beginning the process.

[NuclearPuma]

I finished the millionaire fastlane in two days last week. Now what appears to be mere chance I have stumbled accross an idea worth execution and a partner I think I can trust and who has already done some research on our potential product.

Here is the story, I was talking with a co-worker at lunch, he already has a side business going, but it cannot scale and is good for 800 to 1600 a month. One particular piece of equipment he uses sells for between 3,000 and 6,000 dollars, and when I heard this I said, "you should design your own and sell that." and he said "what do you think I'm doing, that's one of my ideas."

You see, we are both mechanical engineers and could design this product ourselves and probably manufacture it for a lot less than 3,000 and sell it for less too. Apparently there are only 2 major manufacturers of these things, and both apparently are 4 to 6 week lead times, my friend thinks the long leads are because of market demand, but I said maybe they are made to each order.

Basically we design it, build and test a few prototypes, then put it up for sale online. We can build these things out of his garage. The profits will be high, a few hundred dollars per sale. We can sell (we think) at a lower price than what is currently on the market. The other manufacturers have high overhead, big warehouse/manufacturing faciltiy, I'm sure some sales guys and a handful of employees. We won't have any of those costs. It looks like they are running their businesses back before the internet revolution, their websites and branding are horrible, but there is no competition so they don't need great branding.

Need - not sure of extent, but if current 2 manufacturers are backlogged, then Yes. The consumers would also like a lower priced option we think we can deliver.

Entry - requires engineering hours to design a competing product. Possibility of getting patents.

Control - 50% company ownership.

Scale - can scale up manufacturing if needed, this will take a lot of work to do. For now the plan is to start just making them ourselves from a garage. Can sell nationally and internationally.

Time - will require a lot to begin, and time required to assemble and ship each order, so this would be an effective cap on our $/hour until we reach a place where it makes sense to hire someone else to do it...

This will be a process. It may not meet each commandment perfectly, but once we have a product at a price lower than the other two manufacturers on the market, and we destroy them in the branding department, it's not a stretch to think we could garner a handful of sales in year 1, and if the demand is there, grow into a pretty legitimate business in 5 years time.

We both work full time now, so that will be the biggest thing slowing us down.

Thanks for the book MJ.

Is there a place to start a journal thread to give updates and get feedback or advice?

 

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