit $22 million.

In order to maintain its competitive advantage and compete with similar sellers in China and elsewhere, SparkFun has updated its business model and now creates and assembles its own designs and groups products in custom kits, backed with documentation and tutorials that help distinguish its versions from commodities that can be purchased more cheaply elsewhere. The company also began producing a steady stream of videos highlighting talk worthy projects.