Looking for things to make
Hey there! I’m starting a small company that would allow people to order products that are manufactured to order, mostly electronic stuff, with a catalog of available products. Products are supposed to be open source, but with a fee going to hackers who created them/colaborated from each sale. And the company will be doing all manufacturing, shipping and anything else required.
And I’m a software engineer, going into manufacturing, because I always wanted to hack physical stuff, so it’s very important to me. Me and my wife (who is also the author of the idea) are planning on taking a small loan for all of the equipment we need to buy.
Any ideas on what projects I should pick up? Where can I find some stuff to make and people willing to create and share such stuff? And also what do you think, should I develop the website for it myself, or outsource it?
Congrats on taking the leap of faith. What gaps are you seeing in the market that would need your services?
Just asking because I was involve in contract manufacturing house (similar business model as yours) before and it was a cut throat business where the margins are low.
The main one is the products that were on crowdfunding campaigns, didn't have enough demand to keep business running, but still are in a small demand. I start on assumption that combined, they will provide significant enough gap for a small business (hoping for 50-100 orders a month) . And I hope that by being the actual seller of the product we can control the margins easier, unlike in contract manufacturing.
The additional gap is high barriers of entry from product ideation to product manufacturing, that right now require significant funding and lots of time overhead. I want that platform to make using parts of one product design to make another one simple enough (i.e. sharing the same case design, or some electronics, or firmware, or whatever else), lowering the bar of full product design. And this will hopefully bring more products to the platform.
I tried this once before. First, I designed a 3d printer/cnc hybrid mill ( easymaker ). Even did a Kickstarter. Ugh.
I then designed a voice assistant for construction. Got some interesting conversations, but again, ugh.
I then designed a VR home remodel tool. Ugh.
The physical and physical-linked space is terrible. I met one guy at a hackerspace who got a hit! He made an alarm clock from a single piece of wood. People like traditional things made by hand. And he hated his life. He did a KickStarter, and was constantly flamed for his hand-made clocks taking too long to deliver by his customers. Said when he finishes, he'll never do physical things again.
I met a guy from a US power company at a bar once while on vacation. His entire job is to find ways to sneakily copy patented physical products that might be useful to power utilities, with the hopes the patent owners never find out.
Physical is just a terrible place to be for these reasons. Software or IP all the way.
Damn that's so sad and so educational… I want to run small enough, and I hope it will be easier to just handle all products as IP hosted on the website that we can manufacture — so that we are not putting effort into anything that will be stolen and copied.
But then again, customers waiting on their orders may be a terrible problem… And we will have no idea at first even how long manufacturing is going to take, which is probably even worse.
Hi.
Lots of promise. However before you take out debt... please find 10-20 people who would buy from you!!! Having a couple of good/tried/hopeful ways to get paying customers is critical unless you have $$$/cash to throw away!!
Let us know how we can help!
Thanks for advice! Sure, I’m kind of locked down — don’t want making promises to potential customers, while not actually having equipment to make their orders. And I have no idea how long it will take to get the loan (or if I will actually be able to do that).
Do you know where can I find such customers and how can I reach out to them asking will they buy something like that?
Outsource the production until you have to customer flow. It's better to resell at a loss/no profit while you build a customer base than spend on a lot on equipment to can't use full time.
That's a good idea, thanks! How much time do you think it may take to build a good enough customer base? Should I plan forward for 1-2 months or more?
It's impossible to say. You don't really have to plan until you do though. Start trying to sell and if it your volume gets high enough that the cost savings from in house mfg > (the cost of equipment depreciation + maintenance + operations) then buy.
I'd check out thingaverse, and instructables for ideas you like then contact the creators for licensing.
You don't need a very complex website to start with this you could get away with a shopify site so I'd go with that until you find customers.
Hey @morpheby !
As a fellow programmer that started a physical business, I can say that applying software development skills to product manufacturing is a real framework.
In my case, I started with apparel, but the mindset is transferable.
As far as the website, of course, make it yourself. Why would you outsource a skill you have, just implement an MVP and then you can ask the IH community for feedback on let's, the design/UI/UX of it.
Check out this blog post, where we talk about finding a manufacturer for your business, it may be helpful to you for some context.
If you have any other questions, feel free to get back to me, would love to talk more about jumping over from a digital industry to physical product creation 👍
Have you come across tindie.com?
You've probably seen oshpark.com - IIRC they have the "creators get a fee" thing going for people that share their PCB designs with others.
Random idea: think about entering a couple of verticals, like RaspberryPi "hats" or Arduino "shields" - those would let you have a somewhat constrained target audience for your marketing.
This is a tough space... Good luck!
Make an IH app---connect it to real IH auviesly not just a copy