I think you’re actually asking good questions!

> scalable business beyond being yet another Oshkosh

OSH Park is fabulous for what they do, but they don’t do PCBA.

I’m not OP, but I think I can provide some insight anyway:

> Outside of targeting specific sectors e.g. defence, how else do you plan to remain competitive globally

I think that trying to be competitive globally would be a dumb play for these folks, they’re optimizing for something different.

Defence is one sector where this model works, no doubt. But there’s a bigger market that doesn’t have a great domestic story yet (I’m in Canada and work with a variety of CA and US PCB/PCBA houses): fast-turn low-volume PCBA, either for prototype iteration or for industrial one-offs. While I work on a specific “sort of defence adjacent” project right now, my past consulting work would’ve benefitted quite a bit from being able to turn around full PCBA work in 7 days. Macrofab end-to-end was usually 3-4 weeks and cutting that iteration time down would’ve had a solid effect on reducing project timelines if it could’ve happened for a reasonable price. There are domestic manufacturers who have optimized for that… but the price was not something my clients were willing to pay to accelerate their projects. If this hits a sweet spot there… that’ll be really exciting for me.

(I’ve already sent it to my team to start looking at)

Defense adjacent work is another place where we're seeing some strong pull.

> scalable business beyond being yet another Oshkosh

Yes, OSH Park is awesome. They could add PCBA, but we see the long-term value in owning the full stack (from design to testing of finished boards). Stops us from having a knife fight all the way down.