On Sat, 26 May 2007 01:33:47 +1000, you wrote:

>In my opinion distributors are now largely redundant and have been so
>for a number of years.
>
>1. They were a communication medium across borders while the internet
>and cheap telephony was not available or accessible. Today I can email
>or phone anywhere on earth just as easiliy as my next door neighbour.
>
>2. They provided support by way of printed data books, apps engineers,
>etc. With the WWW, electronic datasheets and forums like this there is
>now no further need for that support. (But those bookshelves sure do
>look empty!)
>
>3. They kept stock on hand so that you got what you wanted when you
>needed it and consolidated orders to pass on savings. These days
>corporate greed has taken over: they seem to hold no stock and only
>order from the principle after receiving my order and then want to
>charge me more than I  would pay for a diect buy from the principle.
>
>4. Being local they provided a simple way to pay for product with
>local funds. Now I can buy anything from anywhere with a credit card
>and get rewards points to boot.
>
>5. They used to take you out for a good meal once in a while to thank
>you for being a good customer. These days you get a bulk Christmas
>email and your email address is BCC'd along with all the others.
>
>I do think that the only reason they still exist is because of the
>'old school' mentaility still out there. These days I only go through
>them when I have exhausted all other options.
>
>That said, I do regularly use a local parts supplier for general
>parts, kitting services, getting hard-to-finds from the grey market,
>etc. They ARE providing a service by keeping stocks and having parts
>when I need them so I don't mind paying them a bit extra for that.

I'd pretty much agree - if you look at how Microchip have set up buy.microchip.com I wonder why
anyone would want to be a Microchip distributor - whenever I've been buying  100s to 1000s of chips,
buy.microchip has been the cheapest, and I doubt many disties could match their programming service
on price. 
Tech support is one argument sometimes offered, but in most cases the manufacturer can offer better
support if they have themselves set up right (ISTR reading somewhere that Microchip had 24/7 phone
support). Stuff moves so fast these days that I can't see many disties having the resources to keep
their staff up to date.

My usual problem with disties is that as an independent consultant, I need parts in prototype qtys,
and occasional support but have little or no control over final purchasing, or knowledge of sales
numbers/timescales, which tends to upset distributors, but if you are designing a specific part in,
it will always be coming from the manufacturer. 

There is definitely still a need for broad-line distis like Digikey, Farnell etc. for smaller qtys,
as the convenience of being able to get a couple of dozen parts from as many different manufacturers
within a day or two is easily worth the price premium. 

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