Voices: 15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business is an interesting article. This engineer started her own successful electronics-kit business. Limor Fried has made Adafruit Industries into a successful electronics-kit business. You can too. Based on her own experience, she offers 15 practical steps for engineers who dream of starting their own kit business.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
https://viral-loops.com/blog/how-to-make-your-product-go-viral/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.valco.fi/blogs/sekalaista/kuoleman-spiraali-eli-miten-firma-melkein-meni-nurin
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/15/did-venture-capitalists-undervalue-startups-for-decades/?tpcc=ecfb2020
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/15/transform-your-startup-investors-into-growth-marketers-without-them-noticing/?tpcc=ecfb2020
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Shark Tank’s Tristen Ikaika Turned A Stolen Spoon Into A Million-Dollar Business
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftrib.al%2Fh8Paqvp&h=AT1FJjmJEAep-MnpP7AZlaIUSkyWFqFaJjm9aTJ0dJFhxnGk4FxUYwSgzndar6ez0dikbP7b-UksFlvxjJanVotEybi8rM5SlL-jbnvW7I53RJookWh-BlzAOX1oyVDpMma7PHDoTF8yTS9feg
“I noticed a comment on one of my Instagram pictures asking ‘does anyone know where Tristen gets his rings?’ one day and the lightbulb clicked. I’d been making these spoon rings for myself since I was 12; perhaps I could share this passion and make rings for the people who had been asking.”
With around 20,000 followers there was certainly potential to turn the 25-cent spoons he’d been stealing from his parents’ kitchen into a profitable side hustle, but the reality far exceeded his expectations.
“I thought I would sell rings once, I didn’t think I was launching a seven-figure business!”
After announcing he would be releasing a limited-stock drop of handmade rings styled after his own, interest grew. So much so, in fact, the collection sold out in minutes.
“It was the biggest rush of adrenaline,” he says. “The first drop was the hardest, figuring out how to work a website, print a shipping label, all of it felt so foreign.
He’d made $4,000 in the click of a button.
Of course, with sights set low to start, the thrill was quickly replaced by the stress of production and delivery.
Ikaika needed to measure, cut, grind, and bend more than 200 spoons and forks into custom sized rings and had yet to figure out how to collect sizes on the website, so had to email each customer individually.
“It was unorganized chaos,” he admits. “There were parts to this puzzle that I hadn’t even realized were there.”
Still, being thrown in the deep end worked in his favor. Relishing in the “scrappy hustle”, he began to implement systems that allowed him to work faster, better and more creatively.
In a matter of months Tristen Ikaika not only became his full-time job, but a brand big enough to employ others.
For the next two years Ikaika traveled the world collecting spoons and forks to turn into rings, knowing it would give his collections an even-bigger USP.
“My hands have been bruised and blistered from bending thousands and thousands of rings,” he admits, albeit to the tune of $2.1 million in sales by 2021.
As the company scaled from hundreds to thousands of rings per monthly drop, Ikaika reinvested profits where he needed them most: manufacturing (switching from hand- to machine-made rings) and marketing (sending samples to influencers encased in dry ice-filled packaging—perfect for social media promotion).
“It’s still hard for me to believe a business created from a stolen spoon would one day pay off the same house I stole it from,” he says in tears.
And just when he couldn’t feel more emotionally overwhelmed, he got the call to confirm the hopeful application he’d made to take Tristen Ikaika to the investment-loving masses had been successful. He’d secured a spot on Shark Tank.
“Even in the early days of building this business in my parents’ basement I would binge episode after episode while I bent ring after ring. I wanted to work with the people who have been there helping me this whole time.”
Admittedly, the businesses would have continued to thrive without a Shark’s investment, but Ikaika saw the bigger picture.
“Connections are EVERYTHING and they can open doors for you a lot faster. I wanted that.”
After a near-perfect pitch in front of the famed TV investors, he requested a $250,000 investment for 5% of the business.
In true ‘Tank’ style, some sharks bit, others didn’t, and after fierce negotiations Ikaika left with the full quarter-mil and 15% of his brand in the hands of Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O’ Leary.
The proof of which is already being served. Even though the episode aired towards the end of last month (January 21st, 2022), the brand’s revenue was up 4.5x month-on-month from December, marking an “unbelievable” 354% growth rate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/27/allspice-building-a-hardware-development-ecosystem-for-companies/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Craft of Artisanal Computer Manufacturing Stefany Allaire has carved a niche in small-batch, retro-inspired computers
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-craft-of-artisanal-computer-manufacturing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learn All About Writing A Published Technical Book, From Idea To Print
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/19/learn-all-about-writing-a-published-technical-book-from-idea-to-print/
Ever wondered what, exactly, goes into creating a technical book? If you’d like to know the steps that bring a book from idea to publication, [Sara Robinson] tells all about it as she explains what went into co-authoring O’Reilly’s Machine Learning Design Patterns.
https://sararobinson.dev/2020/11/17/writing-a-technical-book.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/what-we-learned-from-the-informations-50-most-promising-startups-of-2021
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://viral-loops.com/product-launch/timeline
Tomi Engdahl says:
Diversifying too early into too many domains can result in a dilution of your efforts and a failure to get substantial results from most of your undertakings.
Specialize First, Then Diversify As A Startup Founder
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abdoriani/2022/04/27/specialize-first-then-diversify-as-a-startup-founder/?utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB&utm_medium=social&utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&sh=2fe12ad45e47
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anxieties Of Hardware Bringup During Parts Shortage
https://hackaday.com/2022/05/04/anxieties-of-hardware-bringup-during-parts-shortage/
[Dirksavage88] tells us a story about developing a simple BEC in times of chip shortage. He needed a small 5V/3A regulator board for a servo rail on his drone, and decided to use one of the new integrated-inductor modules from Texas Instruments. Hardly requiring any external parts, such modules are exceptionally nice to use for all your power rail needs, albeit at a slightly increased cost – the downside is that, as the parts shortage hit, most of them have been out of stock. Originally priced at about $7 USD, the asking price for these specific modules, LMZM33603, has climbed as high as $800. Somehow, he obtained a few of these modules nevertheless, and went on designing a board.
It can be daunting to test your very first PCBs when the silicon you’re putting on it is effectively irreplaceable for your purposes
$800+ Power Module put to good use
https://hackaday.io/project/185199-800-power-module-put-to-good-use
Texas Instruments power modules are very rare, so much so that scam sites sell them for over $800
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.op.fi/yritykset/vakuutukset/toiminnan-vakuutukset/vastuuvakuutus/konsulttivastuuvakuutus
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simone Giertz goes from projects to products
The YouTuber discusses the birth of her online store, Yetch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/06/simone-giertz-goes-from-projects-to-products/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
“I’m happy to be a woman who does things.”
YouTube’s one-time Queen of Shitty Robots didn’t renounce her crown so much as outgrow it. A few years back, the time came to put away the breakfast machine, the lipstick robot and the Styrofoam mannequin head that slams into a keyboard and kind of rolls back and forth in a rough approximation of internet commenting.
Filling the house full of projects has been its own reward — and fodder for the latest phase of Giertz’s YouTube journey.
Yetch, she’s quick to explain, is more than your standard YouTube influencer merch store. It’s a step toward realizing the shape her work will take in a world beyond shitty robots.
It was a perfect template for a career pivot — one that married current success with future ambitions: make a YouTube video about creating a product, sell the product, repeat. Though Giertz says such ambition dates back well before she began work on her first shitty robot.
Yetch’s selection is small — in addition to the two products above, she’s selling a pair of complementary rings: a screw and a screwdriver. Those projects that graduate to the product phase are assessed by her small, upstart team to begin the difficult process of bringing a product to market. That includes manufacturing, navigating supply chains and — in the case of the first product — recognizing that it’s harder to create a puzzle with a missing piece than it is to design a complete puzzle and manually remove one.
The missing pieces will then be mailed to Giertz.
Above all, the products represent the thesis at the center of much of her work: the interplay of the useful and useless. “The tagline for Yetch is unique solutions for everyday problems,” she explains in the puzzle video. “So, obviously, the first product I’m going to show you doesn’t live up to that, at all.”
For her part, Giertz sees no conflict. “I don’t think it needs to be a battle. For me, they seamlessly coexist, because the useless leads to the useful. And the useless helps bring a playfulness and an openness that lets me think in ways I wouldn’t otherwise. If I were to sit down, thinking, ‘I should come up with something great,’ I’m never going to do that. I’m going to choke. So the useless is an end goal, and they’re entertaining on their own.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Heathkit: An Employee’s Look Back
Nov. 30, 2020
Lessons of a successful electronic business—an interview with Chas Gilmore, former Heath executive.
https://www.electronicdesign.com/blogs/contributed-blogs/archive/communiqu/article/21148923/electronic-design-heathkit-an-employees-look-back?oly_enc_id=3156C3713901G5X