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Old 02-22-2016, 07:39 PM   #7
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Join Date: Nov 2010
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The design part will be the easy part.

The hard part is having access to low cost/high quality aluminum. Can you afford to buy in large enough quantity to get the price low enough?

And do you have access to high quality machining at a low cost? I don't remember Canada as being considered a particularly low cost labor country.

Will you have enough cash to build a large quantity at one time so the setup and other fixed costs of the machining can be amortized over a large quantity? Machining a small quantity of parts can be incredibly expensive.

Add in the cost for taking orders, managing orders, shipping orders, return orders, customer damaged goods coming back for free replacement (you need to count on this happening and if you don't give them free replacement parts they will flame you on every internet forum imaginable and ruin your reputation), answering customer questions, managing inventory, advertising, and the cost of your time to manage the business and you'll be hard pressed to make much of a profit.

There is a reason why Tarett and Rennline sell so many products - each additional product lets them amortize the fixed costs of the business over more products and revenue. With only a single product and a low volume, even with a very low overhead it will be very hard to make a real profit.

I say all of this based on my experience of owning/operating RoboTop for several years.

Do yourself a favor and build out the business in a spreadsheet using firm costs (quotes from suppliers and hours from similar labor) before you do anything.

And it probably needs to be 20% better/nicer than these for 30% less (currently $1,000 so you'll need to be around $700 sell price):

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Last edited by thstone; 02-22-2016 at 07:58 PM.
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