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Making a Physical Product

317 pointsby j0nccabout 12 years ago

37 comments

FigBugabout 12 years ago
I liked this article and would like to see more like it. With the maker movement, Kickstarter, 3D printing, etc there now seems to be a lot more interest in making physical products. But the isn't a lot of public information about the costs and processes involved, compared to say the number of tutorials on how to build web app or a mobile app.<p>I noticed that the actual cost of the 'product' is less than 40% of the total project costs. And labour isn't even factored in.<p>I was just involved in making a small injection molded part. I was surprised how easy and inexpensive it was. For all the hype 3D printing is getting, I think there could be lots more businesses in making injection molding more accessible.
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yajoeabout 12 years ago
Really cool to see the numbers and congrats on making the product!<p>One nit to emphasize the value in basic accounting knowledge for others when going down the manufacturing route: it's $11.37 <i>_gross_</i> margin (aka gross profit, see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin</a> ), not <i>_net_</i> profit (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin</a> ). While this may sound silly and academic, <i>net</i> confers a sense of finality -- it includes all costs, marketing, discounts to sell remnant inventory, depreciations... everything. Learning this distinction will also introduce you to inventory management, promotion cycles, and all sorts of other crazy business skills to help you get to the next level in building a game business. There are hundreds of years of wisdom built up about manufacturing that all has to funnel through.... accounting...<p>For example, having &#62;50% net profit is fantastic for manufacturing! Having &#62;50% gross profit is on par for low-scale, specialty products. Jon's 11.37 is a gross profit and on par. Knowing nothing about this specific market, the standard advice in this case is to focus on growing the market rather than reducing costs at this point. (This is a business-model version of the 'don't scale prematurely' mantra you hear in tech considering his price of $20/game doesn't seem insane).<p>Back-of-the-envelope calculations show the gross revenue for all 333 sets is $6,660. Assuming he's included all costs, this means:<p><pre><code> Revenue: $6,660 Costs: $4,660 ================== Net Profit: $2,000 </code></pre> Which means a net profit of $6/set, a little more than 25% of the sale. Depending on how aggressively he wants the market, he should offer discounts to influential or trend-setting groups of people in the 25% range.<p>Another way to look at this business is he would get a return of $2,000 for $4,660 in capital (since he has 1 production run), or 50% ROI... also not too shabby (if sold at retail price).<p>And yet another way to look at this is manufacturing the product over 8 hours yields $2000, or $250/hour... better than most. It's unclear how much time he spent on the admin and design tasks, but since this is a labor of love... let's assume it was leisure time and free :) It also means a second production run may get him an economy scale from re-using the design and website assets for even more $$$/hour.<p>All-in-all, this looks great across the board, and I wish the Jon the best of luck in bringing Space Dice to the world!
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gcheongabout 12 years ago
Why make an iPhone app to keep track of planets owned when you could just make a simple paper based scorecard? Or am I missing something about the complexity of the game? An app might be useful but you want the game to be playable by the largest number of peopl possible and there could be some opportunity for recurring revenue from selling the scorecards.
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DividesByZeroabout 12 years ago
"I spent a few hours hacking together a little rails app which would play out 100,000 rolls in a few seconds and tell me the chances of everything coming up. "<p>Why did the author write a rails app to run statistical experiments on what are easy to calculate probabilities? It seems that if you want to make a probability based game you ought to have at least a working knowledge of the basics.
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munificentabout 12 years ago
"In space, noone can hear you roll! The fate of the galaxy is in your hands, as you race your friends to create (or destroy) planets. Who will be the first to 10? Only the dice know."<p>Ouch, two errors:<p>"noone" -&#62; "no one"<p>"hands, as" -&#62; "hands as"
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jonkneeabout 12 years ago
For your next run you should shop around for a different tube supplier, it's a huge portion of your unit cost (24%) and I bet you can drop its price by at least half.
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dcalacciabout 12 years ago
It's eye-opening to see a breakdown of the process behind conceiving, designing, and manufacturing a product. I think that for many, this process is hidden behind smoke and mirrors, but Jon made it appear doable and worthwhile.<p>It's also empowering to know that he did this with ~$5000 USD. I have no doubt that small-scale production like this would have been prohibitively difficult (read: annoying/costly) even five years ago.
famousactressabout 12 years ago
Awesome! (purchased) I've been reading about game design and playing with ideas myself. The prototyping was _this_ past Christmas? So you went from concept to sales in three months!? That seems fabulous. Congrats.
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tunesmithabout 12 years ago
Would love to see a follow-up on what you actually try to do in terms of marketing and distribution - as I'm finishing up my first 7-song album, I'm painfully aware that even after all the songwriting, recording, mixing, mastering, and product design, "release day" means that you are still only half done.
jeffandersenabout 12 years ago
In case you miss it in the middle of the article, these are the instructions for the game: <a href="http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0218/2060/files/spacedice.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0218/2060/files/spacedice.p...</a>
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clarleabout 12 years ago
As a huge board-gamer, I always love seeing the "making-of" of different games, and this one is no exception. I especially thought the prototype was pretty hilarious, but it definitely makes sense to have one when working with a physical product.<p>I'm not too surprised at how much the costs ended up turning out to be, but I am curious as to how long it took to assemble everything together, from prototype to finish? I guess the main difference for a physical product is really the time it takes to get from prototype to sellable product, rather than just hacking something out in a weekend and getting it out there immediately.
marbanabout 12 years ago
Did anyone come across some good articles on dealing with suppliers on alibaba (test-runs, QA, IP, shipping, customs, etc.)?
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tjicabout 12 years ago
Coincidentally, I made a plastic d6 in my home workshop yesterday using silicone molds. This is just a prototype for more molding work in the future.<p><a href="http://365bowls.com/?p=175" rel="nofollow">http://365bowls.com/?p=175</a>
muratmutluabout 12 years ago
Loved this post, great that he wrote a rails app and nice to get the costs at the end too.<p>I tried to make a wi-fi kettle with a wifi module in that had a API, the prototype alone was a huge expense (£25k+) and to get it into production was around £200k (CE certified etc). In the end I just wrote up the blog post (here <a href="http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/introducing-the-twettle-project-the-kettle-that-tweets/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/introducing-the-twettle-p...</a>)<p>Props to anyone who makes something physical, it's dedication, passion and investment
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willthepersonabout 12 years ago
Purchased. I love hearing stories from people who just got up off the couch and did something.<p>Congratulations! Can't wait to play!
curtabout 12 years ago
Got a couple emails asking me questions, this is the company I always used in the US for prototyping. They are a little expensive but fast. They also have great resources that will answer all your questions:<p><a href="http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx</a>
dplusavidgabout 12 years ago
This really resonates with me. I am currently working on a physical product of my own. In a world where digital goods are the norm, I'm thinking of publishing a bi-weekly magazine.<p>I'm still really in the planning stages, as I haven't got any experience on this front at all. But I do have some of the digital backbone in place already. And I have my ideas stirring in a pot now. All that's needed is for me to start cooking.<p>Anyway, I would just like to say that I am inspired by what I'm seeing here. I'll work as hard as I possibly can. Wish me luck!
amit_mabout 12 years ago
Interesting post. The author could save another 0.83$ per package by skipping the included instruction manual.<p>I think it's safe to assume that very close to 100% of users will have an internet connection available when playing this game, unless they're on a vacation abroad. I would opt for: 1. Full manual + videos on spacedice.com, aimed for use before the first time one plays the game. 2. Abridged version of manual printed on the tube, mainly meant for recalling some specifics of the game.
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mprinzabout 12 years ago
I'm impressed by how fast you decided to go into production. How many playtests did you do? I know a bunch of people who failed with a game that wasn't sufficiently tested. I experienced that the main faults in game design are testing with the same group over and over again, and relying to much on calculations rather than getting real life feedback.<p>But hey, it looks awesome. Great Design. If you come over to the largest game fair in Essen (Germany) this year, I may grab one ;)
rianelliabout 12 years ago
Curious why you chose to spend $2.06 on the tubing stateside? That's a lot of money for packaging, and then to have to assemble the kits together. I'd try and get as much done in China as possible, especially the tubing, which would run you far less and you would be shipping a finished product and minimizing costs a ton.<p>Happy to help anyone who needs guidance on sourcing and manufacturing in China. I've become pretty savvy over the years.
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orangethirtyabout 12 years ago
The landing page is missing an important piece. The explanation of how the game works in <i>text</i>. Its beautiful, well structured, but missing that key part. I was <i>ready</i> to give it a try, but I did not want to see the video. You have to include an explanation in text. Or even an image of how it works. You are losing sales to this. Fix it.
tummybugabout 12 years ago
Not sure if you are aware (or its designed that way) but on your website you have two different dice both labeled 'supernova'.
fragsworthabout 12 years ago
The costs breakdown neglects his own time put into the project.<p>To get the real total cost (which must be estimated), we should know how many hours he spent on it, and what his expected hourly rate might be if he were an independent contractor.<p>You can't really decide whether or not the endeavor was a net gain unless you also take your own time into account.
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SimianLogic2about 12 years ago
Good article. I've been working on a board game prototype on and off for a couple of years and have decks of cards with things taped on them that look very similar to your dice. My plan was to perfect the mechanics and then just make an iPad app, but I think this demonstrates a boutique print run is not that unfeasible.
aikabout 12 years ago
This looks great. I have no experience with selling physical products and so not sure what it takes, but I would think selling these on various specialty websites and specialty stores could work great. Thinkgeek.com is one that comes to mind.
RobotCalebabout 12 years ago
This sounds really cool. Congrats on shipping it!<p>I'd love to check it out, but I don't think I'd enjoy it very much due to my being color blind. Have you given any thought to designing the images to not be dependent on color?
alttababout 12 years ago
Article read like an episode of Shark Tank. These sorts of real constraints is good information to mix into not-always-related-to-business technical discussions.
chrischenabout 12 years ago
I watched the video on the site and still didn't really get how the game worked. I couldn't find any written instructions on the site.
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devguttabout 12 years ago
Very cool, but I missed a board when I saw the video of the game. Still seems to be very interesting.
nnqabout 12 years ago
&#62; I spent a few hours hacking together a little rails app which would play out 100,000 rolls in a few seconds and tell me the chances of everything coming up.<p>Can't people do the math anymore, they have to simulate everything?! And they have to do it with a mtf web framework?! A spreadsheet and some pen and paper to figure out the formulas would've sufficed...
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tocommentabout 12 years ago
Have you considered selling these in Target or Walmart, or perhaps specialty stores?
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tantalorabout 12 years ago
Every game I've ever played has a suggested age range, e.g., 5+ years old.<p>Is this good for kids?
joshrotenbergabout 12 years ago
Really cool. Just purchased!
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joemaller1about 12 years ago
This was front page all day, I'm surprised he has any left to sell.
SCAQTonyabout 12 years ago
Very well done and finally. WoW! God does plays dice!
tocommentabout 12 years ago
How did you find the company to make the packaging?
adaml_623about 12 years ago
$69 for 1 yr of a .com domain? You need to shop around more.<p>But pretty inspiring! Good looking game!
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