Comment by fragmede
5 days ago
even something twice the price ($438) would still be a great deal. Mind telling us something about your pricing strategy trade-off consideration matrix?
5 days ago
even something twice the price ($438) would still be a great deal. Mind telling us something about your pricing strategy trade-off consideration matrix?
Design for manufacturing is one thing. I did it a lot when building micro gas turbines in college. Sometimes changing the design or manufacturing process will make it 10x faster to make one while not compromising the performance.
The second thing is low margin. When people are pricing hardware, they usually plan a 50% to 100% margin to offset various costs that happen in the real world. From what I've heard, in extreme cases, some products cost around $100 while they are being sold at close to $1000. I believe in the Prusa printer approach: you design a good product and price it a little bit above cost. So the company grows with the community.
Deep down, there are so many times that I wish I could afford a fancy tool like a Milwaukee drill or a Mitutoyo caliper. And in extreme cases, I really wish I could have a HAAS UMC-400 or even a KERN Micro HD+. Now that I can set the price, I really wish I could make someone get what they want without breaking their bank.
For folks curious about why these kinds of margins are built in for hardware products, I found these videos informative:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwrkfHadeQQ
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IdAT_SIRK8c&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=63pnz-z_2sU&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D
As a customer, thin margins scare the crap out of me. It means you probably won’t be around in a few years.
Seems like this stuff is mostly built on open source, so no need to be too scared.
4 replies →
It’s worth reading the history behind Raspberry Pi. It depends on the team. With the right product market for, this strategy has and will work. In my view, the Vassar team got the pricing strategy right to do something even bigger than Raspberry Pi if they can scale at this price point for the low end model.
For software support, the software is open source, so the community can keep it going even if we’re no longer around (hopefully not anytime soon).
For repairs, the components are inexpensive enough to simply swap in a new one, and you can always find replacements on AliExpress.
that's really great, thanks for sharing!