71–80 of 94 posts
Those costs in China are too high. I've lived in Shenzhen for under $70 USD / week in a hostel. If you eat out every meal for 100 RMB, you're not even going to be spending $350 a week for meals. While I agree that if you can do it locally, do it locally, but those numbers for the cost of living and travel in China are inaccurate.
What exists to help entrepreneurs find/pair up with manufacturers locally/domestically? Opportunity there? I work for a US manufacturer (non-tech related), and we frequently get inquiries from folks about making their products. We are primarily focused on producing our own products, but it is nice to fill gaps in production and explore new partnerships. But we don't actively pursue this, and I have no idea how they f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess would be that it starts with the assumption that "China is cheaper", and that makes for an easy story to tell to investors "we're making XYZ in China!". The second you say "we're making it in Texas", it opens you up to questions of "isn't that expensive?" On the face of it, I'm sure the up-front quote from a Chinese manufacturer is cheaper than something in the USA. Where costs skyrocket is when something go…
> there are all sorts of fun import tariffs and such to deal with (at least on the US side) Hopefully some free trade agreements help eliminate blockages like this in the future.
If you're making things which are basically PC boards, manufacturing is not too hard. Making boards and soldering parts onto them has a well developed workflow. There are lots of board houses and board-assembly services. If you design for what a pick and place machine can do easily, things usually go well. Hint: production is surface mount today. This is a pain for people who are used to prototyping with through-hole parts.
Kickstarter-class startups seem to have excessive problems with making cases and panels. Tooling for injection-moulded plastic is difficult and expensive. Once you get it right, the parts just fly out of the machines at a few cents per part. The production process is just getting warmed up on a run of 10,000 parts, and few Kickstarters get there. Basic truth about manufacturing: most of the processes are really cheap if you're making enough items, and far more expensive for short runs.
Local manufacturing only works if you're in a place where there's a lot of manufacturing, or your product doesn't really require much manufacturing capability. You many need to be in a place where there's someone down the street with a 20 ton press. If you need a 20 ton press, you need to be in a place where at least three shops have one. If you're making things which are basically PC boards, manufacturing is not too…
http://www.harborfreight.com/20-ton-shop-press-32879.html
Agreed on the injection moulding, that's expensive (and rightly so). But a simple press is not going to be a showstopper on any budget.
If you're going to do sheetmetal manufacturing there are a ton of companies waiting to get your business just about anywhere up to a reasonable volume. Manufacturing hasn't completely moved out (yet).
Small series, prototypes, even your first batch of some product can usually (definitely not always) be manufactured locally in just about any country.
What exists to help entrepreneurs find/pair up with manufacturers locally/domestically? Opportunity there? I work for a US manufacturer (non-tech related), and we frequently get inquiries from folks about making their products. We are primarily focused on producing our own products, but it is nice to fill gaps in production and explore new partnerships. But we don't actively pursue this, and I have no idea how they f…
thomasnet.com was decent for finding leads, but we weren't able to find a suitable manufacturer to get past prototype
Those costs in China are too high. I've lived in Shenzhen for under $70 USD / week in a hostel. If you eat out every meal for 100 RMB, you're not even going to be spending $350 a week for meals. While I agree that if you can do it locally, do it locally, but those numbers for the cost of living and travel in China are inaccurate.
For context: 100RMB is about $16, so you better really be enjoying those meals you're eating 3 times a day, because wowzers that's upscale.
I'll add one word of caution, I've looked into getting a product made that had a textile component and a separate product that had a leather component. Precision, automated stitching is either totally absent or completely unaffordable in the US. There are great shops India and China that can do laser cutting and CNC stitching super cheaply and if you want to make an inexpensive product to tight tolerances this is exa…
Read your own comment. You're basically saying that laser cutting and CNC stitching - operations performed by robots based on files uploaded by computers - are done better in China than here. That's like someone in China saying that we are better at standing. People on both sides of the ocean probably do just fine at both. ;)
Not done better. They're not done here AT ALL.
That's a big difference.