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What a hustler. I'm sure she'll make it work the way she's made everything else work, but my heart sank when I read: >To churn out products more quickly, she p

What a hustler. I'm sure she'll make it work the way she's made everything else work, but my heart sank when I read: >To churn out products more quickly, she plans to automate aspects of her production processes. Doing that requires a larger studio space with better ventilation, which Ms. Baskin said would be easier to find in California. So this month, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she plans to start a fabrication lab next year. With rents the way they are, this seems ill-advised. Unless she's planning to take funding. Even then, I'm not sure why she'd want to spend gobs of it on rent.

placeybordeaux 11y ago
Plenty of places in the US to move that have cheaper rent than either NYC or the bay area. Strange to move from one of the most expensive places in the US to another.
- JoblessWonder 11y ago
  Her target market seems to be living in those communities though. She probably can't start renting tri-cycles in Atlanta and expect the same results.
  - marcusgarvey 11y ago
    From the focus placed on them by the article, and the mention of the need for "ventilation", I'm guessing the helmets are more significant to her portfolio of businesses than the tricycles. And to the other commenter's point, it's being sold online. Sales trips to SF and NYC make sense. Moving production there? Not so much.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Where else would you move production to? Houston? Silicon Valley and California in general is a manufacturing powerhouse. Even Tesla automobiles are made in Silicon Valley, instead of someplace cheaper. Why? Simple: the talent is there, the technology is there (many of the supporting companies that make components and such), and there's already a manufacturing base there which hasn't been ruined the way it has in the Rust Belt. The Bay Area is one of the main places to go if you want electronics manufactured in this country, but it's also big for lots of other low-volume stuff. You can't just start up a manufacturing operation in some random, cheap cost-of-living city in the US; it doesn't work that way.
      - marcusgarvey 11y ago
        She's making bicycle helmets, not electric cars.
        Grishnakh 11y ago
        The article specifically said she was looking to have more of her production automated. You're not going to do that better anywhere than Silicon Valley.
        marcusgarvey 11y ago
        Any examples of who's currently doing this well in Silicon Valley?
        Grishnakh 11y ago
        I don't know any offhand, but if you want PCBs made, there's tons of that stuff there. I would think there's also a lot of 3D printing stuff going on there.
tinbad 11y ago
NYC and SF Bay area seem the perfect places for marketing her products at a premium though. Plant one of those tricycles in the mission district and SF tech hipsters will hand her their money.
- reedlaw 11y ago
  The bicycle helmets could be made anywhere and shipped. The article implies most of her business comes from online sales.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    If she's as successful as the article implies, the cost of rent probably isn't that big a deal to her. It's more important that she be in a place where she can forge local connections, especially with places to do manufacturing. That's why SanFran is a good choice: there's lots of tech manufacturing there. NYC, not so much. NYC keeps trying to push its "Silicon Alley" and various tech stuff, but it seems to fall flat. It's a shame too because there's tons of old factories and stuff there that aren't really being used well, and could be converted to low/mid-volume flexible manufacturing using modern automated equipment. I imagine there's a few factors working against this: 1) the very high rent costs make it hard to attract new people to the area (unlike the Bay Area where the tech people and tech companies are already there, and have been for decades), 2) the public transit isn't that great unless you're in or close to Manhattan (a lot of those old factories and such are in other boroughs or on the NJ side; anything in a decent place in Manhattan has likely already been renovated and converted into something else by now), and 3) the taxes and regulation probably stifle things too much (Silicon Valley certainly has its taxes and regulation too, but the local government has decades of experience in taxing and regulating in a way that mostly supports the tech economy and not driving it out). In a nutshell, inertia is a very, very hard thing to overcome.

placeybordeaux 11y ago

Plenty of places in the US to move that have cheaper rent than either NYC or the bay area. Strange to move from one of the most expensive places in the US to another.

JoblessWonder 11y ago
Her target market seems to be living in those communities though. She probably can't start renting tri-cycles in Atlanta and expect the same results.
- marcusgarvey 11y ago
  From the focus placed on them by the article, and the mention of the need for "ventilation", I'm guessing the helmets are more significant to her portfolio of businesses than the tricycles. And to the other commenter's point, it's being sold online. Sales trips to SF and NYC make sense. Moving production there? Not so much.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Where else would you move production to? Houston? Silicon Valley and California in general is a manufacturing powerhouse. Even Tesla automobiles are made in Silicon Valley, instead of someplace cheaper. Why? Simple: the talent is there, the technology is there (many of the supporting companies that make components and such), and there's already a manufacturing base there which hasn't been ruined the way it has in the Rust Belt. The Bay Area is one of the main places to go if you want electronics manufactured in this country, but it's also big for lots of other low-volume stuff. You can't just start up a manufacturing operation in some random, cheap cost-of-living city in the US; it doesn't work that way.
    - marcusgarvey 11y ago
      She's making bicycle helmets, not electric cars.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        The article specifically said she was looking to have more of her production automated. You're not going to do that better anywhere than Silicon Valley.
        marcusgarvey 11y ago
        Any examples of who's currently doing this well in Silicon Valley?
        Grishnakh 11y ago
        I don't know any offhand, but if you want PCBs made, there's tons of that stuff there. I would think there's also a lot of 3D printing stuff going on there.

tinbad 11y ago

NYC and SF Bay area seem the perfect places for marketing her products at a premium though. Plant one of those tricycles in the mission district and SF tech hipsters will hand her their money.

reedlaw 11y ago
The bicycle helmets could be made anywhere and shipped. The article implies most of her business comes from online sales.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  If she's as successful as the article implies, the cost of rent probably isn't that big a deal to her. It's more important that she be in a place where she can forge local connections, especially with places to do manufacturing. That's why SanFran is a good choice: there's lots of tech manufacturing there. NYC, not so much. NYC keeps trying to push its "Silicon Alley" and various tech stuff, but it seems to fall flat. It's a shame too because there's tons of old factories and stuff there that aren't really being used well, and could be converted to low/mid-volume flexible manufacturing using modern automated equipment. I imagine there's a few factors working against this: 1) the very high rent costs make it hard to attract new people to the area (unlike the Bay Area where the tech people and tech companies are already there, and have been for decades), 2) the public transit isn't that great unless you're in or close to Manhattan (a lot of those old factories and such are in other boroughs or on the NJ side; anything in a decent place in Manhattan has likely already been renovated and converted into something else by now), and 3) the taxes and regulation probably stifle things too much (Silicon Valley certainly has its taxes and regulation too, but the local government has decades of experience in taxing and regulating in a way that mostly supports the tech economy and not driving it out). In a nutshell, inertia is a very, very hard thing to overcome.