Would selling in kit form change liabilities significantly?
Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
131–140 of 464 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#132I am a Software Engineer like you. I got started in making physical products in 2017 first with 3d printing, and today I do design for manufacturing.
This might surprise some here, but if you can do 100% of the design and get good at it, it's possible to bootstrap a hardware company, even as a solo founder. I know it because I've done it.
However I intentionally started with physical products with no electronics in them. I also tried manufacturing in the USA initially but quickly realized it to be uneconomical and too slow, especially for bootstrapped consumer products.
My advice: 1. make a breadboard prototype @ home & design the product on your computer 2. have prototype parts made in China until you are satisfied with the final assembly 3. once you have pre-order volume, have the molds & dies made in China, import the tooling in the USA and setup your own shop.
The other thing is getting good at Industrial design takes a few years, it's not necessarily intuitive -- you have to understand the processes that you are designing for and get good at making drawings and hiring shops. It won't happen in a year unless you just focus on one part/process, so I would team up with someone who has that experience.
Feel free to contact me, info on my profile, happy to chat & help out.
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#133Given all of the regulatory obstacles and logistical headaches surrounding manufactured products these days, I personally feel that mechanical/electrical entrepreneurship is a path to ruin. Since you're in software already, would it not make more sense to create a strictly-digital product? Keep your day job, work at your own pace on software products (ideally with a partner), and see whether the market actually wants…
Enter Elon Musk with Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, & Neuralink... he seems to have it figured out
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
no, a toaster is actually pretty simple lol. the issue is that production at scale for millions of customers, for practically anything at all, is not simple. all of the things you point to are true, but they are true of many other goods and products. also, you are assuming they need or care about profit.
If they don't care about profit, it's not a business, it's a hobby.
Not necessarily?
There's nothing to say that you need to make a profit. If all the employees are paid a decent amount, all your other costs are covered, and there's revenue unspent, you could just reduce the prices a bit.
The idea that any enterprise needs to make a profit (let alone an endlessly increasing profit) is a destructive fallacy.
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#135Maybe off-topic, but having recently repaired a cheap-ass toaster, maybe some insights:
When you get a cheap toaster, they will probably have a design flaw: when the toaster pops up, there will be arcing. This means that the toaster will only last a few years. My repair was in this section. The heat eventually desoldered the mains pad on the PCB. You can maybe repair it once and get another year out of it, after that the PCB will be very charred and brittle. The fact that the PCB gets toasted a little bit every time probably isn't great for your health either, so I think I wouldn't recommend repairing toasters with this flaw, unless you have some clever plan to get around this problem. My new toaster is a name-brand one. And I don't see any light when it pops up, so maybe it's fine. I've also seen other name-brand toasters that were only replaced because they got filthy -- due to improper maintenance I must add :p
My toaster was mostly made of metal that was bent into the shape of a toaster, plus plastic on the outside. To disassemble it, you have to use pliers to bend some interlocking metal bits into a different shape. That should be pretty cheap to manufacture! The pop-op logic was very simple, not even sure if it used a chip or not. If it did, probably nothing digital, maybe just a 555. Single-sided cheap circuit board.
I want the following functions: stop button, extra long button, short button, single slot operation.
Most people are probably comfortable with a toaster that just lets you adjust the duration. But if you add sensors that can reliably(!) detect how much browner your toast or bread has become compared to when it was inserted, go for it. If that sensor goes haywire after two years, then don't bother IMO. If you can add odor or smoke sensors that react when the toast is burnt, that might be nice too. (Course they might go off when you run the toaster for the first time to burn off the lubricant(?), so that may add some complexity)
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#136I do this for a living. Setting up a small operation and doing the physical actions of designing, manufacturing and selling the toasters is the easy, fun and obvious part. I figure what your looking for, advice wise, is what's not obvious. A few things you'll need: -Product liability insurance, this isn't isn't easy or inexpensive to get. You need to have a lot of the below in place to get it. - UL certification (or…
>I'm sure I'm missing some things
Manufacturing tooling and test jigs
A quality management system
Support and RMA systems
PLM software although you could probably get away with excel for a while
> UL certification / FCC
A lot of other certs if you want to sell into overseas markets... Luckily the US market is pretty big
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#137I married into toaster moguls. When they sold out in '97, domestic toasters had been infeasible for years already. And this was for a company where all the knowledge, equipment, and facilities had beed paid for many decades before. (They invented the electric pop-up toaster for certain definitions of electric pop-up toaster.) Toasters are refined brilliance, if done right. The concept of "done" is computed using an a…
I worked at a small aircraft company and one of the oldtimers told me lawsuits almost sank the company multiple times. As human transport, people WILL die in your product. Whether it's your fault or theirs, the lawsuits are a huge amount of money and no less important than the engineering quality. And so the company got lawyers and even a lawyer for president, not an engineer, and is still doing really well.
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#138I've had a similar idea, except in addition to toasters, it's midsize pickup trucks, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers... What I've found is that regulations make it impossible to sell simple machines, labor costs make it impossible to compete on price, lawyers make it impossible to go to market without being sued, and consumers who say they want reliable, well-made goods will balk and buy cheap stuff en masse wh…
I think you need to aim for a luxury-ish niche, or at least a occupy a space where people feel like they're buying a piece of luxury, that's aspirational, where people know they're paying over the odds and that's part of the feel good factor of buying it. A toaster might well be a good space for that - cheap enough that it can be expensive in relative terms without being out of reach. But figuring out the marketing o…
I have a theory that anything that takes permanent, visible-realestate in the household has someone of a niche for people wanting tastefully designed things. In essence, things that do not appear "disposable" as so many kitchen appliances do. People pay extra for designer hot water pots. However purely aesthetic upgrade products will need serious work to maintain differentiation.
Dyson is a more glaring example (fans, vacuums, hair dryers), albeit with expensively achieved differentiation on engineering and manufacturing quality.
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#139I've had a similar idea, except in addition to toasters, it's midsize pickup trucks, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers... What I've found is that regulations make it impossible to sell simple machines, labor costs make it impossible to compete on price, lawyers make it impossible to go to market without being sued, and consumers who say they want reliable, well-made goods will balk and buy cheap stuff en masse wh…
>washing machines Among your examples I think this one is interesting. Speed Queen is regarded as among the best washing machines + dryers and they are made in the US. They are extremely well built, they feel really sturdy to use and also are known for being extremely reliable. I guess what I'm imagining is the Speed Queen of toasters..
They’re also known to use a ton of water, be extremely inefficient, and destroy your clothing much faster than a modern washer. Fetishizing “the good old simple times” isn’t going to get us to better products.
Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?
#140I've had a similar idea, except in addition to toasters, it's midsize pickup trucks, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers... What I've found is that regulations make it impossible to sell simple machines, labor costs make it impossible to compete on price, lawyers make it impossible to go to market without being sued, and consumers who say they want reliable, well-made goods will balk and buy cheap stuff en masse wh…
> [...] and consumers who say they want reliable, well-made goods will balk and buy cheap stuff en masse when it comes down to the wire. And I've never really had much of a problem with cheap toasters being unreliable in the first place. But I guess there are people who do?
Best toaster I've ever owned is a no-name I bought for about $20 at Lowes when they had them in stock for Christmas season. It makes perfect toast, and does a great job on bagles also.