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A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

countthings.com

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Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#11

Post by steinuil »

jarenmf wrote: post #4

They are using an app https://countthings.com/ This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1]. [1] https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates

> This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive

It's easy to do it in an unreliable way. 1000$ a year doesn't seem very expensive if your business depends on it and you're saving a lot of time like in the OP.

> and limited with the templates for things it can count

It seems very specialized towards certain businesses, if you have a specific use case that isn't covered I'm guessing you can probably contact them and see if they can add it?

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#12

Post by umangrathi »

innocenat wrote: post #8
raverbashing wrote: post #3

Counting elements from pictures is how old again now? 20 years? 30 years? Sure, it's more reliable and you can run it on a phone. But maybe this could have been solved 20 years ago. (Yes, it might not have been as convenient, but for something that apparently is so important, it could have been applied earlier) Japan, a country which in the 80s was synonymous with technological innovation seems to have slowed down dr…

People outside IT field generally don't even know how counting thing from picture is very trivial computer vision task. This is common everywhere in the world.

Are there any alternatives? Or how one should approach making an app from scratch?

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#15

Post by morsanu »

steinuil wrote: post #11
jarenmf wrote: post #4

They are using an app https://countthings.com/ This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1]. [1] https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates

> This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive It's easy to do it in an unreliable way. 1000$ a year doesn't seem very expensive if your business depends on it and you're saving a lot of time like in the OP. > and limited with the templates for things it can count It seems very specialized towards certain businesses, if you have a specific use case that isn't covered I'm guessing you can probably co…

You are totally right. We usually work with businesses that have a counting need and we create a new template for their use case.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#16

Post by voiper1 »

6510 wrote: post #10

terrible example. You can just make a square from pearls and multiply. If you need to do a lot of it make a box with numbers on the side, tilt it then count and add the remaining row. The weight is probably not irregular enough to justify the tool. There are better examples on the website. Pricing is just silly. I'm sure it is worth that much to some 0.001% of the potential market.

The pictures show them as different sizes.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#17

Post by morsanu »

sva_ wrote: post #9
jarenmf wrote: post #4

They are using an app https://countthings.com/ This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1]. [1] https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates

Seems like a low price if it saves labor costs like in the OP. But they can only ask that price because it's such an obscure niche and other people probably didn't even consider that something like that is needed. Good chance they'll soon have competition. edit: The app has 500k+ downloads and is rated at 3.5/5. People seem to complain about the fact that the templates are so limited. Real opportunity right there I'd…

It really depends how much time they are losing while manually counting. For most, the price is not high, the employees doing the counting can now focus on other more valuable tasks. We also have pack of 24hour licenses that they can activate when it's inventory time, for example.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#18

Post by mytailorisrich »

jarenmf wrote: post #4

They are using an app https://countthings.com/ This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1]. [1] https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates

This is a B2B app.

I can imagine $100 a month for having an instant count so simply being a bargain for many.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#19

Post by sellyme »

notimetorelax wrote: post #7

To counter other’s points on pricing - in the end it’s a question of utility vs price. 1k$ per year to cut time to count by 80% may be a great deal to many.

Of course, but $100 per year to do the same is an even better deal.

I can only assume that their support for custom requests is absolutely incredible, because it should be pretty trivial for any potential competitor to put up a similar concept for a tenth of the price and still be making a profit.

But that's always the case with enterprise software I suppose. The improvement from 98% to 100% "quality" (whatever that means) is well worth a drastic price hike for most businesses.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#20

Post by morsanu »

jarenmf wrote: post #4

They are using an app https://countthings.com/ This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1]. [1] https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates

Our app is mostly targeted to businesses. Besides counting, we also have a ton of other features (e.g. forms, reports, integrations, etc).
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