Advice on distributing a kit

Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Forum rules
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!
Locked
pichenettes
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2010 9:21 pm

Advice on distributing a kit

Post by pichenettes »

Hi,

(first of all I'm not an adafruit customer but I've followed what was going on here over the past months and I really appreciate the spirit of this place).

Last August I started a little synth project to learn a bit about electronics and build something... the people that previewed it were very enthusiastic about it and I took the decision of going forward and actually selling it as a kit. Going from a messy breadboard to a PCB design and a relatively cheap selection of parts was a tedious process, and now I'm done with it. Parts are stocked, PCBs will be ordered soon in matching quantity, I'm very excited but also worried about the things that could go wrong...

For those out there who have experience distributing their creations as kits, which advice would you give? How do you "beta-test" your kits? Do you have horror stories to share and what could you have done to avoid them?

Thanks for your advice!

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by adafruit »

get 3 people to make them according to your documentation, that way you'll get some feedback early

User avatar
sherpa-of-science
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2010 10:38 am

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by sherpa-of-science »

Hello! Sherpa of Science is just about the same stage as you in developing a fairly simple synth kit. Once your kits are in the bag, simply give a couple to people you know (better yet, people you BARELY know) and tell them to follow the instructions and build the kit just as Ladyada suggests. Then have them give you honest feedback. Repeat until kit can be built flawlessly by anyone.

That is Sherpa's plan, anyway, har har! Do you have anything concerning your synth online? I love seeing what others are up to. Don't worry, Sherpa's kit is the way it will be. Sherpa is happy with present design.

Happy developing!
~SOS
http://www.sherpaofscience.com/

pichenettes
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2010 9:21 pm

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by pichenettes »

Hi,

Thanks for the "3 kits, then go" tip. I'm currently exactly doing that, tester #1 built the kit successfully, tester #2 is on his way :)

The beast: http://mutable-instruments.net/shruti1

A second question: while this forum is titled "kitbiz", I don't want to turn this into a real business - actually, I would be happy to just recoup my investment and continue being able to have fun designing devices and publishing them - which is why so far I have not incorporated my activity (also, this first project, by "design", will be a limited run). Now the question: what about liability? - how bad things could go if some guy sets his house on fire with his soldering iron and the insurance company sues the kit seller? What's the best way of being protected against such things? Is there any precedent of silly cases in which kit makers (corporation or just guys in a garage sharing the love) got sued?

alex_dubinsky
 
Posts: 188
Joined: Wed Jul 30, 2008 5:17 pm

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by alex_dubinsky »

Will your instructions include, "Step 13: take a cotton ball, dip it in acetone, and use it to cool your soldering iron" ?

Honest question.

User avatar
sherpa-of-science
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2010 10:38 am

Re: Advice on distributing a kit/liability

Post by sherpa-of-science »

The disclaimer/liability statements are already posted with tools such as soldering irons, hammers, safety scissors, etc.

There is no need to disclaim liability for injuries/damage incurred durring construction of your project.

Your synth looks and sounds great! Sherpa Of Science kit is a flint knife compared to your laser!
I'm sure you will have great success!

pichenettes
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2010 9:21 pm

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by pichenettes »

Just a little update... ~80 units of my synth have been sold in various forms (from full kits to bare PCBs) - I couldn't do more because the design used a rare part.

Random things I've learned:

- No soldering iron accident, phew!

- If you don't use an integrated cart webapp, you'll need to find a solution to generate documents from templates (invoices, custom forms, labels). I personally used Python+LaTeX but Word macros or Applescript are other options.

- Postage incident rate: 3/80, 1 parcel finally found his way, 1 was returned to me, 1 was lost (this was in the middle of the Eyjafjallajökull kerfuffle).

- Do not stock parts until you have finalized development. When I was developing my synth, whenever I needed a new part, I ordered 10x or 50x or those thinking "I'm going to need some when shipping the kits". Bad idea... When time came to prepare the kits, I had uneven stocks for all the parts (due to half built protos) ; some parts I had ordered at design time became out of stock and I had to order equivalents that did not look the same as the ones in the assembly instructions and people got confused ; and it was a mess to reorder everything. So now, I'm keeping two inventory spreadsheets and two distinct drawers for the "development" and "distribution" parts I use, and never allow myself to use one in place of the other.

- Beware of selection bias when getting people to test your hardware. My design had a flaw (fortunately the fix was to replace a chip) triggered only when it was hooked to modern, commodity MIDI controllers. I favored experienced builders for the first kits - they all had tons of fancy/vintage gear and the first one to report the problem was the 8th customer.

- Be ready to have your heart broken. You'll work months designing a device, writing assembly instructions, building prototypes, counting resistors in plastic cups... and in the end someone will totally rape your masterpiece with an awful soldering job or a gross short. Also, keep in mind that after the last kit will have been shipped you'll likely HATE your product, so if this was something you designed for yourself in the first place, my bad... Still, this is largely compensated by the joy of seeing people posting online pics of your product in their fancy cases.

- Offering a very fair price and hoping to gain a little extra with donations doesn't work. Any extra you expect, put it in the base price.

- Avoid pre-assembled subsystems you don't have much control on, or that don't come with absolutely pristine datasheets/source code/technical documentation. I used a LCD display with built-in serial interface from Sparkfun and in hindsight this was the stupidest move in my design - when I realized that it did not work as expected and that "fix the firmware yourself" was not even a valid solution. Avoid anything that can be obtained only from 1 minor distributor.

- Bare boards+pre-programmed chip is a good model. Cuts a lot of labor costs and unless people are organizing themselves on a forum to do a PCB run, it'll still be cost-effective for them to pay $25 for a board and chip - so the margins are not bad.

- Providing a firmware update feature (that doesn't require extra hardware) in your product is going to save your life, several times.

So am I going to do it again? Sure! A major revision of this first project is going to be available as a kit soon (http://mutable-instruments.net/shruthi1/) - though I'm thinking of giving a try to a Kickstarter-like model in which I'll collect funding first, spend it to come up with a device, publish everything, and let people do the distribution/sourcing themselves (except maybe for the final PCB runs...)

rarebeasts
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jul 18, 2010 5:06 am

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by rarebeasts »

Hi pichenettes,

Thanks for sharing what you have learned about producing and selling your kits. It's interesting to see what has worked for you.

Your kits look great by the way, super professional.

User avatar
altairlabs
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2011 4:19 pm

Re: Advice on distributing a kit

Post by altairlabs »

Howdy, pichenettes !

kitbiz is loaded with excellent advice. We all appreciate ladyada for her guidance and inspiration; and glean words of wisdom from westfw and others. But so far your post is the most relevant to my little project.

Congrats on your impressive synth, and THANKS MUCH for sharing your experience and lessons learned.

Locked
Forum rules
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!

Return to “Kitbiz”