Where does one get part-level information to qualify a supply chain as "juicy"?
Otherwise the first advice looks like a 1st-world solution that independent 3rd-world developers can't deploy. Could early-stage companies even expect this from their investor/connectors?
Digikey has 32,000 in stock and your search filters yielded 100’s of nearly identical components from different manufacturers. This could mean using 4 pole switches when you only need 3 because toggles are typically 1,2, or 4 pole.
Digikey is sadly very expensive. It’s good for prototype. Or expensive industrial equipment. But for consumer goods one needs to go to China and source really cheap components optimized for large volume manufacturing.
- tear down a mass produced product that has approximately the right size of part that you're looking for and see what you can find. If you're super lucky there'll be a generic part number on the item that you can use to do some research with. If you're less lucky, take some measurements (dimensions, RPM, torque, voltage, current, wavelength, whatever) and start looking around to see if there are manufacturers making generic versions of that part.
That's true, but grandparent's advice is a good way to pick standardized parts. If there are 4 versions of a switch with identical footprint on digikey, you can be pretty sure that you'll also be able to source it from Taobao or LCSC or something.
Otherwise the first advice looks like a 1st-world solution that independent 3rd-world developers can't deploy. Could early-stage companies even expect this from their investor/connectors?