3 ms·
I thought the same thing when I started my startup (we make physical stuff too). Then I started learning about injection molding, tooling, materials, minimum or
by anthonycerra 16y ago
I thought the same thing when I started my startup (we make physical stuff too). Then I started learning about injection molding, tooling, materials, minimum order quantities, packaging, etc.
It turns out that very simple things are very expensive to start with because of the low quantities. I thought an order for 30,000 was massive, but some companies we worked with flat out laughed in my face.
So even though he raised a million bones, he's "only" making < 13,000 watches. That'll still be pretty expensive for him.
- davi 16y agoThat's interesting. At what quantity do they stop laughing?
- spydertennis 16y ago100,000
- anthonycerra 16y agoIt really depends on the manufacturer. Some don't want to deal with you unless you're in the 100s of thousands. We were very lucky to find a company that will make a quantity as low as 300, but there would be no reasonable price we could charge for the product without losing tons of money. A quantity of 3,000 would basically be a wash, and 30,000 would give us a decent margin. Another point I forgot to mention above is assembly cost. I was surprised to learn that automating tasks isn't cost effective even when production is in the tens of thousands (depending on the task of course).