My experience is that I own and run a marketing company. Pricing strategy is always an important piece of any business model.
I’m also just completing my initial build of the MPCNC. I’m fresh in the experience and only purchased a 3D printer to eventually learn enough to have my own plasma CNC.
The entire process is daunting, as every step I’m learning from the ground up…but it’s extremely rewarding.
As for your product pricing, there is tremendous value in purchasing your kit, as I did. While I now understand most of the components, I saved huge time in sourcing all the parts from Amazon. The problem I have with online shopping are the number of choices. You have tested your gear and stand by it.
10% markup is for big box retailers with no experience added.
I’m happy to pay a 50% premium for your knowledge of the parts, source them and sell me what I need.
The key word is value-added. You offer good value.
I’d suspect you should be marking things up 30-50%.
Yes, Another way to think about the gereral contracting business is that they general contractor usually works for an insurance company, home owner or some other entity where they are working on such a project that 10 percent usually equals 100,000 dollars or more in a reasonable amount of time and they dont have their wallet on the line like many smaller type of contractors or Micro. Where as the Costcos of our life are working on a Macro system meaning they can make much money because a single store may make several millions a day. and at 10% that is a huge profit margin.
Now think about the micro contractor where they are inventory heavy and only making 40 bucks an hour. One may start to think they are charging less and the big box store are gouging the customer. Thats what I love about America.
Hey Ryan, I can fully understand as an enineer you may or may not have been exposed to the world of high pressure sales tatics. I unfortunately was almost conned into taking a job here in vegas. The manager had the same credentials as I but was trying to get me to build a team. I knew what to ask in the interview and realized what it was. After I told him no he then explained to me what they were really asking.
I also worked in the insurance industry for 5 seconds. They used robo calling to attempt to contact people. The script and believe me it was a script. Sales truely suck and they are high pressure and never doubt that.
Marketing is such a vast topic.
Ryan I would do a function like this. I want to make “X” so like this.
X = ((rents - utility - material costs - any overhead you choose - (inventory/how fast to pay it off or loan payment) - (any payrolls) + (inflow of cash all sources))
Basically the most basic formula in existence. This is so basic towards an engineer. But I would run my business like this at least to start. Figure out these paramaters then go from there.
If you run a stream lined business and you have that all figured out then y ou can safely run a promotion from time to time. If you choose.
Hey Ryan, Actually you offered the biggest promotion one could offer the community. You offered up the STL files for your machine. You do not ever need to offer a promotion to anyone and you never should feel bad about that in any way. You and I both know what one could do with that info that is in those files. The fact that you have a prosperous business makes me wish I was younger and could compete with you. And lets not just look at that. You and Jeff and I do now know how many others have offerd up documents on how to make the machine work. Personally I know how to program the whole damn thing but regardless of that you guys have as close as a plug and play DIY project that I have come across in my three years in retirement. I would like you to reflect on that. Well done sir!
Now back to my project fellas. Today I start cutting pipe and grinding a bit on them and trimming up some screws. Lastly today I will see if I can use the rail system to get a good solid square setup for wood plates. Wish me luck. I’m also gonna make a 5 foot by 3 foot MPCNC I really like that design for my Fuselage Mold Making idea. Anyways any R/C enhusiast out there? If so I would not mind posting pics of my progress over the next six months. Let me know.
The comments in this thread are insane, no dummies here. I have to re-read half of them to absorb the info. It gives me a lot to think about and also seems I am in the ballpark of where you all think I should be.
The older I get, the less I want to nickle and dime the purchasing process and the more a complete vetted kit is valuable to me. There is more than enough adventure in the building and operation to satisfy the weekend engineer in me.
That is why I would pay a premium for a complete kit. What I think would really help support that product would be a more complete build document than what is currently available. One that doesn’t assume any level of familiarity with this world. It was a bit of a slog building the lowrider the first time. Not because the information didn’t exist but because it wasn’t all in one place.
A good example is when I built my Prusa i3 MK3S 3d printer. This document is the gold standard for me:
It would take a ton of work but could be divided up in the community. Once you have a true step by step build guide, it promotes the kit sales directly.
Is it bad that I have never seen those docs before?
Those are great. With the new community docs we have going any new updated hardware I promise to put in a little more effort with them. Then you all can jump in and fix my mistakes. We are getting there. The LR in particular was a crazy experiment, no one has really said anything yet. I just uploaded some exploded views and things seemed to go well. The very first version of the MPCNC had very detailed step by step instructions and it seemed there where too detailed and people would just skim them and miss the nuggets of info pepper throughout. Fine line of too much and not enough.
You need a needle-cutter then. One of the fun things it brings to the party is to enable cutting and building an exact replacement plane and getting back into the air in just a few hours, rather than days… crash, needle-cut and glue up a new airframe, transfer over the old electrics (which usually survive), and go toss it in the air. With foamboard being so inexpensive and quick/easy to rebuild with comes a certain freedom to go out and just have fun… without the anxiety and fear of crashing that often accompanies flying more expensive and/or difficult to replace planes.
I’ve held off mentioning it here but since you brought it up… take a look at Edward Chew’s foam (needle) cutter machine – he sells a short/lite KIT for $89, shipped to US! – which can (at present) be built for well under $200…
The short/lite kit is everything but the 2020 and 2040 1000mm extrusions and the printed parts. Here’s a version I’m adapted to MPCNC…
@niget2002 Ya, I have Airplanes and I have built over 20 of them in the past mostly from kits. I am starting to only build off of plans and/or pictures. I have been working towards (slowly) making my fuses out of fiberglass and creating molds for the fuses so that I can rebuild once I crash. It eventually happens. Additionally, I have 3 RC 1/10 or 1/8 th scale trucks.
I got rid of most of the planes because the closest field has strict noise requirements. I kept my first kit build. It’s a tiger 2 with a tower hobbies 46 and tuned pipe on it.
I flew helicopters for a while, but stopped when I couldn’t afford the cost of a major repair. I sold everything but a mcpx and X3.
I was also into racing quads, but didn’t have time to practice enough to be competitive, so stopped that too. Now that we’re at a house with a small field, I’ve been thinking about getting another small quad.
A few years back I picked up a few rc trucks really cheap. A nitro rustler, a Traxxas stampede, and a a RC18T. The kids and I race them around the yard.
I built one plane using a fiberglass fuse and balsa covered foam wings. It’s a ton of work.
Now I focus on the woodworking. I don’t have to drive anywhere to do it and I can sneak out to the shop in the evenings and on the weekends easily.
It all depends on what you want. Is goal to spread your machine and ideas far and wide? Do you want to retire off this business? Do you want to make enough to further R&D without your own cost contrabution? I am a building maintenance man currently(past jobs sales,dance instructor,rough in framing, construction clean up,meat processing,lock Smithing,apartment maintenance) and do small side jobs(handy man stuff. Decks,doors,small prototyping,lite 3d manufacturing) I never charge the same price per job. If it’s a friend of a friend or just helping random people.
There is a guy I have done random prototyping for. He built it from wood and gave me measurements and a video explaining what he wants. 10 minutes in cad 3 minutes to slice. 3 hours to print. $50 first job,$75 second,third he paid me $100 even though I quoted $75.
Radio clips for my full time job. Whatever hours I work on it threw my company printed at work plus material X 2(roll of petg cf for them and 1 roll for me)
Random guy off of Facebook $50 a sign plus cost of materials
Deck for a home-cost of permit plus materials x 2
Epoxy table and counters $30-40 a square foot.
Most of my experience on price and cost has never been about making lots of money(personally). More about helping people because I am no professional (jack of all trades master of none) and if they are asking for my help it’s because they can’t afford a professional and are in a tight spot or are unsure and looking for an idea of what to do next.
I personally believe you should charge what you want for you to obtain your goals. And our opinion and experience shouldn’t effect your goals.
I can say there is no merit in charging less than anyone else with a similar product, and you have seen the occasional merit in charging more. If everybody else is selling those bearings at 50 cents, for example, I think that is the floor.
I’ll agree with everyone who said spending a few extra bucks to support you is agreeable. I don’t even remember now if searching for prices ended up being less, more, or equal (I’ve done that with so many projects since last year) but I DO remember thinking “why the hell am I wasting my time on this? Either way it’s gonna be close and this guy DESERVES to earn a living, here.”
How much do people really expect to save by shopping the kit? I don’t know, but I think if you suggest that it could take 2 hours or more to do a good job, that most of us have better things to do with those 2 hours than save 30 or 40 bucks, especially those of us who don’t like doing it just to wait a month or two for bang good to come through. This isn’t a poor man hobby, and I don’t think I’ve met anybody with any type of cnc who didn’t have disposable income.
I think you could probably spend a little less time researching prices and more time reminding potential customers that you DO provide quality assurance on your inventory, that all your parts DO plug and play nicely together if we do our part, and that you DO actively improve your designs (at least as far as the lowrider 2, firmware fixes and updates, plus whatever else you have going in that rocket lab of a brain).
It’s ok to ask people to spend a little more… there aren’t many (if any) DIY machines that can do what the MPCNC can do for the price you ask. We are already saving a ton by choosing MPCNC. You’re running a boutique, not a flea market or garage sale.
I’m building a kit car (roundabout led me here, actually) and I ended up waiting almost 6 months for a sale, because I knew they would have one that saved me over 1000 bucks. I won’t stop at harbor freight unless I have one of the 20% coupons and one for a freebie because I know they are around. I bought your kit as soon as I had the free cash (you know, kids lol). I think a lot of people will appreciate your no-sale philosophy if you point it out. Kinda like the carmax no-haggle.
TLDR; pat yourself on the back a little, tell everybody about the work you put in to make a first cnc a GOOD experience, and then charge what you can get.
And thank you, dude. Thank you a LOT!
Thank you for that reply, It all made a lot of sense to me. This line in particular. I do feel I need to add that somewhere. For the most part, I have seen people talking about saving $20 shopping around (probably from using a different board really), those people I can not chase. If you have that kind of free time to spend to maybe save $20, and wait for things from everywhere I will never please you. The kits I actually think I do a great job with, and I can prep in bulk, and ship super fast. I am considering upping the price of everything else. As the orders for people basically piecing together a kit without one or two things takes a very long time to pack. Still working on that and keeping track of time spent. Oddly enough If I do not stock plain steppers I do not get those types of orders. The other option is to try and squeak a few dollars off the kits to try and reward the kit buyers without punishing the parts buyers too much.
I agree here, I pay a premium to buy from here because I want you to keep supporting this awesome learning platform.
You need to mark things up enough that you will be willing to improve and update the core platform - you’ve already done what’s required to allow people who want to do absolute-minimum-cost version of the platform.
In order for me to source parts myself vs buying a kit the price difference has to be somewhere in the thousands of dollars. It would cost that much of my time to research and source all the parts needed. What I’m buying with the kit is a much easier start with some level of assurance that all the parts will be reasonably compatible… I’m not trying to get the absolute lowest cost
Well done sir!
