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> dramatically hinder new entrants from selling new products Armchair product engineering thoughts: A lot of kickstarters seemed to set themselves up for failu

by WWLink 3y ago

> dramatically hinder new entrants from selling new products Armchair product engineering thoughts: A lot of kickstarters seemed to set themselves up for failure by trying to make a hermetically sealed apple-style product and have it produced in china without ever considering if they could build it locally, if they could get it produced in smaller quantities - if at all.... I get the whole "it can't be made at a competitive price if you don't build for an economy of scale" - but what seemed to happen is a startup would attempt to sell a widget with a design that was all hopes and dreams, immediately fly out to china, and spend a whole bunch of time and money coming up with something that looked great on paper.... but then had a fundamental flaw that required them to throw away all of the initial batch of products - maybe even the first few batches, burning up every penny they gathered in their funding campaign. "Hold on there cowboy" is my take on this - it's easy to throw a design together that looks slick and ends up quickly becoming ewaste... startups (and startup-like projects) are usually some of the worst offenders. Think of things like Ouya or (lol) Google Stadia or any of a plethora of IoT crap that sounded cool, didn't quite achieve the desired results, and ended up in the landfill. I'd argue that all this "bureaucratic red-tape" would help limit how much ewaste gets produced, at least a little bit.

jkestner 3y ago
I’ve made a conscious effort to build our (Kickstarted!) stuff domestically. With the exception of one product in China, which was still an educational PITA. Can’t claim the things are Made in America when a critical component is fabbed overseas, but it’s great to talk with people in my time zone. Going to be even better to drive over to the injection molder to dial in fit and finish. OTOH, the examples you cite and many more are junked not because they’re made in China but due to a lack of software support/remediation. I’m not sure if there’s a business model that incentivizes this, so I’m rooting for the regulations that are slowing coming along on this.
- WWLink 3y ago
  Ah, software is a big one but I was thinking of a few products that involved no software at all. Stuff like mechanical keyboards, that one PC case that looked like the current Mac Pro, there was some other hardware widget or two that I can't quite remember right now. They all had these neat ideas, spent a lot of money getting it engineered & produced, and oops... the end result wasn't what we hoped it would be...... In some cases they actually shipped the defective product out, because hey, getting something is better than nothing. But it fell pretty far short of what people were hoping they'd get lol. Edit: But I do commend your efforts! Great job!

by WWLink 3y ago

jkestner 3y ago

I’ve made a conscious effort to build our (Kickstarted!) stuff domestically. With the exception of one product in China, which was still an educational PITA. Can’t claim the things are Made in America when a critical component is fabbed overseas, but it’s great to talk with people in my time zone. Going to be even better to drive over to the injection molder to dial in fit and finish. OTOH, the examples you cite and many more are junked not because they’re made in China but due to a lack of software support/remediation. I’m not sure if there’s a business model that incentivizes this, so I’m rooting for the regulations that are slowing coming along on this.

WWLink 3y ago
Ah, software is a big one but I was thinking of a few products that involved no software at all. Stuff like mechanical keyboards, that one PC case that looked like the current Mac Pro, there was some other hardware widget or two that I can't quite remember right now. They all had these neat ideas, spent a lot of money getting it engineered & produced, and oops... the end result wasn't what we hoped it would be...... In some cases they actually shipped the defective product out, because hey, getting something is better than nothing. But it fell pretty far short of what people were hoping they'd get lol. Edit: But I do commend your efforts! Great job!