I live in Europe and my boss is starting up a side venture to manufacture some small scale hardware based on cameras (near infrared). We came up with a solution to get our stuff manufactured in China but do not know the first thing about it. So I wanted to ask HN - how do we go about it? Or, are there places in Europe that could be cost-effective or other places in the world? If so, any tips or pointers?
If you are doing a small to medium scale product or are just starting out with a product you hope one day will be very big I would skip China to start. You are much better off using a company like CircuitHub or MacroFab. If your product becomes really successful you can always transition to China later but there are a lot of pitfalls to doing that upfront.