

Most important choice of a hardware startup - contract manufacturer  - krschultz
http://bugblogger.com/a-long-overdue-productstatus-update-159/#more-159

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micks56
I worked for a contract manufacturing/engineering company for a while.

Here is what I would recommend based on my experiences:

1\. Interview employees at the CM. Talk to the people that will be building
your product. Talk to the bosses and their bosses. Talk to the people in the
warehouse. Talk to the accountants. Talk to their suppliers. You need to find
out how things are run. Try to see if you can shadow people in key departments
at the CM.

2\. Talk to their customers. Get a current and past customer list. Talk to the
customers that walked away and find out why. Lots of good info here.

3\. Find out when building starts. Show up unannounced and see how things are
going. I recommend this throughout the relationship till you are confident
that things are how you want them to be. This keeps the CM honest.

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wmf
And since nobody ever names names, _your_ startup gets to make these same
mistakes over again!

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krschultz
Can't name names, but I would say - take a hard look at the amount of square
feet the CM has. The larger the manufacturer, the more they can scale. The
smaller the manufacturer, the more they care about your business. It would
seem like the 2nd is the one you want, but it is not, go with the large one.
Look for a CM with "new product introduction" expertise, and their experience
and size will pay great dividends.

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micks56
I agree with your statements of going with the large CM and one with extensive
"new product introduction" (called NPI in the biz) experience.

I will re-iterate the points from my previous post. Extensive due diligence is
a must. You need to make sure their goals are exactly in line with yours. It
is very difficult to move a CM in a direction they aren't already going.

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cmos
Cool.. a hardware post! I feel your pain.. We had such bad experiences we
decided to do our own end assembly, and strictly source everything in the US.
It's more expensive, but then again, we were a small company, and making
things happen overseas is really difficult.

Are you manufacturing in the US or China/Taiwan?

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krschultz
US at the moment

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comatose_kid
For more interesting information about a hardware startup and their
experiences building a product, check out the following:

<http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=7>

