PSOC 5LP Hat for a Raspberry Pi

Interesting article.

Oviously didn't work so well for Dave as the link to his uCurrent device came back with the "Shop Unavailable" message.

I know I look at this one sometimes.

Typically you’ll try and make sure this figure is just above the one-off parts cost of someone making it themselves (customers will do the math!). So most would rather buy it from you assembled and tested instead of dicking around making it themselves.

I did like this one

Essentially, you price the product “at what people are willing to pay”. If your widget only costs $10 to manufacture, and you know they will pay $100 for it, then great, your gross margin (essentially your profit) is huge.

Followed by this observation

In the OSHW industry, where your customers are cluey, you can’t get away with huge markups.

Cheers for that link.

Mark

Can you point me to an example of two of the above where you did what you explained?

Dave uses the 2.5 multiplier which is a good rule of thumb. Most companies I have worked for have used a 3x multiplier.

Another question, how much per hour do you figure your own time is worth?

These things start out as a hobby project, where time is "a hassle to keep track of" so those are essentially free and cannot be accounted for afterwards.

When things take off, and you quit the day job, those hours need to be accounted for eventually. (but depending on your financial situation, you might accept them being "almost not paid" as a loss-leader for future sales...)

I will answer to your previous question later that I should find a series of links. About this, it depends on the job. Between 35 and 55 Euros per hour.

It's a family owned business, not a hobby project.

Anyway IMHO the business approach is not 100% correct.

This question has been a great learning experience from many perspectives. Here are a few points:

1. When it comes to "fair value", the chart is all over the place especially depending on which side of the coin you are on. Customers tend to be price conscious unless the product is unique and useful. Sellers have to make a profit without appearing to gorge someone in the process.
2. The article from Jan Cumps shows there is a reasonable way to price things if you may "expect to use a distributor in the future" to justify a 2.5 times markup. But even then he dismisses that as not really a true option. He did say he had found a way to minimize the shipping cost/expenses. I wonder how many go this far?
3. The debate between made in USA and made in China goes on. I see no light here. I have been to China and see how too many people leads to competitive pricing on everything made or sold beyond electronics. The mentality comes from a poorer China where everyone below the leaders had subsistence living and high taxes being more than 50%. You can go to centers where computers and mobile phones are sold and bargain on anything.

Truly I never expected this simple question to generate so much dialogue. But that is great for all concerned.

Cheers,

Clem

Jan this link is very useful and depict a scenario that seems the next step what I have depicted in my previous post. It includes a lot of good suggestions and involve retailers and resellers, the step after the first preproduction (that also gives trustability to the product and a good reference base to the potential distributors / resellers and why not, the industrial scale production investors).

Thank you for sharing this.

Enrico.