I’ll piggyback on what some others have said. I think the conventional wisdom, in business, is that, if units are selling, and the company is losing money, the company isn’t charging enough per unit. I know that you want to keep it affordable, but I like the idea of keeping the kit cheap, and selling an assembled unit that just works out of the box. And you’ll need to charge like h@ll for the assembled unit. It’s like offering a Volkswagon and a Rolls Royce in your product line.
The Dynaco ST70 was the greatest selling audio amplifier of all time, I believe, and it was available fully assembled (Dynaco), or as an inexpensive kit (Dynakit). It had the reputation of being “the poor man’s McIntosh”, which is to say that it had a stellar reputation.
The Rolls Royce will need to ride like a Rolls, but the Volkswagon can stay a Volkswagon, and continue to serve your core customers. Good luck!
I don’t think it’s really a long term money earner, but have you thought of some sort of enhanced support offering?
”Get Bar on a video call to help you build your Maslow”, etc…
It’s something that could bring some money in, and also it might even help iron out pitfalls, and give you insights & help move towards some of other points people raised of it more a product and less a very DIY project.
I really think the key is marketing to sell more units.
I think Bar is running a 1 man operation at this point so his time needs to be applied to efforts that have the most value. Prebuilts, seminars, video support for troubleshooting or assembly are just too time consuming (and costly) at this point in the game. We really need software improvements to make this thing more viable and marketable. Working out the bugs has to be taking up most of his time and is vital to ensure longevity of the product.
As mentioned by quite a few members, I think the best route is to get interviews with YouTubers and bloggers that are big in the woodworking world. He can showcase his vision for the machine and where we currently are in development with follow up interviews. This will help get the word out to a larger customer base. Reach out to makerspaces and provide them with informational flyers to hang in their areas and that contain links to videos and the website. Selling on Amazon and search engine priority are other options. We do need to ensure that the buyer understands what he is buying.
Selling other stuff such as router bits may be cumbersome, I’m not sure if he could compete with Amazon on prices.
We need to support him by posting more of our projects so he can showcase what the machine does. I love the projects Bar is doing, but his time may be better spent on bugs, software improvements, and marketing. Plus big projects eat alot of plywood $$$.
At least one China manufacturer making long-enough cordless brushless router bodies.
At least one China manufacturer making a PSU-in-a-box that appears to work with it (subject to testing).
Together they are in the $100 ballpark.
I feel like there is a market for ~$100 dewalt/makita clone router brushless replacements, with the PSU changed to have a 2-3m lead. So sitting somewhere above a brushed makita clone, but below a full spindle and vfd, but still coming in at about 8/900watt.
I wonder if Maslow / @bar is well placed to lead that as it potentially solves a few problems around which router to use and the longevity issues of brushed routers?
Oh and a quick one - I’m not sure it would make vast amounts of money per se, but accessories with a decent mark-up are often quite good modest money earners (as others have noted).
Specifically though, I was thinking some that also support tinkering (because that’s part of what interests me) - a set of 10/15cm lead extenders for the motors / encoders / steppers for people that want to relocate the board for example.
Bit of a pain to DIY, but not that expensive to order a small batch from China I’d suspect. Similarly a PSU extender wire.
