[deleted]
Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
241–250 of 427 posts
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Googled that ‘yes’ thing. Not different from my experience in other parts of the world. ‘Yes’ means ‘yes, sir’ only in the army. What is your environment?
As someone living in the Nordics my experience already with central Europeans and especially so Americans is that these cultures are already much more high context than the Nordics. I guess up here we're all borderline autistic?
I am entirely convinced that the entire country of Germany suffers from Asperger's.
Denmark is a bit better, maybe because they drink more ? Dunno.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#243This is the second article about hardware supply from China I've read and it reads very much the same, albiet in a different niche (the other one was about SBC construction) -Anything you don't specify will be done least cost, and there is no amount of "least" which cannot be chased in manufacture. The other one noted if you don't specify the density of plastic for bags, or paper for bags and packing, you get clingfi…
That's not my experience at all. I manufactured simple objects in China some years ago (2017-2020) at scale (around 50k units) and everything went extremely well.
The objects were order of magnitude simpler than in the post (no electronics and no plastic, only metal) so maybe that doesn't compare, but I never had any bad surprise from any supplier, including packaging (which can be quite complex and involve several providers), etc.
Everyone will gladly send you samples (for free!) and prototypes of what you imagine (usually at cost) and if you're explicit about what you want and validate each step before the next, everything goes well.
Eventually I moved on to other things for mostly bureaucratic reasons; selling objects in Europe is an administrative nightmare that's simply not worth the hassle.
But the manufacturing part was not just smooth -- it was the best part of the experience.
(And I never left my town and never even talked to anyone over the phone: the primary means of communication was email.)
Edit: why would anyone downvote this, and so fast? If anyone thinks I'm being insincere, I have proof! ;-)
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too harsh. Trump was president once before, and didn't impose 150% tariffs on anybody. You don't have to be a fucking moron to assume he'll behave similarly in his second presidency. Trump says a LOT of things that he doesn't end up doing.
He imposed quite a few high tariffs the first time, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_first_Trump_adm...
Thanks for that. It had flown below my radar.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#245I am amazed that someone dared to list a lamp for $1200, that it sold that many units, and then proceeded to ship sub 1 dollar shitty screwdrivers with it.
Had I ordered a $1200 lamp and received a $0.1 screwdriver with it, I would be livid.
I guess it goes to show in what kind of an inflationary environment we live in.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#246This is super interesting, and I'd actually be quite interested in buying a 60K-Lumen lamp... but not at $1200. Years ago, there was an HN article "You Need More Lumens"[1], which in turn led me down a rabbit hole. I ended up purchasing: 4 standard table lamps from Target, 28 2000-lumen Cree LEDs bulbs[2] and, 4 7-way splitters[3]. The end result is somewhere around 56,000 lumens. And I LOVE it. Makes me much happier…
You can also buy photographic lights and umbrellas; it's dirt cheap and works well.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious if LEDs can really match the black-body that is our sun (and therefore incandescents). I would get/build such a thing for my mental health, but I worry the LED illumination will be counter-productive.
Look for the CRI rating of bulbs that you buy. It's a measurement of how close to a blackbody spectrum the bulb is putting out, the highest fidelity being 100. Note that this is not the temperature measurement, and you can have e.g. 2700K or 5000K bulbs with high CRI. Newer LED phosphors are typically 90+ CRI, and I commonly find 93 CRI bulbs available off the shelf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_inde…
Even high cri lights have a huge blue spike that doesn't match the sun. I don't know what chip OP uses, but you need a full spectrum light if you actually want very sun-like light. This page has some details:
https://optimizeyourbiology.com/best-natural-full-spectrum-l...
No idea if there's any evidence or not of the blue spike actually mattering for human biology.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Trump administration has made it very clear on multiple occasions that any company that does that will find that every law that affects them and has some amount of administrative discretion will suddenly be interpreted maximally against them. https://www.morningbrew.com/stories/2025/04/30/amazon-wont-b...
They couldn’t realistically take on Walmart, Amazon, Target, Lowe’s, and major grocers all at once. They’re just not organized enough. We’ve already seen them give up or flop in court when challenged.
Tariffs are applied to the price the importer pays. Listing them separately would thus give away the reseller's markup. That's far more than the tariffs for most importers from China. Often you can look up the same item on Alibaba and find what the reseller is paying.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#249This is super interesting, and I'd actually be quite interested in buying a 60K-Lumen lamp... but not at $1200. Years ago, there was an HN article "You Need More Lumens"[1], which in turn led me down a rabbit hole. I ended up purchasing: 4 standard table lamps from Target, 28 2000-lumen Cree LEDs bulbs[2] and, 4 7-way splitters[3]. The end result is somewhere around 56,000 lumens. And I LOVE it. Makes me much happier…
Curious if LEDs can really match the black-body that is our sun (and therefore incandescents). I would get/build such a thing for my mental health, but I worry the LED illumination will be counter-productive.
I have seen a couple studies that show having/adding deep red is an important part of LED lighting because deep red penetrates your skin the deepest and is used as a signal to your body that it is receiving light/sun.
Personally if I wanted "daylight" replicated by LEDs I would go for a higher quality white grow light that included deep red LEDs. Just be sure you don't get one that is also outputting in the UV range, although most don't.
Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you happen to remember where you read that article about SBC construction? I’d be interested in reading it
It was a HN post several years ago. I will try and find it. I think it was one of the many threads off "Bunnie Huang's Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen" because the specific incident I can't find. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=guide+shenzhen
Buy the current edition here.[1] Revised by Naomi Wu.
[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/machinery-enchantress/the-new-es...