Hi there,
i am an italian guy writing from rome, i am posting here
to look for any suggestion...
i am tired of chinese products, i would like to manufacture something
metal object in my garage at a competitive price like chinese one.
Could you help me with any idea?

thank you!

On 2 Apr 2005 06:15:50 -0800, the renowned
) wrote:

Hi there,
i am an italian guy writing from rome, i am posting here
to look for any suggestion...
i am tired of chinese products, i would like to manufacture something
metal object in my garage at a competitive price like chinese one.
Could you help me with any idea?

thank you!

Rome is a relatively expensive city in a country with costs broadly
similar to other developed countries. You can't make anything that
will compete with the China price if it is made in large quantity (eg.
MOQ one TEU container). Stick to special niche stuff that you
understand well and that has little competition and you can do fine.
Try to compete head-on and you'll get slaughtered. Don't judge their
costs by the selling price in your country, even big international
companies have made that mistake and have paid dearly.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

Pick on the Germans, the French, even the Americans. What the hell, everyone
else does! Mess with the Chinese or Indians and they'll beat you like a red
haired stepchild.
Steve

wrote in message
om...
Hi there,
i am an italian guy writing from rome, i am posting here
to look for any suggestion...
i am tired of chinese products, i would like to manufacture something
metal object in my garage at a competitive price like chinese one.
Could you help me with any idea?

thank you!

wrote in message
om...
Hi there,
i am an italian guy writing from rome, i am posting here
to look for any suggestion...
i am tired of chinese products, i would like to manufacture something
metal object in my garage at a competitive price like chinese one.
Could you help me with any idea?

thank you!

Find a niche and fill it. You would be best served to try to find something
you can control from raw materials to retail. Let's say something you can
make to sell to tourists.

You will need one LAAARGE garage to produce items on a scale to compete with
the Chinese. Plus, if you have a winner, they will "knock it off" in less
than a week, and have exact replicas of your widget selling in your market
for half your price.

steve

Since you are talking about doing it in your garage, I am assuming that
you are looking for a niche. One item that I can think of is the
specialized tools that are used to make oboe and bassoon reeds. Find
some oboe players and ask to look at the tools they use to make reeds.
Work with them to come up with some improvements. And figure out a
good way to get knowledge of your improved tool to all the oboe and
bassoon players. You would probably have to set up a web site and also
send letters to various orchestras telling of your web site.

The tools are not extremely heavy and could be shipped all over the
world.


Dan

I know! Leaning Tower statuettes! The market must be wide open on
those....isn't it? Or maybe it's Mussolini busts I'm thinking of....
JR
Dweller in the cellar

SteveB wrote:


Find a niche and fill it.
steve




--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth
If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes
Doubt yourself, and the real world will eat you alive
The world doesn't revolve around you, it revolves around me
No skeletons in the closet; just decomposing corpses
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dependence is Vulnerability:
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Open the Pod Bay Doors please, Hal"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.."

"JR North" wrote in message
...
I know! Leaning Tower statuettes! The market must be wide open on
those....isn't it? Or maybe it's Mussolini busts I'm thinking of....
JR
Dweller in the cellar

SteveB wrote:


Find a niche and fill it. steve

More successful men have made it by filling a niche than reinventing the
wheel.

Anyone who has been in business will tell you to:

Identify the market - will these people buy this product? Do people have
the disposable income in this market to spend their money for my
product/service?

Is there a need for this product/service? Or is it something that I just
really like, and not many other people would buy for themselves?

How many people are already providing this product/service? Too many people
doing it means the slice of the total sales pie I can claim will be small.

Are there any holes where needs are not being met? (This is the most
fertile ground ....... niches, as I call them.)

I have seen countless businesses fail because they did not research these
basic business concepts.

The OP said he wanted something to do out of his garage that could compete
with Chinese goods. By making that statement, I knew he was clueless.

So, I made the suggestion of a plausible alternative. To stay within his
own market, identify a need, and fill that niche.

What are your suggestions?

Steve

BTW, I wonder just how many leaning Tower of Pisa statuettes have been sold
in the last fifty years. I would estimate it to be in the Million$, and
that would probably be very low. I would bet you a month's pay that plaster
leaning Tower of Pisa souvenirs have bought a few men a few Mercedes over
the past fifty years.

I live just near Vatican, and here is full of souvenir shop,
what do you think to buy a machine like that
http://www.coincrafters.com/newsite/...d/attended.htm
and make coins to sell at that shop for retailing?



Rome is a relatively expensive city in a country with costs broadly
similar to other developed countries. You can't make anything that
will compete with the China price if it is made in large quantity (eg.
MOQ one TEU container). Stick to special niche stuff that you
understand well and that has little competition and you can do fine.
Try to compete head-on and you'll get slaughtered. Don't judge their
costs by the selling price in your country, even big international
companies have made that mistake and have paid dearly.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

I think you might be able to make some money with a machine like that.
but I think you need something a bit different from what they currently
have. Perhaps a scenes of various Roman historic sites with a month
and year on the back. I can see where I might buy a souvenir
especially if it had the month and year when I was there. I would not
buy one that said" my lucky Penny ".


Dan

Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On 2 Apr 2005 06:15:50 -0800, the renowned
) wrote:



Hi there,
i am an italian guy writing from rome, i am posting here
to look for any suggestion...
i am tired of chinese products, i would like to manufacture something
metal object in my garage at a competitive price like chinese one.
Could you help me with any idea?

thank you!



Rome is a relatively expensive city in a country with costs broadly
similar to other developed countries. You can't make anything that
will compete with the China price if it is made in large quantity (eg.
MOQ one TEU container). Stick to special niche stuff that you
understand well and that has little competition and you can do fine.
Try to compete head-on and you'll get slaughtered. Don't judge their
costs by the selling price in your country, even big international
companies have made that mistake and have paid dearly.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany


Yea...Costs of chinese stuff in china are waaaaaay lower than the
western world sees. In 97 on a visit to a fabricator there, he was
paying less than $ 1 US for a 1 HP open frame motor. Of course they had
to test every one before installation and had a high reject rate but I
would guess you are actually competing at about 20% of the retail cost.
Yes, you could improve the situation by skipping all the middlemen but
it would still be nearly impossible to make money on a
fabrication/direct sale of a near-duplicate product.

The answer to the original question is "art". The value in art (and
fabricated art-like items) is all in the labor and brainwork put in
rather than the materials/production.

Koz

wrote:

I live just near Vatican, and here is full of souvenir shop,
what do you think to buy a machine like that
http://www.coincrafters.com/newsite/...d/attended.htm
and make coins to sell at that shop for retailing?




Rome is a relatively expensive city in a country with costs broadly
similar to other developed countries. You can't make anything that
will compete with the China price if it is made in large quantity (eg.
MOQ one TEU container). Stick to special niche stuff that you
understand well and that has little competition and you can do fine.
Try to compete head-on and you'll get slaughtered. Don't judge their
costs by the selling price in your country, even big international
companies have made that mistake and have paid dearly.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany


In the past life I worked at the Space Needle (think near a million
visitors a year) and was the guy who had to fix the coin flattening
machine. Some guy in southwest Washington built his own machines and
got the Space Needle to install them. At $ .25 a pop in the early 80's
there were probably 50 to 100 users a day during the summer.
Maintenance was minimal and mostly consisted of getting the odd stuck
penny out. Machines were fully sealed and motor powered rather than the
crank style. people perferred watching the motor turn the gears (extra
gears for show) to the hand crank machines in other places.

The real money was in the pay telescopes......Ever try and carry a 5
gallon bucket filled with quarters?


Koz (who begins to wonder if the old pay toilets actually turned a profit)