91–100 of 464 posts
To mix in with other's comments. It's always good to have a target in sight, but building a physical product with no experience will be a long, expensive journey. I make physical and digital products as a consultant, the first thing I tell entrepreneurs is get to your first prototype. Not even an MVP, just something functional with the core features. Some times these are partial prototypes that work out various sub-s…
I have seen the lack of an American made toaster appear in several venues, so there is pretty clearly some interest in this topic. How many would buy one is another matter. I worked for a company that made customized versions of relatively basic electrical devices and they didn't spend much money on it (couple thousand for the prototypes and the devices they disassembled to copy). The one pitfall they did note was th…
That is really interesting and it mirrors my intuition: there are 0 toasters on the market that have "Made in the USA" stamped on them. I think that there may be a decent sized market of people who will pay extra for that stamp on a normal household toaster.
To mix in with other's comments. It's always good to have a target in sight, but building a physical product with no experience will be a long, expensive journey. I make physical and digital products as a consultant, the first thing I tell entrepreneurs is get to your first prototype. Not even an MVP, just something functional with the core features. Some times these are partial prototypes that work out various sub-s…
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.
Also I'm making the assumption it is for profit since they started off with "I'm wanting to start a business"
I don't know about toaster ovens but I've been considering if people would start building 'smart appliances' but with stock open source software. Eg A 'smart tv' with stock linux or something like that. For eg. I like Amazon echo as a device, but I don't like the Amazon software ecosystem around it. Could you produce an open device with the same hardware capabilities?
All I want is to tweak a few programs according to my relative cost of water vs energy, my personal value of time, my typical dish dirtiness, etc. The built-in programs make all the wrong assumptions.
There's no reason I should need to contact a server in Virginia, much less China, to do that.
Also, to OP's point, a narrow-slot toaster. I don't eat bagels or texas toast, I don't need wide-slots that waste energy and take longer. I just want a plain old single-function narrow slot toaster, which is apparently even more rare than the mythical single-roll of toilet paper. I would _happily_ pay 5x for one made in the USA.
I'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?
Have you looked at other high quality toaster makers abroad? Dualit is in the UK and has been manufacturing high quality, hand built toaster for a long time, but most consumers would balk at the prices they ask for their appliances and I doubt you as a startup would be able to manufacture a toaster any cheaper. https://www.dualit.com/collections/classic-toasters https://www.dualit.com/collections/spares Frankly, I do…
I have seen the lack of an American made toaster appear in several venues, so there is pretty clearly some interest in this topic. How many would buy one is another matter. I worked for a company that made customized versions of relatively basic electrical devices and they didn't spend much money on it (couple thousand for the prototypes and the devices they disassembled to copy). The one pitfall they did note was th…
That is really interesting and it mirrors my intuition: there are 0 toasters on the market that have "Made in the USA" stamped on them. I think that there may be a decent sized market of people who will pay extra for that stamp on a normal household toaster.
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 a…
I'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…
>lawyers make it impossible to go to market without being sued, This would be my biggest concern. The potential field full of landmines that is the patent process would give me pause. Not spending the money to properly research because of bootstrapping the process could ultimately be more expensive if some other company comes after you for patent infringement. Whatever your idea is, I would definitely do some investi…
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 disagree. The high end of the market is a proven niche and the target high-end buyer has demonstrated a willingness to spend freely on premium grade products. The is a reason why LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) is one of the most successful and valuable companies in the world. I'm not saying it's easy. Any business endeavor, regardless of product market fit, still requires execution. Easier said than done, but m…
Having the world's largest pool of investment capital and one of the most liberal bankruptcy systems in the world also helps. If there's anything Americans are more willing to do than risk losing their own money, it's to risk losing other people's money :)
> The is a reason why LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) is one of the most successful and valuable companies in the world.
It very much isn't because they sell premium quality products. They sell luxury products. Luxury branding has very little to do with product quality or performance. Also, the US doesn't have a competitive advantage in manufacturing home appliances. They actually have a competitive disadvantage, as the most capable manufacturing capacity for these products doesn't exist in the US anymore.