Purchased. I love hearing stories from people who just got up off the couch and did something.
Congratulations! Can't wait to play!
Making a Physical Product
41–50 of 134 posts
Re: Making a Physical Product
#42I liked this article and would like to see more like it. With the maker movement, Kickstarter, 3D printing, etc there now seems to be a lot more interest in making physical products. But the isn't a lot of public information about the costs and processes involved, compared to say the number of tutorials on how to build web app or a mobile app. I noticed that the actual cost of the 'product' is less than 40% of the to…
Do you mind if I ask what was the quantity for your injection molded part, and what company you ended up going with. Last time I tried to price injection molding it was way too much.
I'll have to check at work tomorrow, but fairly low, maybe 1000 - 2000. It was a plastic case with one bottom and two tops. The company we used has these jigs that can make molds out of a combination of custom parts and generic parts to keep machining to a minimum. The molds only work in their machines, so you don't end up owning the tooling, but I still think it's worth it.
Also did a plastic clip with a live hinge, and I think a steel tool was under $7,000 and parts under a $1.
Compared to 3D printing, we hit the break even point at around 100 cases.
I was just surprised since the last time I was involved in manufacturing was the 90s and was paying $100,000 for tooling for office telephones.
Re: Making a Physical Product
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mind if I ask what was the quantity for your injection molded part, and what company you ended up going with. Last time I tried to price injection molding it was way too much.
My dad runs a small plastic injection molding company. He's got a single bread and butter product they make, but he's always looking for new ideas. Is there a way for people to easily connect with manufacturers in the USA? My dads shop is really small and hungry vs some shop you could find in a google search with lots of machines (and expensive)
A solution to this problem is EXACTLY what my co-founder and I are working on right now. We're working to be Match.com for custom-made parts, and highly specialized shops like your dad's are the ideal use case for our product. Would you be willing to talk directly or put me in touch with your dad? We'd love to help out any way we can.
Re: Making a Physical Product
#44I liked this article and would like to see more like it. With the maker movement, Kickstarter, 3D printing, etc there now seems to be a lot more interest in making physical products. But the isn't a lot of public information about the costs and processes involved, compared to say the number of tutorials on how to build web app or a mobile app. I noticed that the actual cost of the 'product' is less than 40% of the to…
Do you mind if I ask what was the quantity for your injection molded part, and what company you ended up going with. Last time I tried to price injection molding it was way too much.
He says in the article: "5,000 dice + shipping: $1,808 ($0.36 per dice, enough dice for 333 sets)"
Re: Making a Physical Product
#45Have you considered selling these in Target or Walmart, or perhaps specialty stores?
Why did I get downvoted? It seems like a legimate question about the process?
Re: Making a Physical Product
#46For your next run you should shop around for a different tube supplier, it's a huge portion of your unit cost (24%) and I bet you can drop its price by at least half.
Re: Making a Physical Product
#47Really cool to see the numbers and congrats on making the product!
One nit to emphasize the value in basic accounting knowledge for others when going down the manufacturing route: it's $11.37 _gross_ margin (aka gross profit, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin ), not _net_ profit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin ). While this may sound silly and academic, net confers a sense of finality -- it includes all costs, marketing, discounts to sell remnant inventory, depreciations... everything. Learning this distinction will also introduce you to inventory management, promotion cycles, and all sorts of other crazy business skills to help you get to the next level in building a game business. There are hundreds of years of wisdom built up about manufacturing that all has to funnel through.... accounting...
For example, having >50% net profit is fantastic for manufacturing! Having >50% gross profit is on par for low-scale, specialty products. Jon's 11.37 is a gross profit and on par. Knowing nothing about this specific market, the standard advice in this case is to focus on growing the market rather than reducing costs at this point. (This is a business-model version of the 'don't scale prematurely' mantra you hear in tech considering his price of $20/game doesn't seem insane).
Back-of-the-envelope calculations show the gross revenue for all 333 sets is $6,660. Assuming he's included all costs, this means:
Revenue: $6,660
Costs: $4,660
==================
Net Profit: $2,000
Another way to look at this business is he would get a return of $2,000 for $4,660 in capital (since he has 1 production run), or 50% ROI... also not too shabby (if sold at retail price).
And yet another way to look at this is manufacturing the product over 8 hours yields $2000, or $250/hour... better than most. It's unclear how much time he spent on the admin and design tasks, but since this is a labor of love... let's assume it was leisure time and free :) It also means a second production run may get him an economy scale from re-using the design and website assets for even more $$$/hour.
All-in-all, this looks great across the board, and I wish the Jon the best of luck in bringing Space Dice to the world!
Re: Making a Physical Product
#48"In space, noone can hear you roll! The fate of the galaxy is in your hands, as you race your friends to create (or destroy) planets. Who will be the first to 10? Only the dice know." Ouch, two errors: "noone" -> "no one" "hands, as" -> "hands as"
Fixed this. Thank you!
There are also two icons labeled "supernova" at the bottom of the page, which seems like a mistake. Good luck!
Re: Making a Physical Product
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mind if I ask what was the quantity for your injection molded part, and what company you ended up going with. Last time I tried to price injection molding it was way too much.
He says in the article: "5,000 dice + shipping: $1,808 ($0.36 per dice, enough dice for 333 sets)"
Learc83 is talking to Figbug, who is not the article author.
Re: Making a Physical Product
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
All that work and there's still a typo on the first sentence, second page.
And the directions are still pretty confusing. For example, I had no idea the debris' orientation mattered until I saw the examples. And what happens if there's a dispute about whether the debris is aiming at a planet or not? And also, can I keep a planet if I didn't roll a sun with it? I assume not, but it's not explicitly clear. And what's the difference between orange and yellow space debris? Also, the How to Play…
The answers are there, but I agree that it could be quite a bit clearer.
> Can I keep a planet if I didn't roll a sun with it?
No - suns make planets habitable (see the Sun section); you can only keep habitable planets and black holes.
>What's the difference between orange and yellow space debris?
There is no difference between red and orange space debris (there are no yellow -- the colors in the instructions are slightly off from what the dice actually show). There's also no difference between yellow and green planets/suns -- take a look at the image in the article that shows all the dice laid out. I think it'll clear that question up.
>but don't I also keep stars so that my planets stay habitable?
That makes logical sense, but since the instructions specifically state to keep only planets and black holes, no, suns go back in the tube. I think the logic behind this is two-fold: One, since planets and black holes are the only metric for score, any planet that you keep has a star in its imaginary galaxy, so a planet that is by a player actually represents not just a planet but also "at least one star." Two, a green/orange die going back into the tube helps keep the game points flowing.