If you’re considering selling something on Tindie, an obvious question is “where do I get it made?” If you have a 3D printer, laser cutter, or are simply good and efficient with hand tools, these can present good solutions for very low volumes. Perhaps you have aspirations of selling not just tens, or even hundreds of your product, but scaling up to a volume that you simply couldn’t make by yourself.
You could attempt to hire staff, but another good option would be to get your product manufactured by another company. Many of these factories that can make your “widget” exist in China, meaning a huge amount of unfamiliarity for many Tindie sellers.
For a good introduction to the challenges of manufacturing a product in China, Akiba, creator of FreakLabs, has a series of videos answering questions on this challenging subject which were filmed during an AMA on SupplyFX. Questions were submitted in group chat from other engineers and range from pitfalls for small companies manufacturing in China to how you can transition to high volume manufacturing.
The videos, which sort of give the impression of talking to a friend, are certainly worth checking out. He touches on how it’s best to ramp up and learn slowly around 2:00 in the last (fifth) video, referencing how huge surges in orders such as a successful Kickstarter can be quite challenging!
