Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

I see so much stuff like bespoke bicycles and clothes made by 'craftsmen' in the USA. Maybe something like that industry but for kitchen appliances would be cool.

> 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 could it do if the War Powers Act were invoked?

Or, am I just way too much of a simpleton to be able to see potential?

I also like buying things made locally, restricting the aperture of a product's origin to its absolute smallest possible in relation to my residence. I've even found tools made in my state!

Whether or not you should try is up to you.

But it is possible. Companies CAN compete with low-wage low-regulation areas but usually only on the high end.

You can buy toasters from Ritter that are made in Germany and they retail for around $200.

After a very cursory search I found a 1939 Sears catalog that listed an old-fashioned (a heating element surrounded by A-frame to hold the toast) toaster for $0.89 and a "Deluxe Automatic Toaster" for $8.95. A "Deluxe Automatic Toaster" is the kind that everyone buys today with adjustable toasting and automatic pop-up.

$8.95 in 1939 is... $200.

So you might want to start by doing some research into what people might want in a product once the price trends towards the high end of the market. My gut tells me, just based my desires and products that are still successfully being manufactured in the US that simplicity, robustness, and repairability are all extremely high, and wifi-enabled smartshit is very, VERY low on the "want" scale.

Products like Vornado air circulators (dumb), Bunn coffee makers (dumb), and Red Wing boots (dumb) are all made domestically and have all been on the market for decades and cheap imports haven't killed them off yet-- and they are all simple, robust, and repairable.

So DO NOT TRY TO MAKE THE JUICERO OF TOASTERS.

Make a residential version of the Waring commercial toasters, something with good industrial design, simplicity, and repairability, made domestically (Waring moved production of their 4-slice toasters overseas long ago).

Someone who spends $350 on Red Wing boots is willing to spend that much because they WILL get them resoled.

Someone willing to spend $200 on a toaster probably attempts to estimate how long it will last, and is smart enough to know that a wifi chip or microcontroller is an unnecessary complication.

I work in a field that makes physical things, but not mass-produced things. One pitfall I have observed with software folks moving in to manufacturing, such as programmers getting an MBA and PMP and moving into management is that the amount of time and money it takes to actually make a real physical object is almost incomprehensible to them.

Also incomprehensible are the very real and very important quality control and safety components to manufacturing.

Of course, if you worked on software in a safety-critical field this is old news.

Sounds like the next Juicero potential. Maybe they can sell more if they make it "smart" so it can post a tweet about all of your toasting adventures. Then they'd be on HN. Oh, of course it'd have to be written in Rust

I 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 analog computer programmed by human experts. (Ok, its usually a bimetal strip but it is placed so that the cooling of the moist bread keeps it from going off and your lighter-darker input is biasing when it considers the toast done.)

Tear apart some toasters. There won't be anything in a modern cheap toaster that isn't absolutely required. Ask yourself why everything is the way it is.

Research the UL requirements. I have the corporate 2 pound copper ball that had to be dropped on things from prescribed heights and not cause malfunction. Make sure you can hit this targets with what you think you can build. Also check the CE, they might have more modern rules.

Be ready for litigation. Toasters catch fire. The toaster moguls were horrified whenever they saw someone's toaster under a cabinet. Decades after selling the business they were still being sued by mesothelioma suits for things like a repairman that got lung cancer and repaired home appliances, so he probably might have worked on one of their 1920's models with asbestos insulation. Don't let it stop you, but put the backup insurance into the expenses.