Small Side Projects and Spin Off Products - Crowd Sourcing?

Hi All,

Wondering how many shops have had success spinning of small products or products lines? We are giving our first real attempt by launching a small curiosity project on Kickstarter. We've designed a made a handful of Finger Treadle Engines. We'll see how they go. It's a test campaign to figure out the intircacies of the crowd sourcing platforms, we have some larger manufacturing/engineering related projects planned.


Model No. 1 Treadle Engine by Imperium Tool & Instrument, Inc. —Kickstarter

Experiences on this front are appreciated. Also interested to hear if people have found worthwhile value in using social media to promote their manufacturing businesses? Do posts really equal sales?

Your kickstarter makes it seem like your selling these engines that you made/will make in house in Montana.

You are trying to crowdsource the components for it?

Maybe you can get all the parts within tolerance and they all assemble but good luck achieving consistent visual appearances at a cost you like.

lowdowncoyote said:

Do posts really equal sales?

Click to expand...

I've done pretty good side biz through Facebook. Getting in the right groups is the key.

Sorta off topic- if someone on social media brings you an idea and you profit from it, do you how them royalties or some sort of interest?

IE- hey man, can you make XYZ trinket? So you do, he posts it and then you get a request for 100 more. How would you handle that?

Hi All,

Sorry it looks so salesy... I wanted the pictures to post not the links. We make all of parts for this thing in house and have no expectation of making any money off of it... That said, we'd appreciate any support we can get. ...How I hate social media. I feel I'm being drug into this new marketing reality kicking and screaming. My cam and aneroid driven marketing philosophy is not getting it done... But, adapt or die... It's our first attempt at the crowd funding strategy, or making marketing videos for that matter.

The idea of crowd sourcing parts for a large or complex project (An American made dirt bike for example...) from a bunch of vendors is an interesting idea. May be a way to keep the project away from the greedy maws of the Goldman Sach's and Venture Capital types(Venture Vultures). Everybody risks a little to launch a company/product that no individual party could do alone. Casting house, engineering company, tool & die shop, etc... Could go badly... might work great with the right management and a wise attorney.

We do make these in house. We made a handful to give to our loyal customers, then decided to spin the project out "to the masses".

Cole2534 said:

I've done pretty good side biz through Facebook. Getting in the right groups is the key.

Sorta off topic- if someone on social media brings you an idea and you profit from it, do you how them royalties or some sort of interest?

IE- hey man, can you make XYZ trinket? So you do, he posts it and then you get a request for 100 more. How would you handle that?

Click to expand...

Good question. Most of the projects we work on are already governed by NDA's and Intellectual Property Agreements or negotiated around a table with the attorneys. I've thought that being up front about the cost is the best way to equitably determine the "cut" amount. for example: I invested 230 hours in making trinket XYZ which was sold for the "friend discount" of four cold PBRs and a burger. If he makes it go big on social media and needs 100, hopefully he talked with you before setting the sales price. Nothing worse than "paying for the opportunity" to work your ass off on somebody else's profitable project.

I've always considered a project a success if we get the second order for more pieces. As long as your making money on the 100, rock on, or place your bets on the volume... If you add to the design, or he adds more effort in sales, you can always renegotiate the spread.

18mo or so ago a guy approached me and said I needa tool to fit this nut, the OEM won't sell it to me. OK, so I go buy a nut (which is strange that the nut is available to the public but the tool is not), measure make a tool to fit and voila. Dude posts about it on FB, I sell dozens more and he's happy.

Another dude approached me with a similar concept after having bought some tools for the original problem. Same deal, make a tool to fit this nut. OK, done deal. Plot twist, the owner of the company that makes the device that the tool fits buys one. He's buying my product to work on shit he makes, that's pretty cool, right? He gets it, likes it, and says I want (100) of these to send to my vendors.

Would you compensate the guy that came to you with a problem to solve? Currently, I'm thinking that I'll flip him a portion of my profits (10%) from the first run. If it repeats that's all mine.

Thoughts?

Sorry for the vague descriptions, trying to keep it generic.

Sounds fair to me. You designed the tool and made it real. If he's still helping push the idea and driving high percentage of the total sales, maybe keep the percentage going. If you're on your own with the sales and manufacturing, you're on your own.