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Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#301

Post by yanellena »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #139
Dig1t wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Those are two sides of the same coin though. More durable machines (solid, thick components for example) will be heavier and in the example of a washing machine will require more energy to move. Washing machines have also become much cheaper than 40 years ago, making them more of a disposable item.

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#302

Post by FirmwareBurner »

_tom_ wrote: post #212
SoftTalker wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I bought an expensive, name brand, toaster. It's crap.

"Expensive and name brand" doesn't mean anything in the toaster world. They all come out of the same Chinese OEM factory with different badges on. Same with most comodity white goods like washing machines, fridges, microwave ovens, etc.

If you want good toasters you need to hunt older models from 30+ years ago.

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#304

Post by welzel »

I like to encourage you to go on this adventure to learn why a toaster made in USA could be the single most horrifying idea a founder can have. I would like to encourage you to become a founder and milk every insight out of this idea you can get. Don´t walk away now, go all in and learn in order to protect you from sinking years of your life into a bad idea (Spoiler: your next idea might be even worse)

1. research the cost of producing a production-ready physical product. You need millions of up-front investment and a couple of years of funding.

2. research how a toaster is sold. Spoiler: you need attention and access to a target audience. What would be your customer acquisition cost to sell 100K units?

3. what is the customer lifetime value of a person who bought your toaster? Spoiler: your competition might be a 10 USD made-in-china piece of crap, so people a willing to spend 25 USD on something that is not dead-on-arrival. How much do you need to charge for a made-in-USA toaster? 99 USD? 299 USD?

4. how much do you need to spend on branding and marketing to get the value of "made-in-USA" attached to the toaster? 10M? 50M?

5. how will your life look like, when you manage to pull this off to sell 10K toasters? My assumption: it will be a constant nightmare/living hell, as you now have a mountain of dept, high running costs and many people asking you to sell the next 100k toasters...

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#305

Post by nmeofthestate »

benj111 wrote: post #268
floren wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When too many OOOOLOOO brand toasters start fires, they just close their Amazon profile and create a new one selling FOLGARP brand toasters. You can't have quite that level of untouchability as a US manufacturer, so you have to do it right.

Is FOLGARP an IKEA thing?

You're thinking of FÖLGARP

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#306

Post by gadders »

dylan604 wrote: post #54
starky wrote: post #40

I think you are greatly over-estimating how many people would be willing to pay the cost of a North American made toaster. This would require an absolute ton of capital to do it on anything above a craft scale. The challenges of design, testing, certification (very important for a device that could burn your house down), manufacturing, supply chain, and support that are all specialized careers in themselves. I've got…

> I think you are greatly over-estimating how many people would be willing to pay the cost of a North American made toaster. Who wants a $75+ toaster just because it was "Made In USA"? Is it going to make toast better than a $15 toaster "Hecho In Mexico" or whatever other country? Even making the infrastructure to make a toaster would not do much in the way of increasing the manufacturing abilities in the US. What co…

Dualit toasters are over £100 in the UK and are pretty popular. We have one that is over 15 years old and still working.

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#307

Post by prepend »

I would like to buy a good toaster. I’d easily pay $100, maybe more.

It seems all the toaster models are pretty crappy. They’re hard to clean. It’s hard to guess how to set things to toast properly.

But it’s acceptable. I don’t like using my toaster, but I do.

I think there’s some small market in improving things that everyone uses because they must, but makes people angry to use (cable, phone service, air travel, toasters, etc).

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#308

Post by beAbU »

herbst wrote: post #230
sumoboy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't use any plastic parts, over-engineer the whole thing internally, no wifi, just a dial for temp and lever to engage. All these fancy toasters still can't toast bread.

If you do WiFi, do it right. Nobody wants to install a toaster app but many Devs would enjoy a little API for their toasters

I am honestly struggling to find any use case to an iot toaster. Keen to understand what you have in mind.

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#309

Post by crabmusket »

tim333 wrote: post #291
arghwhat wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toasters are refined brilliance, if done right. The concept of "done" is computed using an analog computer programmed by human experts. That hasn't been the case in ages. Modern cheap toasters use a dedicated toaster chip (... yes), which is a plain timer but with built-in retained heat compensation for when the toaster is used back-to-back. Fewer components equals cheaper toaster. A very fancy toaster would have s…

Gosh I didn't know there were toaster chips but it seems so. One here 8 pin package with pin 3 being the bagel pin. https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/PT8A2514A.pdf

Seeing "BAGEL" on a pinout diagram is very cute.

> As input, requires a positive pulse to active "Bagel" function.

> As output, gives a "Bagel" function indicator, active high.

Re: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

#310

Post by boppo1 »

bigfudge wrote: post #225
wegfawefgawefg wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you, but arent you suspicious of the Big Toasta superconglomerate.

Although I don’t want random delay incendiary devices either, I do have some sympathy with OP. The net effect of all regulations like this means large classes of business are not feasible unless you have substantial capital. And availability of capital for good ideas is not at all evenly distributed in our society (the UK at least). This is just one more way that we are going to entrench low social mobility. Note als…

>going to entrench low social mobility

Pretty sure we're already there.

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