From a financial perspective, what were your biggest challenges? What was the working capital cycle like? Were you forced to do a certain level of minimum order quantities and did the cash constraint limit other decisions?
What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
151–160 of 276 posts
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#152I hope the author can break down the recommendations in a future post. I'd love to learn how to build this kind of hardware (what tools are needed), how to iterate on the results, how to find a supplier. Also it'd be interesting to know what the author means by having an counterfeit strategy.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#153Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…
AND shipping.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#154A question: Are you still below any significant scale thresholds and are there any you dread crossing? I ask this because I tend to find things are simple until they are not. e.g. it's easy to write an e-commerce platform until you have to deal with shipping, duty, tax, tax on shipping, etc., for multiple countries. There are scale thresholds I am aware of in hardware that I have not yet run up against. For example I…
Having too many orders is a good problem to have (unless it gets cloned). Worst case, you pay an external contractor to sort compliance/fulfillment/whatever.
I guess, though I am not sure that this truly is the worst case, if some new compliance thing required a redesign or worse.
You hear about firms that go over certain thresholds, get noticed and then find out that their production facility is no longer "small" or exempt for example.
Some amount of defensiveness in planning and design can mitigate but I'm interested to know if there are thresholds I didn't know about.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey man, you made a successful product, wrote a great article, and are now getting attention for it. You don't need to respond to every person who wants to nit pick at your title :) I think there's a lot of people talking past each other here. Sourcing parts internationally, preventing counterfeiting, slow iteration time, inventory management...all this logistical stuff is hard enough that the conventional wisdom in…
I wanted to ask the exact same question. 2500 is a very low order size for injection molding am I wrong?
Not super low. It starts to make sense around 1000 units. I’ve gotten runs of 2500 done domestically. But it is pretty hard to find domestic injection molders for consumer work - they will give you an FU quote at best because they cater to high volumes and industrial customers.
And they’ll make the molds in China anyway. Chinese molders are hungry — they will work with low volumes and offer a bunch of integrated services. But if you don’t know what you’re doing you will end up with bad parts over schedule.
Easiest way to get started is to use ProtoLabs. They charge lower prices on molds in exchange for higher part cost, are way faster than China, and have way better customer service.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#156This is so weird. I was in the process of trying to build something almost identical! Congrats, and good luck! I'll have to buy one now.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#157Very happy to hear about your success! I'm curious to hear more about your anti-counterfeit strategies beyond just enabling encryption. I'm curious if you feel like anti-counterfeit and open source firmware are mutually exclusive. I made the choice to embrace an open firmware approach on my project while keeping the hardware closed, while knowing that if someone tries hard enough they can completely reverse engineer…
Will do a write up on injection molding and anti-counterfeit!
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes the anti-counterfeit is primarily app enforced (though entirely offline). I do use the firmware encryption features of the ESP32-S3, whatever that is worth, and the firmware is tied to the HSM.
What happens when app is outdated and can't be installed to current android os?
The device does not require the app. It still records MIDI 24/7 to sdcard.
It's more the opposite. The app requires a genuine device.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#159From a financial perspective, what were your biggest challenges? What was the working capital cycle like? Were you forced to do a certain level of minimum order quantities and did the cash constraint limit other decisions?
500 units was my first run, and it worked out really well. None of the suppliers complained about that order size. I recommend starting with a smaller quantity until you've validated the market. The "economies of scale" between 100, 500, or 1000, units are not all that dramatic. Perhaps 30% cost difference.
I was originally planning to do 4000 units as my first run. Boy I'm glad I started to run out of money and cut it way back. That would have been way too much as a first run.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#160Very happy to hear about your success! I'm curious to hear more about your anti-counterfeit strategies beyond just enabling encryption. I'm curious if you feel like anti-counterfeit and open source firmware are mutually exclusive. I made the choice to embrace an open firmware approach on my project while keeping the hardware closed, while knowing that if someone tries hard enough they can completely reverse engineer…
Will do a write up on injection molding and anti-counterfeit!
[deleted]