Make It, Sell It.

March 15, 2018 9:55 AM

How to Launch a Physical Product. "... lately, all that people are talking about is digital products. And I get it. I really do. The margins are great. They’re easy to make. They’re even easier to sell. But what if the thing that you want to make is a physical thing? What if, like me, you’re obsessed with creating something you can hold in your hands?"
posted by storybored (16 comments total)

An interesting tweet storm about the state of the consumer product goods industry that may be at a turning point soon:

Ryan Cladbeck twitter
posted by gus at 10:08 AM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

this white dude outsourced the making of kimonos and gis to a Chinese factory and is now making a buck off of it while also promoting the fact that it was really simple? and who I am assuming is definitely not checking on the labor conditions of said factory?

this is a little peek of how cheap goods on Amazon get made that I really didn't want/need to see
posted by runt at 10:18 AM on March 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

this white dude outsourced the making of kimonos and gis to a Chinese factory

Pakistan, not China. I think it’s a stretch to say this guy designed or made anything — he’s just buying clothes with his logo on them. Actually designing, manufacturing, and selling a physical product is a lot harder than just finding a supplier of blank t-shirts on Alibaba and emailing them a logo to print.
posted by bradf at 10:54 AM on March 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

The website hosting the article is sort of horrifying and sort of delightful. It's horrifying what lowest-denominator sort-of-franchise seems to be the accepted "norm" and delightful that there are people earnestly noticing that parts of that system are a terrible idea for making a living and explaining that in the local language.
posted by clew at 11:43 AM on March 15, 2018

Are these the people making all the easy money that I have been reading about on literally every bottom-of-page internet comment?
posted by rokusan at 12:07 PM on March 15, 2018

These are the people selling $49 ebooks on how to automate bottom-of-page internet comments that lead clickthroughs to email funnels with reliable 1% conversion, which will make the easy money. Also gently pointing out that if you want to run a business you will need to understand whether your money is coming in or going out, and here are some first terms to learn. A mix of horrible and useful. The businesses range from the horrifying -- coaching on how to optimize airline rewards points -- to the small but sensible (if the gi in the OP fits people the size of the poster, and survives washing, that is a reasonable thing for a customer to pay for).

We might be heading for fewer middlemen retailers (two, apparently) and a lot of tiny companies making relatively custom products. If we can properly regulate the middlemen* this could be a pretty good change in the economy! More different things for people to do, judged by whether people want the result. As opposed to whatever survives Bain leveraged buyouts.

* 2. ???**
** Nationalize.
posted by clew at 12:29 PM on March 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

This reminds me of a certain restaurant operator ridiculed here on the blue some time ago. Also, of a leaflet I once saw of how to go about designing an actual physical product and having it made (in China).

The thing I remember from that is you absolutely need a presence down at the factory - yourself or someone who speaks local. Otherwise there might be a container of low-quality stuff on your hands once you negotiate the details.

I think we also had the story of that guy who designed some electronic gizmo and went into details on how SD card quality impacts the final product.

(I know, I'm too lazy to find the links).
posted by Laotic at 12:46 PM on March 15, 2018

This is a story about how to buy and then sell a physical product
posted by beerperson at 12:58 PM on March 15, 2018

I think we also had the story of that guy who designed some electronic gizmo and went into details on how SD card quality impacts the final product.

That would be Bunny Huang's Chumby.
posted by bradf at 2:05 PM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

May I gently suggest a better title might be:
Think of thing, handwave, be shocked, handwave slightly less, sell it.

The making of, sadly, does not figure into this narrative.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 3:20 PM on March 15, 2018

Also gently pointing out that if you want to run a business you will need to understand whether your money is coming in or going out

I'm having flashbacks to a long career as an advisor to hundreds of business owners, and, well... you might be frightened to learn how many don't really have that understanding.

Even... heck, especially... the ones with seven or eight digit numbers all over their financials.
posted by rokusan at 3:51 PM on March 15, 2018

That explains so much, rokusan.

Maybe this scene is for people who can understand it because of a slice-of-life essay when the idea didn't get through from accounting textbooks or business consultants. That's the part I like, although it looks so fragile, so subornable.
posted by clew at 4:36 PM on March 15, 2018

How does Oxo do it? Practically everything they make is a winner.
posted by bz at 6:31 PM on March 15, 2018

Oxo has a big design and engineering center in the US(Portland maybe?) and also absolutely has QC and industrial process engineers on the ground at the factories.
posted by rockindata at 4:33 AM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Good lord. This is my actual jobby job (job title: manufacturing engineer, product development) so just about all of this is "well no shit Sherlock", but I'm not really the target audience.

He makes kimonos/gis. I make orthopedic implants and surgical instruments. He can play pretty fast and loose with what gets by his QA system (if he has one), because nobody will die.

Remember that “Gold Supplier” means nothing in terms of your business, only how long they’ve paid Alibaba for being in their marketplace. This is why all of our suppliers have at least ISO 13485 certified. It doesn't solve all the issues, but it gets everyone on the same page.

Create a small run. Order a first article inspection run. An FAI should arrive exactly how a production order would (same shipping method, same paperwork, same packaging).

I'm on a team of other people tasked with getting a product to market as quickly and safely as possible. This means going as fast as we can without breaking either our internal quality regulations or regulations/guidelines established by the FDA and EU regulatory agencies. This means, in addition to the project manager herding cats, you've got people (usually engineers) whose scope is focused specifically on things like vetting, validating, and qualifying suppliers, validating packaging and sterilization, validating distribution, the whole design verification/validation process, the manufacturing process (my job), quality (supplier quality, internal quality), marketing (not just marketing the product to the end user, but making sure that the design inputs, usually from surgeons, get captured by the end design), and others whose job is essential to making the widget. Everyone is a cog in the machine, and their job is important, and if someone doesn't do their job, things don't move forward.

This is grossly simplified (and you can't really compare a class III medical device to a kimono). But yeah, it's really freaking hard to make something. Well, it's easy to make one thing. I'm literally getting on a plane Monday to travel across seven time zones so I can meet face to face with a few different companies making our widgets, just so I can better understand the challenges they're facing and get an idea of what we can do to help them make better parts (fuck yeah Switzerland! whoo!). It's hard to get your widget mass produced at a price the market will bear, and at an acceptable level of quality. It's really, really difficult.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 9:49 AM on March 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

A friend once worked on a product where the inches to metric issue happened -- a touchscreen-based device that was supposed to be 8" square was supplied, in the first example, as 8 centimeters square.

The whole "getting what you want" also hit me with a water-jet cutting request I had a few years ago. I ordered steel cut to a shape, with a 1/4" hole in it, by water jet as it was a hardenable steel (S30V) -- plasma and torch cutting can leave a skin of decarb that has to be removed. Unfortunately, they cut the hole out such that it formed a cone 1/4" to 9/32". This was apparently because of how water jet cutting works--if you're not careful, the jet will erode the cut wider at one side as it goes through material, especially hard, tough material such as high alloy stainless steel.

This was easily fixed by boring out to the next size up and putting in a bearing, but still annoying, especially as I had checked the first example and seen only the correct diameter on the one side, and not bothered to check the other side as well. Didn't catch that one until I had taken the lot home and started assembly. The company in question did give me a discount when I informed them of the error, and said that they can compensate for the cutting angle. If I ever do do this again, though, I may just see what the price difference is for getting something like this laser cut.
posted by Blackanvil at 1:00 PM on March 19, 2018