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<p>Two months ago Avnet ($27B FY sales) finished buying Premier
Farnell ($1B), a Leeds, England-based corporation that had
US-based pieces of its organization Newark Element14, and the
Ohio-based retail-facing entity MCM Electronics. I say "had"
because Avnet ultimately has them now, not to imply they're going
anywhere unless/until Avnet makes changes. MCM is a "non-core
brand", as is "AVID Technologies" (that is somehow allowed to use
this name despite the major collision with the big media company
called Avid Technologies. Try launching APPLE as distinct from
Apple and see what happens, hah!). <br>
</p>
<p>In 2009 Premier Farnell bought Cadsoft, the creator of the Eagle
PCB CAD software. They seem to have nicely managed this, as Eagle
hasn't been turned upside down with aggressive feature/UI changes
(except for the autorouter), nor have they messed with the
pricing/licensing as far as I could tell the last time I looked at
that (last year). And this explains why the Element14 web site has
a ton of Eagle component libraries.<br>
</p>
<p>On a personal note, I had gotten "trained out of" buying from
Newark despite their fantastic mega warehouse in Gafney, SC,
because frequently what I wanted didn't sit in that warehouse, it
sat in Leeds and Newark wanted $20 to get it to the US. They seem
to have dropped this surcharge now, so the only downside is an
extra few days to get the stock moved. I recently bought some
super fantastic CK wire strippers this way at a better price than
what I could find from US sources. The UK's recent self-inflicted
head wound changed the price equation, of course, and the currency
rate-related differences in some Newark prices might persist with
Avnet.<br>
</p>
<p>-Pete</p>
<p>On 12/05/2016 01:55 PM, Scott Hall via TriEmbed wrote:<br>
</p>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CALOtY4M4acWsd0V9s7sRsv+XyuFUa0BReC-8yFv0cmSCh7yZqg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">MCM now <i>is</i> Element14 / Newark.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
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