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I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
31–40 of 456 posts
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire US of A is free R&D for Chinese manufacturers. In fact the entirety of China is free R&D for itself as companies in China copy each other. China is the apex of the open source philosophy taken to the maximum extent.
> The entire US of A is free R&D for Chinese manufacturers. All of China/Asia/Africa are free manufacturing for the West… Of course, the view that they don’t innovate and only knockoff the West is also hilariously false.
>All of China/Asia/Africa are free manufacturing for the West…
Not free. But extremely cheap.
>Of course, the view that they don’t innovate and only knockoff the West is also hilariously false.
Of course not. I never made this claim. But in China, the incentive to innovate is much lower due to lack of enforcement of intellectual property rights. So of course in terms of cost/benefit ratio every individual in China is more incentivized to copy someone else's innovation rather than innovate themselves. It's the most logical move.
It's sort of a strange parasitic symbiosis between the US and China that in theory should never work. When China steals ideas and manufacturing from the US and tries to sell it back to the US, one would think there's trade imbalance that would cause the whole thing to break down.
The thing that keeps it afloat is marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product but issues with marketing and QC prevent them from effectively selling it. So what happens is the US uses China to manufacture and then they sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost to everyone in the world including China.
Everybody gets fucked in this scenario except for US corporations. But at the same time everybody makes enough money such that the whole economic cycle doesn't fall apart.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#33If you want to save space why hang your clothes? Stacking them is easy and does not require another object to be used.
Some clothes do better hung up.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#34Sadly, the design is most likely going to be copied, mass produced and available on Temu/Amazon/Alibaba within the next several weeks. Kick Starter is basically free R&D for Chinese manufacturers.
Well, wide-spread copying might be 'sadly' for her, but it would be good for consumers.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire US of A is free R&D for Chinese manufacturers. In fact the entirety of China is free R&D for itself as companies in China copy each other. China is the apex of the open source philosophy taken to the maximum extent.
o/s is where you share your designs freely, not just rip others off. China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets.
There are non-GPL licenses in open source. So MIT license does allow you to 'just rip off'.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#36Isn't the point of a coat hanger to hang your clothes uncrumpled? If you're compromising on that aspect, wouldn't wall hooks fit most use cases? For places where space is at a premium a normal coat hanger on a telescopic rod would be a viable alternative in many cases, i.e. have the clothes rotate almost 90°, and mostly overlap. You can also stack the coat hangers vertically, e.g. with cheap plastic brackets like the…
Stacking vertically does kinda get there but there are some clear downsides. You can't access clothes in the back without taking off the whole stack. And it's visually a lot worse: you're just looking at like 5 shirts flattened on the wall instead of a neat line of flat sleeves.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#37Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design. I was also surprised something like this didn't exist already. But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.
Hopefully she already started the patent process, otherwise it’s either 1) an expired patent 2) an existing patent 3) she actually invented it but won’t profit at all from it
Patenting this for her portfolio maybe, I can design and print a folding plastic hanger in 1 piece in less than 24 hours. A mold not far behind if i reached out to a shop...
you raise an interesting point I think gets asked in nearly every YC interview. How do you build your moat or stop any big players from competing with a very similar product.
I think she actually misidentified the problem she was trying to solve.
In her case, imo, her "secret sauce" would be the space saving clothes rack/furniture AND matching hangers.
There is no solution with her hanger in normal clothes racks. so her hanger product actually serves no purpose.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#38Isn't the point of a coat hanger to hang your clothes uncrumpled? If you're compromising on that aspect, wouldn't wall hooks fit most use cases? For places where space is at a premium a normal coat hanger on a telescopic rod would be a viable alternative in many cases, i.e. have the clothes rotate almost 90°, and mostly overlap. You can also stack the coat hangers vertically, e.g. with cheap plastic brackets like the…
Stacking vertically does kinda get there but there are some clear downsides. You can't access clothes in the back without taking off the whole stack. And it's visually a lot worse: you're just looking at like 5 shirts flattened on the wall instead of a neat line of flat sleeves.
You don't have to take the whole stock off the hook or rack, you just grab one of the hangers and move the item to the side.
Or (in the case of that cheap AliExpress plastic dongle) pull the bottom part up and away from the wall, and detach the clothes item with your other hand.
And yeah, maybe it's less pretty or whatever, but that's my point unthread: since this isn't contrasted with existing viable alternatives the sales pitch is rather incoherent.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully she already started the patent process, otherwise it’s either 1) an expired patent 2) an existing patent 3) she actually invented it but won’t profit at all from it
Patenting this for her portfolio maybe, I can design and print a folding plastic hanger in 1 piece in less than 24 hours. A mold not far behind if i reached out to a shop... you raise an interesting point I think gets asked in nearly every YC interview. How do you build your moat or stop any big players from competing with a very similar product. I think she actually misidentified the problem she was trying to solve.…
Her Kickstarter does have tiers with brackets/shelves, so yeah, that's already there too.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#40Sadly, the design is most likely going to be copied, mass produced and available on Temu/Amazon/Alibaba within the next several weeks. Kick Starter is basically free R&D for Chinese manufacturers.
Well, wide-spread copying might be 'sadly' for her, but it would be good for consumers.
In the short term, but in the long term it can kill new ideas before they are shared.