Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Going It Alone Part 3: Inside the Factory Walls
Part III of the Going It Alone series will answer the question: What is a factory and how can I tell one from another? I will answer the question from a consumer electronics perspective and I will assume an audience that has little or no prior knowledge of manufacturing. The purpose of this article will be to try to introduce the burgeoning entrepreneur to the basic components of electronics manufacturing in China.
I will do this in the context of manufacturing the simple electronic product shown below – a digital kitchen timer that we call the Klip!. This is an item that we sell at The Container Store chain and at gourmet stores across the United States. I chose this product because, while relatively simple, it still encompasses all of the major facets (noted in the white boxes) of manufacturing a mass-produced electronic item of greater complexity. I’ll start with a little background, then I’ll give a very basic overview of each manufacturing sub-process and I’ll conclude with a summary that will serve to make your first visit to a third-party manufacturing facility more effective and productive. Armed with the knowledge from this post you should be able to walk into an Asian plant for the first time and have the basic working knowledge that you need to converse intelligently about the creation of your item.
Ideas for Future Topics
Thanks, first and foremost, to John Biggs for giving me the opportunity to post my first couple of installments on his blog CrunchGear.com. In response to his readers John Allen, Tom Reynolds and others I am going to accumulate a list below of future subject matter. I welcome anyone to comment on this list with a “yeah” or a “neah” and/or their own idea for something they may like to read about at a future date:
- Ideation – Where do Good Ideas Come From?
- Marketability – Is a Good Idea Necessarily a Marketable Idea?
- SBA Funding – What is the SBA and How Does One Take Advantage of It?
- Protecting Your Idea In America – Basics of Intellectual Property
- Protecting Your Idea In China – Is This Really Necessary and, If So, What Can I Do About It?
- Vetting a New Manufacturing Partner
- Tips On Industrial Design – Is This Something That Can Be Outsourced As Well?
- Is it Even Possible to Make This Kind of Stuff in the USA?
- Effects of Outsourcing: Trade Deficit? American Job Loss?
- Analysis of Cost of Manufacturing the Same Product in the USA vs. in China.
- Reading Your Own Product Reviews – Thick Skin Required.
- The Logistics … Of Logistics. How Does Importing Work Anyway?
- Is The iPhone Killing Good Old-Fashioned, Mass-Produced Product?
- Mysteries of Retail Revealed – What Are Buyers Looking For in Terms of Margin via Various Channels (Boutique, Catalog, Big Box, Mass, etc.)
- The Best Working Prototype of All May Be … A Rendering?
- Vet It By Committee? Thoughts On “Crowd-sourced” Product Development (i.e. Quirky.com)
- The New World Order of the Direct Sale (Etsy, Zazzle, CafePress, SpreadShirt, etc.)
- The Armchair Inventor – Online Resources Useful To The New Product Developer
- OEM, ODM, FOB, FCL, LTL. GTLKA … Guide To Little Known Acronyms
- Continuous Improvement … Handling Quality Control From Afar
- More To Come …
Go It Alone: How To Make Your Stuff In China (Part 2)
Note to Readers: This post was originally written on Monday, February 29th, 2010. It is the second part of a two part series that appeared on CrunchGear.com on April 10th and 11th, 2010.
American Innovative Chef's Quad Timer Pro
I am sitting in the lobby of the Royal Plaza Hotel in Mong Kok waiting for the owner of the factory that makes our Neverlate and Quad-Timer items to pick me up. The final legs of my journey were largely uneventful although it was nearly 2am local time before I finally closed my eyes to go to sleep last night. Dealing with the jet lag on the way out is easy. I basically stayed awake the entire time, dozing in out of a half-sleep the way that someone who is over six feet tall does on airplanes. Some five small airplane meals later, I had lost track of what meal I was supposed to be on. Acclimation to the time zone on the way back is much more difficult and if you’ve ever been to the International Pavilion at the CES you can attest to this first-hand through the observation of countless sleepy Asian booth attendants nodding off in uncomfortable plastic rented chairs.
Before I continue where I left off from last time, I’d like to pause to address the question that was the inspiration for writing this article. That question is why? Why “go it alone”? Why take the route that I’ve taken rather than license your idea (actually, let me be more specific – your product concept) to another party? I am of the opinion that there is a place for licensing, but it is not for low cost – say, sub $100 – consumer products. If you have a proprietary technology – something that you embed in another product then, by all means, license it. If you have an idea for a consumer product and the desire/willingness to put forth the effort to bring it to market, then you should go it alone. The reasons are many, but the main ones are (1) IP, (2) margin and (3) control. Let me speak to these one at a time.
Go It Alone: How To Make Your Stuff In China (Part 1)
Note to Readers: This post was originally written on Saturday, February 27th, 2010. It appeared on CrunchGear.com on April 4, 2010.
Neverlate Executive Buttons
It’s Saturday morning at 6am. I’m about to leave my Boston apartment for the first of three legs from Logan International Airport to Hong Kong via New York and Tokyo. I will arrive at 10:30pm on Sunday. Against insurmountable odds it appears that both my Boston and New York flights are on-time – an anomaly if there ever was one given that we’ve had a full week of driving rain inBoston and two feet of snow in Westchester County, just 45 minutes north of New York City where my parents told me they’ve had to sleep at a friend’s place because they’ve been without power for days. Still, never to disappoint, and despite clear sunny skies, my commuter flight from Boston to New York is delayed almost two hours on account of “missing personnel”. This conjures up images of airline top brass scrambling around to replace the guy who’s responsible for loading the salty snacks on the plane (as if) when the gate agent clarifies that our secondary officer is on his way from another city. Or maybe he overslept. Fortunately, having learned my lesson just months ago when traveling to a trade event in Las Vegas (my luggage was lost, never to be recovered to this day!) I seemingly accurately surmised that the chances of my checked baggage successfully navigating three airplanes and two carriers would be slim-to-none. As such, I had packed light. My fiancé made me pack two pair of pants, which I felt to be overkill, but I have a feeling I’ll thank her later.
