>I'm looking for feedback about my shit tier business idea. Please explain why it will fail.
I'm 21 years old and in my last year at uni. I'll be graduating with an engineering degree but am very interested in entrepreneurship and would love to create a small business for side income both before and after graduating. In the long term I'd rather run my own business than work for a company, even if it means earning only enough to get by.
I've found a market for a certain product that can easily be made entirely out of plastic. The product is essentially a "mold" which people purchase in order to produce something of their own. This is all for one specific customer (producer) type who uses the mold to produce a single type of product which they sell to an end user (if someone correctly guesses the end use I will acknowledge), not a generic mold creation company. I outline various components of the value proposition below.
I've spent the last few weeks creating prototypes and I've settled on a design which offers significant improvement over anything I've seen on the market. It has one major improvement in ease of use which makes one step easier for the producer. However the main value proposition is that it is adjustable in length.
The end-use product created is made in a variety of length and widths. The width is static and defined by the mold, and in every existing product I've found, the length is also static.
If a producer wants to make products at say a 4 inch length and 7 inch length, they would normally have to buy 2 molds. With my mold, any length from 0 to 7 inches, at half-inch increments, can be supported. The end use is such that many customers buy multiple molds in order to produce multiple lengths of their product, because end users can vary in their preference. The most important quality to an end user is the volume of the product created with the mold, which is essentially equal to the mold's internal volume.
An additional value proposition is that I've defined every part of this design programmatically, so that I can generate STL (3D object) files at any given dimension upon customer request. It takes essentially no time investment to generate these new files, and so I could easily offer this additional degree of customization for $1 (or even free, although I'd like to steer people towards the default a bit so that I can build up a stock of one specific design).
My chosen production method is 3D printing, mainly because I already own a 3D printer. Injection molding would be way faster but wouldn't support the customization and I assume requires huge up front investment. I'd also like to "release updates" of my design in the future whenever I can think of another major improvement, so 3D printing is quite conducive to that.
Each product takes 12h:40m to print, weighs about 100 grams, and costs $2.12 in materials. I can fit a large enough mold to support lengths of 7 inches at maximum, which is as large or larger than most competitors on the market (the only exception being some made at an obscenely large size, such as 12", which are impractical for most of the users that my customers are trying to sell to and tend to cost in the $50-$100 range).
(2/3)
Asher Davis
After surveying the market I've found that the most common products are 5 inches in length and go for right around $20. They tend to be smaller in width than mine as well, which makes them less valuable to the end user. I feel I would have no issue charging $25 for my 7" product, even offering multiple widths at a 3-for-$60 discount.
Production time is certainly my main bottleneck, but due to the nature of 3D printing I can touch the machine for a few minutes each morning and wake up the next day to 2 completed molds.
I feel my main advantage is the high profit margin. But being new at all this, I also feel it will be incredibly hard for me to break into the market. I feel advertising on sites like Facebook will be my best bet, but I've never run an ad campaign on social media and am worried I'd waste a lot of money without achieving results.
For the time being I have a few friends interested in the product and I've been offering them at $10 each to raise small amounts of capital while I was prototyping. Now that I've settled on the first production design I'll be creating those 24/7 and building up a stock. >Anyway, I'd love to have the details of what I've laid out critiqued. Please absolutely destroy me, I have no idea what I'm doing. Advice would be nice too, but I'm more just looking to hear flaws and have holes poked in my thought process.
(3/3)
Alexander Phillips
bump
Luke Hughes
>$25 retail on a $2.12 production cost
impressive if true. what about getting more printers to fix slow production time?
price seems ok if you're adding as much value as you say. maybe even $30
Easton Roberts
Dental moulds? Dental technicians in hospitals already make these themselves. Also you need special certs to sell anything involved in the manufacture of medical devices. Needs to be free of contaminants etc.
Evan Allen
Also you need to factor other overheads like the space the printer occupies, electricity, packaging, transport, printer payback time etc.
Carter Nelson
Wait are we talking about dildos?
Andrew Powell
Thanks senpai. Technically there's a bit of electricity cost but I don't think it'll add up to much, supposedly the printer uses about as much power as a laptop when dealing with lower temperature plastics (the material is PLA, melting point of around 190 degrees celsius).
Getting a second printer could be an option someday if things were taking off and I couldn't keep up with demand. But if I were able to make $20 in profit on each one that could bring me in $1200 per month with just a single printer. Obviously a lot of that would be invested into growing the business to get those sales in the first place.
I'm also looking into various ways that I can drop the print time. I could easily get it down to 9 or even 8 hours but there would be a significant drop in quality and I'd like to build a reputation for supplying a high quality product at a more-than-fair price.
Do you know anything about running a business? This would be all online sales through something like Etsy (or my own site I guess) but I haven't looked into most of that yet and have no idea what I'll be doing for shipping methods, etc. Up until yesterday it was all about improving my design to a point where I'd actually be willing to sell it, and now I've hit that point.
>Another thing I forgot to mention: I'm very concerned about the design being stolen. Short of getting a design patent, there's not much I can do in that regard, correct? I feel like that's way beyond my reach right now.
Luke Morgan
Good guess, not dental molds though. I'd be way too concerned about regulations to go anywhere near the medical field as a new entrepreneur.
Definitely will need to take these into account. The printer sits in my bedroom in a small corner occupied by nothing but shelving so I'm not too concerned about space. Electricity would be good to calculate so I'm actually aware of it instead of just assuming it's small enough to not worry about.
Packaging and shipping, certainly
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by printer payback time? But if you mean having the printer as an investment covered by profits, it's actually been fully paid for already. I bought it back in June 2017 and immediately started learning CAD software, and began offering a design-and-print service where I create functional parts to fit a given application. Since then I've earned back more than twice the (printer value plus every permanent upgrade I've invested into it). Making custom functional parts is my main source of income at this point but it's not at all steady as I just have one client and perform the work at request.
Not dildos either, although thank you for pointing out how well this description could fit an embarrassed dildo mold salesman
Alexander Hughes
ive never shipped anything that i sold and i know nothing about patents sorry
sure its not dildos?
Logan Turner
Stopped scrolling for the DIY dildo mold.
I am disappoint.
Xavier Gray
OP here, I swear on my life it's not a fucking dildo mold. It's a simple enough "shape" that it's made of 150 lines of code. The way the language works (OpenSCAD) you make things out of cubes, cylinders, spheres. Don't think I could make a dick that way.
Wyatt Baker
>It's a simple enough "shape" that it's made of 150 lines of code. The way the language works (OpenSCAD) you make things out of cubes, cylinders, spheres. Sounds like lego pieces
Would be a lot easier to give you a useful opinion if you actually told us what it is.
Carson Gomez
Bumping again.
Is the fact that I'm not revealing the specific product causing people to not give me advice?
There are so few suppliers out there I could probably compile a list of every single one. ONE competitor has the same value prop about making one step easier for the producer, and is selling it for $10. But they don't give any size information and it's definitely much smaller than mine (and not length adjustable)..
They also have 0 sales of that product so their either new as well or somehow can't complete with the $20 mold guy
Owen Sanchez
Yes, fucking tell us. A good idea is one that you can share because it requires more than just being a good idea to give you a competitive edge.
Noah Anderson
Guess that answered my own question from , thanks.
You can make things more complicated than just Lego pieces out of such shapes by subtracting/unioning, rotating, etc. But I do see where you're coming from.
As I say in the other post, the market is so small that I feel I actually have a chance at breaking in on my own. I feel if I reveal this idea on Veeky Forums I could be creating competition in that space. But I'll consider it. Once I'm in the game and have a few sales I may even share my own (Etsy?) store name on here.
Connor Lee
> A good idea is one that you can share because it requires more than just being a good idea to give you a competitive edge
Can you elaborate on this? I'm not trolling, I truly don't understand. I was under the impression that my good idea is what gives me the competitive edge, does being copied not hurt that significantly?
Isaiah Kelly
marketing guy here. I can't provide feedback about your idea since I don't know what it is, but here's one problem that I see.
If this business is succesful, you will get fucked without protection. This is not a metaphor. There's 2 ways to protect yourself: patents and trademarks
I assume you can't patent this so let's jump straight to the trademark.
A trademark is useless without brand recognition. To build a brand takes years and tons of money, and if you are in a niche where nobody gives a shit about what brand a certain product is, you're fucked.
As soon this becomes succesful you will have to deal with copycats. Without patents and trademarks you can't do shit. They will probably have more money than you, better logistics and they will undercut your price.
Basically, even if this business is profitable, you'll only make money for 1-2 years tops.
Ryder Brown
Execution is king, I can assure you that multiple people have have the same idea as you (do you think you're so unique among 7bi people?), the difference is that they didn't do anything, because most people don't want to do anything.
In addition to that, if you think that the only barrier to entry in this market is an idea, then it's a terrible market and you just don't know enough about it to see it
William Jones
these anons are 100% correct. Ideas aren't worth shit. My team and I have been working on a product for almost 3 years with a really simple idea and we really don't give a fuck about showing to anyone. Even for a large company it will take at least 1 year to reproduce the code and at least another 6-12 months in other types of labour.
If another small team tries to copy us they have to do 3 years of work and if a large corporation tries to copy us, they would probably prefer to buy us than waste 1.5 years of development and salaries and being to market so late.
Sebastian Sullivan
Yep, not knowing what market and what value proposition, nobody can help you unfortunately.
Eli Rogers
Thanks friends. I'll refine my approach with more focus on actual strategy and come back when I have enough to share that people can make meaningful suggestions.
Blake Rogers
What are you printing? I have no desire to run my printer 24/7 for $18/day.
Dominic Ward
The name is Dr. Goldblum, Dr. David Goldblum. I've seen your trading strat and I am IMPRESSED. You got TALENT kid, I know TALENT when I see one. Tell you what: I want YOU to come working for ME. I want to make a DEAL with you. You got the STUFF, you got the GOODS. If you come ROWING for my BOAT, I'll get you a nice QUADRUPLE digit income, a nice PENTHOUSE, all the power, all the drugs, all the women, men, HOGS, dogs, that you can handle. You just NAME it, kid. I am staying at the SAVOY, we can meet for a quick UPPER-DECKER over drinks. A little note for the WISE: I like to break PHONES so don't try to take pictures of me. I like to be break BONES so be careful around me. Glad we sorted this right away.
Jason Watson
why would you 3d print the mold instead of just making 3d printed molds for molds. like, make your mold in a mold. cause i heard you like molds. seriously though.
Ryder Brooks
Adjustable mold used for baking ? Sounds like a good idea to me
Nicholas Turner
His mentality is more true with respect to SCALABLE ideas, that require an enormous amount of applied work to scale upward, this is not the case, do not tell him what it is thinking it will have no effect on your competitive edge as it possibly will
Gavin Cox
so why make a mold instead of the finished product?
Julian Powell
Are you running a Prussa? How do you like it? Ive been looking into getting one.
Christopher Cook
That would be $36 a day, they're 12 hour prints. It's not much, but at least the production phase is completely passive. One of my main concern is being able to ship orders out in a timely manner if they're eventually coming in every day.
I know you're just messing around, but the final product being cast in these molds isn't anything related to plastic, there's no point in printing a plastic version of the mold's insides (or creating a mold of the mold, obviously)
Good guess, but PLA has a glass transition temp of 60 Celsius so it's not feasible for any applications that go above 140F. Baking is pretty much out of the question.
Thanks for clearing that up! Glad to get another view.
Why would I want to make the product? I haven't innovated the product itself that these molds are producing, just various aspects of the production product. I don't hold any sort of competitive advantage over the producers, other than not having to buy my own molds.
Ian Barnes
Not a Prusa but a clone of a clone of a Prusa (Monoprice Maker Select V2). It's my first 3D printer but it's shockingly powerful. Monoprice regularly does 30% off $300 sales and you can get it for $240. It needs a few off-the-shelf upgrades before you can really dial it in but even factoring that into the price it's an incredible printer for what you pay. Would recommend.
Dylan Nelson
Nice! Ill look into that. I have no 3D print experience, but ive been CNC machining for 5 years so ive been looking for a hobby that wont cost me 20K for a machine ha.
Jaxson Thomas
Maybe you can get into contact with a manufacturer of the finished product, provide prototypes, work out a small deal to start off with?
Nicholas Kelly
The problem is these molds can be used over and over again, essentially indefinitely. Once I sell one (or a few, if multiple widths) to a customer, they'll likely never need anymore unless I come up with some revolutionary new idea.
Good luck! It's a lot of fun and there are an incredible amount of resources, some especially great online communities specifically for the Prusa i3 and it's clones.
Carson Butler
Thank you for your insight! Good luck on your business endeavors. I see 3D printing making a huge impact on manufacturing in the next 10 years. Might even put my CNCs out of work someday ;)
Jackson Kelly
i tried something similar to this when the makerbot2 came out.
consumer 3d printers are much to slow
just take the CAD file to a local staples/office depot. They offer 3d printing now
>I've spent the last few weeks creating prototypes and I've settled on a design which offers significant improvement over anything I've seen on the market. It has one major improvement in ease of use which makes one step easier for the producer Can you patent it?
