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Manufacturing in China vs the U.S.: for my company's Kickstarter project, the U.S. was about 5x more expensive. (It's a bit different for electronics). However
by odbol_ 10y ago
Manufacturing in China vs the U.S.: for my company's Kickstarter project, the U.S. was about 5x more expensive. (It's a bit different for electronics).
However, after flying me and my co-founder to China, living there for a month to work out all the kinks in the process, then the incredible cost of shipping and customs taxes (has to rush ship for Christmas of course), I'm thinking the U.S.would have been a better choice (at the small volumes of 1000 per batch we were doing).
Now, if you are making 50,000 or a million of something, then China is definitely the way to go. But for small batches I recommend shopping around U.S. factories... They're pretty desperate for it at this point.
- vishbar 10y agoI have what is probably a silly question. When you have an idea or something you want to mass-produce, what do you actually do? Is there some website that you can upload your design to, then receive quotes from factories that agree to manufacture N units at M dollars/unit? Or do you usually go through an agent? Sorry if that seems dumb. I just have literally no experience in this area; if someone handed me a design and said "Manufacture 1,000 of these" I'd just stand around dumbfounded.
- odbol_ 10y agoWe used Berkeley Sourcing Group. They have an office in China as well as California. So we gave them all the designs, then they did the work of finding factories to do everything and coordinating them all together all the way up to final assembly and packaging. In the end we used about 8 different factories to make all the parts: electronic, injection molding, textiles, packaging, silk screening, etc. I don't know how we could have done it without the BSG team honestly.