Poll of the Day > I wish I knew how to mass produce something.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like say I want to get into the bookshelf market and make my own bookshelf. So I send off my design to a wood company and they make a bunch, they ship to my apartment,I store them down at the local self-storage company, then I take them and put them in a box to ship to people? And then you have to work with companies for screws and stuff and maybe get your own mold? Do you just keep the mold at your house when it's not being used to make things if you're a small company?

I should start with something small...idk where to even start.

Etsy does a lot of that stuff. I think they mostly do their own work though (no outsourcing). I got a wooden chest with the Hyrule symbol burnt into it there.

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Bookshelves are huge. If you're going to get into the mass production game, start with something small but valuable. Like drugs.

I mass produce farts if you want any pointers

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Make a few phone calls and pay a bunch of money

boom mass produced

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Far-Queue posted...

I mass produce farts if you want any pointers

I literally came into this topic to suggest he probably mass-produces methane.
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You would have to move so many units for something like that to be profitable. You're better off starting independently, creating a fanbase and reputation, and then scale up.

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It would make more sense if you weren't doing the fulfillment yourself, which you'd probably need to do via something like Kickstarter where you're promoting production runs rather than ordering at any time.

The problem with bookshelves is you can't make much money there, and when selling furniture you really need to be selling more than one thing because you're aiming for cross-selling. If somebody is getting a new piece of furniture, odds are they're thinking of replacing other things as well. If you're selling other pieces that fit the theme, you're going to pick up business there as well.

As an individual seller, you should *probably* think of working with smaller products. Ideally you're going to want things small enough that you don't need to rent storage space for them which you can buy on the cheap and then just have a larger mark-up.

However, if your heart is set on furniture, I'd say partner with a local furniture maker and just have him fulfill as you go along. Or conversely work directly with furniture stores in placing your product and, since they'll buy as you go along, just have your manufacturer ship directly to them. (And you'd probably have the easiest time going with a furniture store that white-labels its products because they tend to be more conscious about sourcing things that customers can't price shop.)

But as an individual, it doesn't make much sense to get into very small-scale furniture if you were handling the fulfillment yourself (especially if you need to rent storage), particularly bookcases because free-standing bookcases aren't as popular as other furniture items and there are so many budget options.

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It is easier than you would think.
However, it is also way more work than you would think & if you don't do the math up front you can lose money easily (for example - what will you do for an unhappy customer? Can you 'eat' a few bad shelves?)

Well if you took some tips from zeus you could mass-produce a string of characters in no time.

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Money

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This could get long, i'll try to avoid that.

So long ago, back before most of you were born, I worked for a company called Value Media in California. Initially I was hired just to put boxes together for media kits. It was kinda like putting pizza boxes together lol. I put together tons of them. I got super fast at it over awhile. Eventually I made enough and I started actually putting the kits together, and then actually shipping them to customers.

Initially it was in a tiny warehouse, but a friend of mine started the sales department and started selling the kits. I would put em together and ship em. We got enough orders I had to hire others (who I trained myself to also be very fast). We even had to hire multiple secretaries to answer phone calls etc.

By the end (before the evil owners declared bankrupcy moved to another state and did it all again without giving any of us notice etc) I had 13 people working for me and we were mass producing the kits and shipping them pretty much every day.

I literally built the whole thing up myself from scratch (I was completely in charge of the whole opperation) and within a year (Worked there 2 years) was mass producing those kits and shipping them constantly.

So if you want to mass produce something, first get your production going, then find a good place to store/ship them from, and then find a customer base to sell them to, and your set. There are tons of things you can mass produce and make a profit with. Really depends on your skills, but it's waaaay easier today then it was back in the early 90's when I did it. With the internet, websites like amazon etc that you can sell on (Ebay as well etc), way easier advertising, waaaay easier ways to hire people etc......setting up a company that mass produces something has never been easier.

You just need a product that will actually sell.

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zebatov posted...

Well if you took some tips from zeus you could mass-produce a string of characters in no time.

It takes years of expertise to produce a string of characters in mere minutes. I just make it look easy.


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I have the finest swimmers this side of the riviera.

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