Siglent & Rigol Missing from Big Distributors – Any Insights? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: crysti
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2025, 11:19:55 pm
content: Why are Siglent and Rigol oscilloscopes — despite being popular among engineers and electronics enthusiasts for their good price-to-performance ratio — not widely available through major distributors in the US and Europe, such as RS Components, Mouser, or Farnell?

author: Martin72
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2025, 11:26:20 pm
content: Only the retailers you listed can give you a reliable answer to this question.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2025, 11:42:51 pm
content: Quote from: crysti on April 19, 2025, 11:19:55 pmSome models get rebranded so to not be branded OEM for whatever reason.RS Pro is a popular rebrand label for some Siglent gear.LeCroy and Siglent have a long standing relationship where Siglent supply a good # of their low cost DSO's.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2025, 02:38:43 am
content: Quote from: crysti on April 19, 2025, 11:19:55 pmProbably because those brands allow discount dealers (Alibaba, etc) to sell them directly to consumers for very little markup so the big dealers feel that they can't make a high enough profit for them to want to deal with those brands.ALSO, and I can tell you this from personal experience, factory authorized retailers hate dealing with items that are sold through discount dealers that offer ZERO support. Factory authorized dealers are constantly bombarded with DEMANDS that they fix or support items that people bought from a discount dealer somewhere else. I used to work in a factory authorized RCA TV shop and people were always bringing in their K-Mart bought TVs and wanting us to fix them for nothing. The shop that I worked in went out of business shortly after the big box stores and other cut rate stores started selling TVs. People were literally buying TVs from those stores for less than what we were paying to buy the same model from a wholesale distributor.

author: J-R
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2025, 03:16:30 am
content: Your statement is not really true here in the US:https://siglentna.com/how-to-buy/https://www.rigolna.com/sales/Avnet is the parent of Farnell, and their US brand is Newark, not Farnell. So they do sell Rigol.Also, Rigol and Siglent both sell direct via their North American web sites. Rigol also sells on eBay.DigiKey doesn't really sell Rigol and Siglent. Both are "Marketplace" brands which means they drop ship direct from the manufacturer.Mouser doesn't offer a similar Marketplace feature from what I can see, so that is probably why they don't carry Rigol/Siglent.(Edit: slight correction)

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2025, 07:06:07 am
content: Not any brand can be in any shop, and that is for various reasons. There's plenty of Rigol and Siglent to buy inside US or EU.For EU, I bought a few times from Batronix, payed online with a card (from Romania), and the package delivered in Ro. Every time all went perfect, outstanding guys, highly recommended shop:https://www.batronix.com

author: NE666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2025, 08:15:52 am
content: Some good (i.e. likely) answers given already. Primarily, distribution wants both volume and margin, and those usually comes with some desire for either exclusivity or at least, restricted competition. If you're dumping stock on Chinese-based auction sites, have direct sales (webshop), and an Amazon storefront, then you've probably made yourself unattractive already as a potential brand in their product portfolio.I'd also add to that possible contributions from:- They (i.e. Rigol & Siglent) don't feel that they would benefit from distributor representation. i.e. sales wouldn't increase sufficiently to justify the cost of engagement with them- Other vendors may impose restrictions. i.e. Keysight (for sake of argument), may choose not to sell certain product lines through a disti, if that disti carries certain products from other vendors.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2025, 09:49:02 am
content: Simple: "Big Distributors" probably want 40% markup.