Received by email tonight about two hours ago:
Dear Tindie Community,
My name is Gongyu Su, and I am writing on behalf of the new Tindie ownership team.
First, we sincerely apologize for the recent downtime and the disruption it caused. We understand that many buyers and community members were left without clear information during the transition, and that this created frustration and concern.
Tindie is now owned by EETree LLC, a Washington State company. Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world. The recent transition was more complex than expected. Tindie runs on an older technical framework with many connected services, and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted.
We know this was not the experience the Tindie community deserved.
Our immediate focus is to stabilize the platform, resolve payment and order-related issues, and support sellers and buyers through the transition. If you have an order-related concern, please contact Tindie support so the team can review your case directly.
WHAT WE ARE FOCUSED ON
Stabilizing the platform
Restoring reliable access for buyers, sellers, and the community.
Resolving open issues
Working through payment, refund, and order concerns case by case.
Investing for the long term
Renewing attention, support, and improvements for the community.
We also want to be clear about our long-term intention: we did not take over Tindie to let it fade away. We took it over because we believe it deserves renewed attention, investment, and support.
Tindie has always been more than just a marketplace. It is a place where independent creators, makers, and hardware enthusiasts can share useful products, tools, kits, modules, and ideas with the world. We want to preserve that spirit while improving the platform step by step.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will share more about our plans and will listen carefully to feedback from sellers, buyers, and the broader community.
Thank you for your patience and continued support. We know trust must be earned through action, and we are committed to doing that.
Sincerely,
Gongyu Su
On behalf of the Tindie Team
EETree LLC seems to be a shell company owned by EETree Info & Tech Limited in China (https://www.eetree.cn).
I'm not sure what that means as far as payment processing etc, apparently sellers were all cut off with money owing and still have no explanation.
Also the AI-generated blog post on the Tindie site (under the name/account of assumedly-previous staff?), and the post above that says absolutely nothing about what's actually going on...
It looks from the outside like a Chinese tech blog just randomly bought Tindie, broke the site while moving it to their own servers, and now are trying to figure out how to run it?
Yeah, pretty sure there is a better way to make a transition—even a complete stack rewrite. Get your new stack operating before you make the switch—and you could have even staged the switch-over starting with one region first.
If they purchased the site, I get it, new servers, etc. But part of the purchase agreement should have stated that the site continues to be run/maintained for 6 months or so until the new owners have a replacement ready.
(I feel like someone reading HN could have (vibe?) coded a replacement for Tindie by now. I mean Tindie does have the name recognition… kind of?)
Personally, I trust EETree LLC, a Washington State company, a digital powerhouse to the information super highway foster technological innovation and progress to digital future bridging to the electronic divide.
Is it not obvious this is satire?
Poe's law applies
SATIRE DOES NOT COMPUTE
In the age of meme stocks, NFTs, vibe coding and orange clowns in the white house, no, it's not obvious. The world has gone right past satire and into a reality of collective delusion.
Looks AI slop to me. New user with only 15 comments.
Not at all
It is. How could anyone take “progress to digital future bridging to the electronic divide” seriously?
Most folk unsurprisingly would. Folk get suckered in by these lores all the time.
For my project, I am charging the environmental bridge between LLMs and the world; whatever that means.
I can't think of a worse first impression for the new owners of a marketplace that relies on buyer and seller loyalty than taking down the entire platform for weeks without any clear timeline or reasoning.
It also gives the impression that they have no idea how to set up a staging environment or seamlessly migrate to a new backend with a double write approach. Just spells trouble all around.
It's not clear to me WHY it was taken over.. Were there issues with the previous owners?
Also WHO are the new owners? The "About us" page has ZERO info on them. I wouldn't touch the new platform with a 30foot pole, so I guess it's time to find a new alternative marketplace.
Edit: on https://www.linkedin.com/in/gongyu/ it claims that the company name is "EEree LLC", in the email it's magically "EETree LLC"
Found this statement from Alexander Rowsell, Tindie social media manager and editor of the Tindie Blog (link expires in one day):
https://privatebin.net/?db6418554d9d5728#3NjbsSUYzw227zG5P1k...
This archive never expires :)
What's with the expiration?
> # Announcement
After much back and forth with the community and the team internally, we can reveal a bit more of what's happening. Tindie transitioned to new ownership on April 14. Due to circumstances beyond the control of the new owners, the site was immediately put into maintenance mode. Since then, the process of transitioning the site to new infrastructure and upgrading the aging codebase has been ongoing. The intention was, as I originally thought, to do this seamlessly with no downtime. However, once the site was put into maintenance mode and the transition happened. it was decided to take the time to work on the site and get things up to modern standards. The new owners are genuinely excited about Tindie and what the platform can be. After a year or so on cruise control, we're finally going to make substantial investments in the platform and community -- something which in my humble opinion is long overdue.
# Timeframe
Again, I still don't have an exact timeframe for the completion of this work. I know that is what the community wants to know more than anything, and it's very frustrating that I can't satisfy your answers about that.
I know that the new tech team is working hard with the Supplyframe team to complete all the transition steps and ensure things are done properly.
# Who Am I?
I figured many of you already know me, but my name is Alexander Rowsell. I'm the editor of the Tindie Blog and the social media manager. I've been with Tindie for a few years, and I'll be around for the foreseeable future. I do embedded development work, but I also really enjoy writing about what the community is up to. It's always a blast to go through the newest listings on Tindie to see what people are creating!
I'll be honest with you, I was worried about Tindie over the last few months. I could see that the site needed attention from a professional dev team and was worried the site would break totally before that happened. Well, there has been downtime, but the upside is that the site will be refreshed and ready for the long term. Short-term pain for long-term stability -- that's where we're at.
I wanted to write a longer statement, and seeing as how the Tindie Blog itself is down I figured this was the next best thing. To verify this statement is actually from me, I've signed it with my GPG key - B5CFBEB4EE9FE813. You can verify this signature by getting the raw text of this post, and verifying the signature using GPG.
> What's with the expiration?
Generous interpretation - perhaps this is the default for posts on that site.
Less generous interpretation - definitely quite a weird way of posting something, including references to a GPG key, rather than some kind of pre-existing public social media account (which I'm assuming a social media manager would have) or a page on the Tindie domain.
The lack of clear communication and transparency around this whole issue has been appaling. I've moved to Lectronz and will wipe out my store on Tindie as soon as they resolve payouts.
Nobody seems to be using the word "bankrupt", but I'm getting the impression that's what happened here? Sudden un-announced sale?
> Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world.
How does this even explain why they "TOOK OVER" Tindie?
If there were a time to compete, it would be now ;)
Ooo hey, I recognize some of my favorite Tindie sellers right on the Lectronz front page too.
Excellent, thank you.
Thanks. I didn't know about this site. I've been browsing for a bit, and I actually think it's a better site than Tindie ever was.
This is the kind of statement that gets made when everything is awesome.
This is probably a good reminder that the EU-based alternative https://www.lectronz.com exists!
A site that hijacks the back button. Pressing back takes you to the loading screen, which takes you forward to the site again. Ouch.
Scam or spy?
context?
>and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted
I mean, this is unacceptable by any metric. Downtime for a platform like this means lost revenue. If Amazon was down for weeks at a time how do you think that would affect them as a retailer? So at this point I can't imagine what the mystery purchasers are getting, certainly not a steady revenue stream? I can't imagine the user data is that valuable for such a niche market focus. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be delighted to observe more embarrassing fumbles from your nameless owners, and whoever you are because I suspect your given name is false as well.