Advise on my new vape design

[davesmith]

So I've been quietly building and testing a new all glass vape. I'm at the point where I'm ready to make them but am unsure how to best release/market them.

I assume as soon as I show the design someone will outsource it to china and rip me off. I've considered outsourcing it myself. Its not really what I'm about but if I'm gonna make huge margins of course thats the way.

I could do a kickstarter or something? Guaranteeing my sales before I invest time and money into building the things myself.

Or just take the plunge and build an initial drop (say 50) and hope thats enough to make it worth my time.

The way I would've done it normally is post a video and then take orders from there. But as some of the materials are shipped from abroad it means lead times may be a bit shit. And I really don't want to give the "steal your idea and outsource to china" crew any more time than I have to.

I'm certain they'll be popular ive had excellent feedback from my beta testers. Its a real decent design and has the possibility for tons of accessories.

Any and all input is truely appreciated. I'm a bit unsure atm but hopefully these bad boys will be milking your pieces/lungs by the middle of summer.

 

[Abysmal Vapor]

The rip off crew will always be there and there is nothing you can do about it. I'd say just go ahead with it and beat the knockoffs with quality. Also consider offering a chinese version yourself as it gets more popular and you have to meet demand and also will be nice to drop prices. That way you can dedicate time to custom orders that will sell at a better profit marging and still earn on the chinese meantime .
Is it a e-nail coil driven driven vape ? Or is it something that takes time to assemble, if the build is complicated i doubt they will waste time knocking off your product.
I also have been developing my own design, trying to fund the R&D phase myself and i have gotten nowhere in setting up production . Maybe sitting for two years on my idea,wasnt the best choice,knowing the ammount of support you would get is essential to the success of a product .

 

[4everpushingaboulder]

This is the balance between crowdsourcing/funding and a dedicated budget.

Also. Go read thru the Anvil thread and see how he has been impacted. Released a version he self made in an initial drop; had great reception but manufacturing quality issues. Realized he couldn’t scale and had to start looking for a production partner while the demand was growing.

Once he found a partner now it’s taken several cycles to get the bugs worked out and production ramped up. He’s still struggling to fill waitlist orders.

May be a lesson in that someone else already learned.

https://imgur.com/aRWEqyl

 

[invertedisdead]

I had been concerned with China white label smoke shops undercutting me with my glass vape as well, but ultimately it was actually members of the vape community that put the most pressure on me.

There’s a new trend going on where people
just kind of copy each other now without even really innovating on any level. Used to be frowned upon around here (See Onsen Labs desktop thread) but now it’s kind of encouraged so long as a lower price can be met.... now when someone starts getting something going for themselves, someone else might undercut them. I could list so many items in just recent years where this was the case, but just look at Glass Charlie stems for a classic example. I mean just last week there were posts on here from a guy who copied someones popular design, who was disappointed that another guy just copied his newest design. No idea is 100% original/nothing new under the sun, but some effort to differentiate would be nice. tbh that falls on the community though more than the “makers” cause people choose what they’re supporting. It’s truthfully a grey area as most of this stuff isn’t proprietary or completely original to begin with, most ideas are just borrowed from other industries.

Also ironically it was actually much more expensive and at a lower quality to have my parts made in China then I could do domestically. TBH I don’t think there’s much money in glass vapes unless you’re building them yourself. A glass vape should likely cost more than other materials in most cases due to manufacturing complexities but they have almost no value in the community from DHgate glass diluting the value. As soon as OGB put those dimpled Jhooks on his website a China link was posted where you can buy three of them for less than one from OGB.

 

[Abysmal Vapor]

@invertedisdead Glass Charlie = @davesmith

 

[invertedisdead]

@invertedisdead Glass Charlie = @davesmith

Damn man; well I didn’t intend to hit that close to home, but in that case he’s completely aware of this issue.

This is one of those things that’s hard to talk about as a community, cause people will think you’re just complaining, but really we all just want to see members doing well and the community thriving positively. And anytime money gets involved things get complicated. I think one issue is the industry is so much smaller than people think, so some of these seemingly small decisions can make or break an idea very easily.

 

[Farid]

Unless you have the ability to protect your design (in terms of your design being patentable, and your financial ability to actually protect that patent if infringed upon) there's little benefit to withholding it.

 

[davesmith]

Wow these replies are absolutely what I needed to hear. So glad FC is a sounding bored with such level headed members. I think all the points raised are great, thank you.

After reading this and chatting with the beta testers I think I'm just gonna make up a batch and do a drop. After that who knows. I'm not in this game to get rich im here because its my lifestyle. And with what I have at the moment im pretty content so fuck the copycats n haters.

Fuck it Ill order the parts tonight.

Thanks again dudes.

 

[Shit Snacks]

Nice! Yeah that was going to be my suggestion, just build the batch of however many you can and then do a drop announcement launch, good luck!

As soon as OGB put those dimpled Jhooks on his website a China link was posted where you can buy three of them for less than one from OGB.

Sorry just wanted to point out this is not true, it took quite a while before the Chinese hooks came along, and they are designed pretty differently from the OGB spike hooks honestly, but yes they are clearly inspired by the triple right angle (which I helped come up with for OGB custom originally) and other spiked cooling stems... They also sell a mouthpiece version, and a male jointed L hook version, while my guess is that someone else actually sent them photos and asked them to design these new pieces perhaps based off of OGB and others they had seen, I'd be surprised if they (Genesis) researched and had done it all themselves?

 

[Zuhdj]

Wow these replies are absolutely what I needed to hear. So glad FC is a sounding bored with such level headed members. I think all the points raised are great, thank you.

After reading this and chatting with the beta testers I think I'm just gonna make up a batch and do a drop. After that who knows. I'm not in this game to get rich im here because its my lifestyle. And with what I have at the moment im pretty content so fuck the copycats n haters.

Fuck it Ill order the parts tonight.

Thanks again dudes.

Can I get in on that first run by any chance

 

[davesmith]

Can I get in on that first run by any chance

I can definitely make a list of people pre drop who want first refusal. I got my kid tonight so ill try get the parts ordered and the admin stuff done.

 

[Joie de Vivre]

Does all-glass imply butane? gl in any event btw.

 

[ProfessionalHandJob]

Wow these replies are absolutely what I needed to hear. So glad FC is a sounding bored with such level headed members. I think all the points raised are great, thank you.

After reading this and chatting with the beta testers I think I'm just gonna make up a batch and do a drop. After that who knows. I'm not in this game to get rich im here because its my lifestyle. And with what I have at the moment im pretty content so fuck the copycats n haters.

Fuck it Ill order the parts tonight.

Thanks again dudes.

im interested

 

[davesmith]

Does all-glass imply butane? gl in any event btw.

Yes butane powered

And ive ordered the parts to make up a small batch. Should be here in a couple weeks.

I'll make a thread and get a list of interested partys sorted. Ill make sure anyone from these boards who wants one can get one first. ✌

Now I gotta think of a bloody name for the thing haha

Big up u lot

 

[Dan Morrison]

My hard earned advice is to scale slowly, avoid crowdfunding if possible, and keep batch sizes as small as possible. You want to remain flexible. You will want to make design tweaks... keeping your batches small allows you to make these changes between batches.

Don't underestimate customer service and shipping. These two things can take a lot of time. Think through your policies carefully, and always consider worst case scenarios.

Expect everything that you do for the first time to take way longer than you think.

Take great photos.

Re: Protecting your design. The best way to do this is to figure out what you do better than anyone else and make sure that thing is integral to your design. Be faster than everyone else at improving upon said design into the future. You want to garner support by genuinely being the best at what you do. If you have a hands-on skill that you've mastered through experience, it's very difficult for anyone to replicate you at a cheaper price.

 

[4everpushingaboulder]

My hard earned advice is to scale slowly, avoid crowdfunding if possible, and keep batch sizes as small as possible. You want to remain flexible. You will want to make design tweaks... keeping your batches small allows you to make these changes between batches.

Don't underestimate customer service and shipping. These two things can take a lot of time. Think through your policies carefully, and always consider worst case scenarios.

Expect everything that you do for the first time to take way longer than you think.

Take great photos.

Re: Protecting your design. The best way to do this is to figure out what you do better than anyone else and make sure that thing is integral to your design. Be faster than everyone else at improving upon said design into the future. You want to garner support by genuinely being the best at what you do. If you have a hands-on skill that you've mastered through experience, it's very difficult for anyone to replicate you at a cheaper price.

And learn some ancient Japanese rice paper production methods. That helps keep folks from copying you too!

 

[davesmith]

@Dan Morrison i had the pleasure of hitting one of your nomad 2s for breakfast the other day. What an outstanding piece of craftsmanship!

Thanks for the advice. I'm def sticking to small batches with the first run being about 25 pieces.

Really appreciate the advice dude.

 

[DeadRabb1t]

I don't post a huge amount on here but glass and butane are two of my favourite things nowdays can I be on a list if you do UK at all please

 

[Squidge]

I don't post a huge amount on here but glass and butane are two of my favourite things nowdays can I be on a list if you do UK at all please

I thought he was based in the UK?

 

[davesmith]

I don't post a huge amount on here but glass and butane are two of my favourite things nowdays can I be on a list if you do UK at all please

I thought he was based in the UK?

Yep I'm based in the uk, bristol. I will of course be doing world wide shipping.

Once I've made the first batch and I'm ready to ship ill get usage vids and start a thread. Ill post a link here when I do.

Gonna do about 25 or 30 for the first batch so if you wanna secure one just keep your eyes peeled. I Promise ill give fc members the heads up first.

If these fly out then it'll be about 4 weeks till the second batch. I may do a pre order for the second batch if demand is high enough we will just have to wait and see.

Thanks for all the interest people. I've been sat on this one for a while I can't wait to show you lot and give somemlre back to the vape world.

Peace ✌

 

[btka]

I would really like to know how big the vaporizer market is...

In my opinion if you make a top quality product, which maybe is not as easy to copy for example like dan morrision vapes (because of special skills and experience or new technology (for example grasshoppers heating element, which I think is outstanding and until now i did not see any company copying their heater). you could also offer custom made products (i think there is a lot of ways to customize glass, I saw really great artistic peaces and I think there are also a bunch of people which will pay extra for this)... Maybe make you a name and start with custom made pieces (production, logistics, customer service and so will be easier to handle at start), later you can also make "mass" pieces for a better (cheaper) price, if you are already recognized in the vape market.... When you would make custom pieces you can also plan better your costs and so... also people will pay you in advance for custom pieces...

I am not sure how much to suffer of copycats .. the question is if anyway a customer buying copied product would have bought your product... (some people not intressted in quality or do not have the funds), so they anyway would not buy your product...
and yes customer service is also very important do not know how (for example chinese) copycats customer service is...

 

[DeadRabb1t]

I thought he was based in the UK?

I wasn't sure though my brain was hopeful

Now I know