An R&D firm I know is constantly spinning low volume prototype designs with wildly different BOMs; they treat Arrow reps like North Korean spies.
But another crank-turning design firm I know trusts Arrow to do BOM reviews because of how many times they’ve come through with a reel of hard-to-find parts, making a design manufacturable in a pinch, unlocking sales.
The exact same Arrow rep serves both firms, I’ve never figured out why he is treated so differently.
I was in the first type of firm. We were working on an IoT edge device for a large restaurant chain as a subcontractor to an equipment company. Arrow figured out what the project was and who the end customer was and approached them directly with a presentation on their in-house design services and fabrication. Skipping the OEM allowed them to undercut us on price and schedule.
