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Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

simonberens.com

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Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#261

Post by abcd_f »

jjcm wrote: post #112
mmh0000 wrote: post #58

This 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…

I did something similar, but a slightly different approach. I installed grow lights in my ceiling conches: amazon.com/dp/B07BRKT56T?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1 In my office I have 6 of these, for a total of around 13,000 lumens. It effectively 6x'd my light output for around $150. Worked wonders, especially in the PNW winter.

> the PNW winter

It rains only once ... but for six months :)

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#262

Post by nickvec »

rxt_ian wrote: post #252

I'm curious that this story seems to be missing a big part of hardware design - certification. It seems like the design was being changed up to the minute these were shipped to customers, so it doesn't seem possible that any testing was carried out on the final design?

Yeah, I was confused on that front as well. Unclear why a prototype wasn’t initially made by the factory to be vetted and approved before producing hundreds of lamps.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#263

Post by monegator »

>In March, after $400k in sales through our crowdfunding campaign, I had to figure out how to manufacture 500 units for our first batch. >I had no prior experience in hardware; >I was counting on being able to pick it up quickly with the help of a couple of mechanical/electrical/firmware engineers.

And i wish this kind of people to fail miserably. Too many times they tried to make me the scapegoat for their bullshit project, already sold on paper but with nothing more than a render to show, now looking for an hardware guy to point the finger at to blame

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#264

Post by bambax »

theodric wrote: post #260
bambax wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I would reckon the simplicity of the objects and the single material helped. If you specify 304 and you get 304, they can really only cheap out on tooling, and that'll cause them pain rather than you. HN loves downvoting. It's Nerd Reddit. Don't sweat it.

I tried many different suppliers, for the objects themselves and for the packaging (which involved 3-4 different parts); some were better than others (esp. regarding delays) but no one tried to take advantage of me. And I was just one guy from Europe making small batches: the ideal target for a scam. Yet it never happened; quite the opposite in fact.

At some point given the cost of transport by air or by sea I tried train+truck. The shipment ended up stopped in Mongolia for about 3 weeks. The factory in China, which didn't have anything to do with the shipping company (except that they selected it; but it was a completely different entity) went out of their way to find out where the goods were and what was happening, and eventually made sure they were delivered to my door.

> HN loves downvoting. It's Nerd Reddit. Don't sweat it.

Yeah I know, I've been here a long time. But it was instantaneous and that surprised me.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#265

Post by SPICLK2 »

user_7832 wrote: post #256
SPICLK2 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~100 lumens per watt is rather poor, especially given the cost. It's the same as a standard LED lightbulb, and that includes the miniature AC voltage converter. 150lm/w would make it at least a cut above domestic lightbulbs. 200lm/w would make it a premium product.

> ~100 lumens per watt is rather poor Is it, though? Most of the LEDs I've seen are very similar, and lower temp LEDs are slightly less efficient. If it were 60lm/watt I'd be a bit surprised, but 100lm seems pretty typical. Maybe not "well engineered", but average. (Which, with all due respect to the founder, seems the quality of the product.)

CREE offer a variety of LED types with efficiencies 150lm/w (eg CMB, XT-E), up to 230lm/w (eg, 5050).

While 100lm/w is typical for domestic LED lighting, it's going to cause problems when the total power is several orders of magnitude higher but the form factor is approximately the same size. That heatsink will probably fry an egg, and I wonder about the lifetime of the diffuser plastic.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#266

Post by Cthulhu_ »

logotype wrote: post #253

I never ever buy any crowdfunded product, because the moron that makes it always offshores production to China. I support local businesses, with a local supply chain. Please do that too, it’s how we get a better future!

Insults / name calling aside, can products like this even be manufactured domestically? Is there a US based LED manufacturer, for starters? Cables / connectors? Final assembly? And do the ones that make the bespoke parts and final assembly even take orders for 500 units like this one?

I want to support local manufacturing too, but in many cases the choice isn't there. The Trump dictatorship's tariffs are an attempt to "encourage" this manufacturing back to the US, but redeveloping the factories and supply chains will take years - if there's even people willing to commit to it, because despite high import tariffs, it's still cheaper to import things. And even if it wasn't, it'd still be cheaper and easier to go through a 3rd party and back channels, or to a country not affected as much by the import tariffs. Whole manufacturing lines are / have been moved to e.g. Vietnam or India to avoid the tariffs, and that's still cheaper than moving to the US.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#267

Post by urbandw311er »

monegator wrote: post #263

>In March, after $400k in sales through our crowdfunding campaign, I had to figure out how to manufacture 500 units for our first batch. >I had no prior experience in hardware; >I was counting on being able to pick it up quickly with the help of a couple of mechanical/electrical/firmware engineers. And i wish this kind of people to fail miserably. Too many times they tried to make me the scapegoat for their bullshit…

This feels a bit harsh! I get the impression that the author considered their project far more carefully than this, especially given the Ben Kuhn blog posts they say that they were inspired by.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#268

Post by Cthulhu_ »

relaxing wrote: post #144

There are hundreds of articles in this genre from years of failed Kickstarters and Maker-types selling DIY hardware kits. How you get funding for a hardware startup without cursory research into this is staggering.

"cursory" implies fairly shallow / quick looking into it - given they have delivered, I'd say they met that benchmark. And the funding is obvious, through Kickstarter.

There's demand for high intensity lamps (and other hardware projects), a lot fail but some succeed, and lessons are learned. And not just by the people starting these projects, a big part of why these projects start in the first place is because the manufacturers make it accessible too.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#269

Post by faeyanpiraat »

rxt_ian wrote: post #252

I'm curious that this story seems to be missing a big part of hardware design - certification. It seems like the design was being changed up to the minute these were shipped to customers, so it doesn't seem possible that any testing was carried out on the final design?

There was a different lamp startup article kind of recently, where they talked about this, and if I remember correctly they needed to run the lamp for like 1000 hours straight for it to receive some kind of certification.

I could search for it if you want to read about that.

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