Quote:
Originally Posted by zcohen
1) Since when was this free? I spend $5000 to get this stuff. The kickoff kits used to be much larger, with many of the things we've seen in FIRST Choice in them for everyone. As teams grew though they couldn't get the supplies for everyone and they set up this system. Yeah it allows for some cool new stuff, but at the loss of quite a few items that we used to get, so I would never say its free.
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Hi, you must be new here. it's a well known fact that your $5,000 donation goes directly to FIRST. All of the parts, all of the totes, all of the shipping to your kick off site is donated.
Oh, that regional you "paid for". Donations make that happen.
Time for you to search in the CD archives about FIRST financials.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zcohen
2) Did Andymark ever say that they do this for nothing? Maybe they had and if thats the case kudos to them (ignoring the probably huge tax writeoff they can get for this). If not though, it doesnt make much economic sense for a company of Andymark's size to deal with FIRST Choice for free. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of monetary support so that they at least get close to breaking even.
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Andy Mark does amazing things to help roboteers. VEX does amazing things to help roboteers. While they meet bottom lines, the employees and owners put passion in front of profits. Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast made $32.9 million last year. If all the First FRC teams bough ALL their parts from AM, the gross would be less than half of what Brian made.
People do amazing things for stuff the have a passion for.
I salute the robotics suppliers, I think they are awesome people with bad business sense. I buy as much stuff from them as I can, just to keep them (parts, same day shipping, talk to an engineer on a call, phone answered on the weekend) around for another year.
You, on the other hand, should do some research before you post and look like an idiot.