At phenoptix we source products from all over the world, from suppliers as varied as our stock range. This year, for the first time, we met some of our suppliers face to face and they're a really interesting bunch - we'd like to tell you about them, what they make and what make's them tick. The first this varied and interesting bunch I want to introduce you all to are these folks:
They are responsible for one of our latest products the ClockTHREE Jr. an uber cool word clock launched by them from a Kickstarter in February this year. They asked us to quote them on a number of LEDs, we did and then we were able to advise them that the quote they already had was way better than we could offer them at the time. They took our advice and we thought that might be the last we heard of them until our kit arrived from Kickstarter. Fortunately that wasn't the end of the story, appreciating our honesty they put aside some of their first stock for us and gave us a world exclusive in distributing their awesome product!
So who are WyoLum? Really there's not a short answer to that, currently they are Justin, Anool, Shyama, Liz, Emily, Hearsh, Adam, Margaret, David, Christian, Brian, Vincent-Gabriel, Munmun, Kevin and Amy. Geographically they're spread fairly widely - with a large contingent in North Virginia, members reside as far away as Mumbai, India and Sydney, Australia. Each brings their own skills to the party and most recently Justin brings the cool facial hair! The next member could be you if you have a great idea and are willing to work with them, they might even give you some cash upfront!
How do they work? On sweat equity is the short answer in this case! You get out what you put in, if you put 50% of the work into a product, you can take 50% of the profit share of the project out or you can leave the profit in for the next project... Which is what most members tend to do. Monies from the projects also then go to buying more equipment for the next project or it is invested into hard working enthusiastic folks in the form of Wyolum Innovation Grants. Which for 2012 can be found here. I know I linked them before but I wanted to be sure you'd noticed. One of last year's winners is taking their project to the next level with an indiegogo campaign at the moment. Check out Erin's project here.
Another of their products is the AlaMode, a stackable Arduino compatible board for the Raspberry Pi, that slots right onto the GPIO header! We may even be able to get a couple of these in store at a later date.
That run down is the tip of the iceberg with Wyolum, great people with great products and tonnes and tonnes of great ideas and creative potential. The best thing about them really is the next person wearing the Wyolum tshirt could well be you!
