>So it's China again. Amazing customer service, advanced options, short lead times.
This falls apart quickly when you come up with a product that would profit others through mimicry.
Those local manufacturers suddenly become a lot less expensive when you're cruising through Alibaba and you see the product you designed for sale in multiple colors at 2/3rds the cost you could have ever hoped to sell them for, through multiple vendors.
tl;dr : I could tell my story, I could tell my dad's story from 30 years prior, but here's the moral instead : taking IP overseas -- especially should that IP require special tooling that gets shipped around -- is crummy for a lot of reasons that may or may not come back to bite you.
Local manufacturing does have advantages, even if they may not apply to your specific needs.
> Those local manufacturers suddenly become a lot less expensive when you're cruising through Alibaba and you see the product you designed for sale in multiple colors at 2/3rds the cost you could have ever hoped to sell them for, through multiple vendors.
No need to look far, two comments removed from yours is this one:
There are trade offs of course. But from mechanical point of view, my project is simple enough that I am sure someone determined could just recreate it in CAD in a couple of days anyway and send to manufacturer of their own.
I think if product can be copied easily, then it will be copied. It's just a fact of life.
What can't be (easily) copied is the firmware. Someone determined could still do clean room implementation anyway.
The more complex and innovative your project is, the more time you can sell it for premium until someone copies it.
On one hand this is good, because it forces people to innovate on the other hand it makes projects less profitable in the long run.
That being said if you have your marketing and price right, your target audience is unlikely going to choose a cheap copy and those who do probably wouldn't be your customers anyway.
This falls apart quickly when you come up with a product that would profit others through mimicry.
Those local manufacturers suddenly become a lot less expensive when you're cruising through Alibaba and you see the product you designed for sale in multiple colors at 2/3rds the cost you could have ever hoped to sell them for, through multiple vendors.
tl;dr : I could tell my story, I could tell my dad's story from 30 years prior, but here's the moral instead : taking IP overseas -- especially should that IP require special tooling that gets shipped around -- is crummy for a lot of reasons that may or may not come back to bite you.
Local manufacturing does have advantages, even if they may not apply to your specific needs.