Quote:
Originally Posted by ajd
I probably sound like a broken record here but why not just slash the registration fee by $200, up the amount teams are allowed to spend on extra parts by $200, and let teams do whatever they want with the money?
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Because large savings can be had by teams Participating in FIRST when they get the parts from FIRST.
That is true because as a nationally well known entity, FIRST can have a portion of the items donated to them through sponsors (some of the KOP items come that way). For those that FIRST actually purchases, I'm certain their in-bulk purchase is at a substantial discount. Finally, again because FIRST ships in bulk to the kick-off location, their shipping costs are far lower to ship an item that they would be for just about any team.
In the end, most of the parts you get in the KOP are extremely likely to end up costing far less than going somewhere on the web to purchase them.
Finally, if you are a team that isn't local to a large number of industrial businesses, you may be out of luck in buying some of these items at all.
The key to all this, of course, is to minimize the amount of un-needed components that teams get shipped each year. That's where it's very good to get to know teams around you. We've traded components with local teams every year for the last 3, and ended up with very little waste.
I think it would be an excellent idea for FIRST to set up a small store at each kick-off location where veteran teams can buy components the day of kickoff that would normally be in rookie kits that they may need. This would leverage FIRST's cost-savings and shipping, while not creating a ton of additional overhead. Things like jaguars, compressors, pneumatic tubing, microswitches, CIM's etc would be very very handy.