SparkFun Electronics: Testing the Assumptions

SparkFun Electronics is a seven-year-old, 90-person company on the outskirts of Boulder, CO, and on the inside of the growing trend among technology pioneers to spurn electronics made by big companies and instead to use custom electronics to make what the rest of us call “cool stuff.” “Instead of buying an off-the-shelf product that does kind of what you want, people are designing things to do exactly what you want.  SparkFun caters to those people by giving them all the tools needed to make really fun, cool stuff with electronics,” said Trevor Zylstra, SparkFun’s COO.

SparkFun has been successful, and has succeeded and grown without any research up to this point.  As Trevor put it, they did things they thought they would like, and trusted that their customers would like them  as well.  So far, they’ve been correct in those assumptions.  But SparkFun also recognized the risks and limitations of assumptions, and that as they grew, they wanted  to make sure that their assumptions were correct and that their customers “really did look like us,” he added. In other words, they wanted to test their assumptions.  Mark P. Friedman, a strategy consultant to SparkFun and the founder of FastGrowth Advisors, recommended market research – and recommended they use Qualvu to do it.  “It was clear to me that we needed to do research, and qualitative research was critical because SparkFun needed to see and hear from their clients,” Mark said.  “Numbers and percentages weren’t enough.” “I was originally thinking of using a focus group, but as I learned about Qualvu, it became instantly clear that this was the best approach because we’d get the best of all worlds.  We’d be able to see people who had a very high level of engagement as hobbyists  talk about themselves and be passionate about their work; we’d have the flexibility for those people to schedule around their own needs so that they could really pay attention to the questions we asked and give quality feedback; and we’d get enough depth and detail to get insights and  nuggets we could edit down into a really concise package,” he added.

Qualvu’s methodology was to assemble a group of 31 participants nationwide and combine their web-cam enabled research platform to follow participants as they discussed their own projects and inventions and used the SparkFun website.  Qualvu asked participants to show their work space at home, projects they were working on and supplies they used.  Participants  also talked about brands they use frequently and where they purchase their supplies.  They were asked to  navigate SparkFun’s website (www.sparkfun.com), showing via video and talking as they were navigating… where they clicked…and discussion on the likes and dislikes of purchasing a product. Within seven days, Qualvu delivered participant video on each of the 31 participants and distilled their comments into a “highlight reel.”  In addition, Qualvu provided a full online video report and 24/7 access to all participants’ clips and reports through the Qualvu portal. “SparkFun was astonished by what they learned, and they acted on it instantly.  In 30 years of working in marketing, I’ve never seen research go so quickly into actionable conclusions.

They even used the highlight reel in a company-wide meeting, so everyone could get that exposure to their customers – not just the marketing people.  It was awesome,” Mark said. Trevor added, “One of the things we learned was that the assumption that our customers mirrored us was false.  Our customers are extremely varied and wide-ranging.  Some are like us, and some are unlike us.  They share a common passion for electronics, but that’s where the similarities end. “Another thing we learned was that we had always thought that our competition was other companies kind of like us that were making open-source hardware and building blocks that a hobbyist could put together to make something cool.  Interestingly, our customers don’t see our competition the same way that we do.  They think that our competition is the really big companies that just sell bare components.  We were seeing ourselves as a big fish in a small pond, they see us as the tiny fish in the big pond.” With that insight, SparkFun wants to start finding ways to give their customers some of the things they value about those very large competitors, yet do it on the budget and resources available.  This will let us really step up our game to compete with the huge guys, [companies 10 to 100 times SparkFun’s size]” Trevor said. “Qualvu’s research was completely new to us.  We were very, very happy with the product.  It gave us insight into customers’ mindset that would have been extremely difficult to get any other way.  It was very eye-opening,” Trevor said. Assumptions have gotten SparkFun to where it is.  Connecting them with their customers’ truth will help them get to where they want to go.

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