7 Tips to Start Small Scale Manufacturing | Business Ideas for Product Makers

 

scale business based around products that are designed for small scale manufacturing

did I say the things I think you said the things there were a lot of words in that sentence

basically this means starting small without the risk of a big financial investment but

at the same time being ready to scale up big if the opportunity presents itself and how

to scale your business beyond what you can produce in your own shop we've made a video

on how to sell handmade products which we're gonna link below but I feel like this is a

big topic that we didn't really cover in that last video so we kinda wanna do a little bit

more of a deep dive into that here and we do't just wanna go through saying general

tips so we're gonna include some of our personal experiences and walk through how we apply

these tips to one of our own products and the first thing that we're gonna talk about

is kind of this new startup type company that seems to be developing I feel like it needs

a theme song new startup company that seems to be developing it seems like in the past

if you were gonna start a business you kinda fell into one of two categories you were a

big company making big products and that requires a lot of money or you were kind of on the

smaller side you were making handmade things and you kind of stay a little bit of a smaller

company now there seems to be sort of a middle path developing as small scale manufacturing

is becoming more accessible to more people another thing that really opens up product

design to a whole bunch of new people are digital design tools there are great tutorials

out there it's really accessible some of them are free or cheap designing things in 3D is

a lot cheaper when you don't actually have to spend any money at all yeah it is free

the cheapest of cheap haha so with less capital needed there's less pressure to hit that homerun

with your very first product idea you can test it out in the market see if people buy

it see if they don't you can do iterations and there's not that huge loss if you invest

a ton of money in machines or casting and the product doesn't work and then you're left

with all that capital wasted we went through a whole bunch of product ideas before figuring

out what we wanted to make our very first idea was terrible it was good it was good

it's a good thing just the idea of trying to make it at any sort of scale was terrible

yeah it was our marquee letters they're really pretty people love them people wanted them

we got inquiries a lot about renting or borrowing or buying them but they're massive and delicate

and they would not ship well and they take a really long time to make but that was ok

it didn't hurt us we kept going and kept moving and kept trying out other types of products

we started on our computers in our garage we came up with what we thought was yes same

garage we are in now we came up with what we thought would be a good design and we invested

in one 3D printer once that printer had paid for itself and we had enough orders to start

getting more things and start expanding our product line we got we're up to 4 3D printers

and 2 CNCs so you can start with just that one small investment you don't have to buy

your entire robot army all at once although it is cool having a robot army and you can

grow from there yeah so I've worked in traditional manufacturing before as an engineer and product

designer and these big machines that companies have to make their parts are really impressive

but along with those impressive capabilities comes this huge price tag and ever since we've

been working on products at home I honestly haven't really missed those you can accomplish

so much now with a small shop with limited budgets we recommend starting with just the

design of what you wanna make before you ever start making cuts you can do that free design

software we use Fusion 360 and once you have that design ready you can make it yourself

for not that much expense you can go to a local makerspace and if you don't have a local

makerspace nearby there is the internet and on the internet there are people who want

to make money with machines who will help you out who will help you out yeah once you

have that proof of concept with your product if you wanna start making it in house you

can setup a whole little shop for yourself like we've done here you can have your CNC,

3D printer, power tools, hand tools whatever it is you need it seems expensive if you're

looking at the prices now but if you compare it what you're pulling in with your products

it's a reasonable business cost and I think that's really cool that it's actually within

reach now and I love that like if I come up with an idea I can just come out here and

realize it using stuff that we have at home it's like Evan's dream ever since we started

buying tools it's literally my dream I've been dreaming of this since I was a little

kid I love it and these machines are a lot more affordable now the cost of 3D printers

and CNCs over the past few years has gone down so much and there's even payment plans

now where you can pay you know per month and it's a lot easier to tackle as you're making

profits instead of a big upfront cost you know if you're trying to run a business so

I think that's super awesome and hopefully by the time that you buy the CNC you have

products designed you're selling some and you can use that profit from those sales to

pay for the machines that are making the money yes yeah

so to give you guys a real world example we're gonna use this CNC ring dish that we designed

we did all of the design work in CAD then we did all of the computer aided manufacturing

work to plan out how long it would take how much material it'd use so we knew all of the

variables of this product before we spent any money at all and we have a whole video

on that which is that process is called CAM on our channel so we'll link to that too but

after we did all of that digital design work it was time to test the program and figure

out all of the bugs and kinks so we ran it on our X-Carve right over there and went through

4 iterations of the design of the g-code and that took the machining time from 30 minutes

to about 15 minutes and we probably could push it further and having all of that figured

out at the small scale really helps you grow and scale it if your product succeeds and

starts going and selling really big.

these smell good they smell real good haha do they smell like pecan cuz these are pecan

just just like insert like 30 seconds of Katelyn sniffing it right now hahaha so now that everything

with this design is figured out if we need to hire help to make more of these or outsource

this outside of our shop we can do that because we know that this design works and we've optimized

it so we've talked a lot about manufacturing it but it is very important good product design

I think is the key to selling things because without the thing you can't sell it man that's

some wise words right there anyways while we're designing things we try to keep two

things in mind the function and the manufacturability so we often design things with small scale

manufacturing in mind if it's something that we want to become a product so for us that

means CNC work it means 3D printing or sometimes it's molding and casting each of these works

with some types of designs and not other types of designs and you want your design to work

with manufacturing method and not against it there was once a product I was designing

and I happened to add a curve to it I don't actually know why probably trying to be fancy

I might have been trying to be fancy but I was talking with a machinist later that day

he was looking at it like this is gonna be really hard and I was like no it should be

really simple he's like well this curve right there that's gonna like make it take a long

time like oh just take out the curve that doesn't need to be there at all he's like

oh we can get that done real quick and it probably saved us it cut the time down by

1/5th so keeping that manufacturability in mind is really important for scaling and growth

and your profit margins for example with these ring dishes if you look close there's kind

of a spiral design and it looks kinda cool that's actually the cut lines from the bit

it's something that in a lot of designs you might have to sand out because it wouldn't

look very nice but we came up with a design where it actually kind of becomes a feature

and it means less work for us another thing is when we're 3D printing we try to keep those

layer minds in mind layer minds did I say layer minds yes we try to keep the layer lines

that are part of the 3D printing process in mind and maybe even make them a feature we

came up with a topographical Texas where each layer was like a layer of the topography a

layer of the topography so it was better that it was 3D printed instead of worse or when

we're doing molding and casting we try to keep it like a one part mold so we don't have

to sand down the seam line this is kind of tied to it but we try to keep human intervention

down as much as possible so avoiding things that have to be hand painted or hand stitched

or hand anything really I mean we still do put a little bit of work into it but we try

to minimize it so going back to this for example we have this bottom rounded over and that's

because we can take this over to the router table it's a way to remove tabs it polishes

up it makes it look finished and it's all part of optimizing our process tied to keeping

human time down we try to keep robot time as high as possible so that while they're

working we can work on prepping stock setting up jigs coming up with new designs working

with cusomwers :) coming up with marketing material there's so much that you can do to

help your business besides making things like come up design things in your mind and let

robots make them that's what I like you sound like an evil genius but yes another thing

to keep in mind is cost wise it's gonna be hard to beat a big company that has huge econ-

econ- economies of scale it's just it's a losing game but there are other things that

you can do that big companies can't do one of those is customizable products or coming

up with products that respond to trends or seasons you can be a lot more flexible than

a big company can be another way to set yourself apart from big companies is customizing we

started I kinda said that but you can go into the details haha we've started engraving initials

and dates on to the back of our ring dishes for weddings and stuff like that yeah it takes

what literally 2 minutes actually 1 minute and it makes it so much more special and more

meaningful to the people you're selling it to and it's something that big companies can't

do yeah as easily I mean well yeah they probably can but they wouldn't bother yeah haha alright

so what's next let's say you have a product it's selling really well and you can't keep

up with the demand ahhhh oh you want me to finish that yeah I thought I was the example

we haven't had one of our products go big like that yet but I have had a lot of experience

dealing with this in my past job when you're selling volumes that large you can start with

with local companies or overseas partners to increase the amount of products you can

produce if you come to them with a proven sales record a projection for how much products

you're gonna make they're gonna say yeah we wanna do that they'll work with you they'll

bring down their price and they'll make it more accessible they don't like people coming

to them saying I have an idea well no it'd be like I have an idea it doesn't exist yet

but it's gonna be great they're not gonna be interested and that's where everything

that we've been talking about the well designed product with a proven track record that is

able to be scaled that's potentially based in digital means so you can just send them

a file and they can make the same thing that you've been making the whole time you can

have your standards in place you can have a quality policy and you can grow without

really too much downsides you can also take it a step further and even outsource some

of the fulfillment so you can work with your manufacturing partner, your packaging suppliers

and have all of them send everything to a fulfillment center and they ship it out for

you and that allows you to spend more time working on your next product your next design

and just continuing to grow which takes us to our outro yay I really hope that this video

was useful to you guys and helped give you guys some confidence to start your own business

it's a little bit scary I think the thing that we struggled with the most is when to

start and how to start and I think the tipping point for us was when we were more afraid

not to do it than we were afraid to do it and then we made the jump and then we made

the jump and started doing it and that's the end of our story haha good story actually

that was just the beginning and then we started doing YouTube yeah haha but we still do products

on the side still doing it on the side it's fun to keep a finger in that world a little

bit where is it alright if you guys have any questions we'd love to chat with you guys

in the comments below and if you wanna help us make more videos you can support us by

checking out our awesome merch which is at Shop Evan and Katelyn dot com and if you want

more content sneak peeks behind the scenes the aftershow we're about to record the aftershow

you can head over you can head over to patreon dot com slash evan and katelyn and see you

that there hope to see you next time bye did you say see you that there I dunno hahaha

words are hard and today we're gonna- bleh opport- mlehele still had done all this reshearch

reshearch reshearch another thing about sca- scall you can stay even keeper keep hahaha

woo yay!