

The Journey of Launching My First Product, “To Do Cal” - ChrisNorstrom
http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2013/08/the-journey-of-launching-my-first-product-to-do-cal/####

======
prawn
I was nodding along through a lot of this post. A while back, my wife and I
started selling what are essentially speech bubble shapes cut from MDF and
painted with blackboard paint. We sell and ship from Australia:

[http://blackboardbubbles.com/](http://blackboardbubbles.com/)

(They're bought by people for parties, weddings with photo booths,
photographers, etc.)

I built a one page site and got a sale before we'd even created the product.
At first, we relied upon a sibling with access to a college laser cutter and
mailed out the product in expensive boxes.

Many of our adventures parallel that of Chris'. Weeks to get quotes progress
on custom stickers, months of getting laser cutting quotes (including quotes
from Asia or using material other than MDF), for the custom-made boxes we now
use, handles, etc. We still paint the shapes by hand and cut/sand the handle
shapes from broom stick dowel.

We've made some progress, but still have creases to iron out. Selling a
physical product is an interesting adventure for someone who normally works on
and builds virtual products/services.

I laughed at the photos of the room getting filled up with supplies. I've just
installed new shelving in the garage to handle the 200 boxes we have folded
and ready to go, the 600 cut-out pieces of MDF, the packing peanuts and bubble
wrap, etc. Feels good to get on top of it all though!

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marban
Interesting point for a gazillion $ company:

 _" Fab is NOT automated, everything is done manually by emailing people back
and forth a LOT. (At least when I worked with them). Everything is done
through numerous people. There’s a person in charge of buying, editing your
listing, shipping, accounting, UPS account setup, packing slips, payouts, etc…
And they will all send you emails with forms, and excel spreadsheets, and
instructions. It can get complicated on your first time through."_

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waster
This is an excellent, candid, thorough post. If I were thinking of
making/selling a physical product like this, I'd totally bookmark it to help
avoid the mistakes OP made. Thanks for sharing!

~~~
skunkworks
Agreed on all points. I have a feeling I'll be coming back to read this again
in the future.

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kseistrup
Great read — thanks!

Once you're ready to expand, you ought to consider a calender that has the
weekend at the end of the week, MTWTFSS, for those countries that have the
week starting on a Monday.

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mason240
I think the best effect of Kickstarter might be to show just how hard running
a business and selling a product really is.

I often hear people lament over "it only costs $3 to make China, why are they
selling it for $19 here!" without realizing how many details and costs are
involved.

It seems every month there is a new story on reddit/r/boardgames about someone
with an idea for a killer new game who raises ten of thousands through
Kickstarter but still can't ship the actual product.

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tekacs
Can't help but feel like the product's domain (dayonepp.com) is practically
typosquatting/deliberately confusing with dayoneapp.com, that of the
incredibly (almost overnight) iOS _diary_ product, Day One.

Couldn't help but bring myself to check registration dates (this was a year
and a half later after Day One gained huge numbers of customers).

Quite probably accidental, but what a way it would be to gain custom... :|

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georgelawrence
Chris.. I just ordered two. Because: 1\. cool product 2\. your hustle 3\. the
cool post telling us about it all

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atgm
Did you do any product testing with the calendar with family/friends?
Iterative design exists in physical products as well and I was surprised that
you didn't mention any kind of testing/feedback before the actual sales.

I guess your first run of 250 could count as the product testing, though.

Suggestion: What about putting holiday names in block capitals on the line in
a very light grey? Then you can see the holiday name clearly, but you can also
write over it without feeling guilty or the print being too distracting. The
small black print looks like it takes up enough of the line to be annoying.

Edit: There are a lot of distracting spelling mistakes in the blog entry that
would make me slightly hesitant about ordering a printed product.

~~~
cbhl
Holiday names would make it a pain to sell the product internationally. That
might be premature optimization ("Do things that don't scale" and all that)
but it certainly is a consideration.

~~~
atgm
I mentioned it because they're included in the calendar that he took a picture
of and the first thing I thought when I saw them was "So I'd have to write
around that?"

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blufox
Thank you for sharing your experience! And I am certainly going to order the
calendar as well :-)

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gablebarber
That was a very insightful, and honest article. Thank you for taking the time
to put that out there for everyone, and cheers on a handsome looking product.

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meigwilym
Great article.

He makes several strong points on ThemeForest's Avada theme. I recently read
about this theme, it reputedly earned $1M for the author.

[http://earnistan.com/inspiration/pakistani-freelancer-
earns-...](http://earnistan.com/inspiration/pakistani-freelancer-
earns-1million-dollars-by-selling-a-wordpress-theme/)

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kybernetikos
Great blog and fun idea.

However, as far as I'm concerned the only 'innovative' part of this is the
day-of-the-week indicator. Calendars like [http://www.amazon.co.uk/2014-slim-
month-black-calendar/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/2014-slim-month-black-
calendar/dp/B0049MTCNQ/ref=pd_cp_kh_2) or [http://www.amazon.co.uk/column-
large-month-planner-calendar/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/column-large-month-
planner-
calendar/dp/B0041H67O6/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1377678624&sr=8-13&keywords=calendar)
are actually better at conveying that information anyway and use less space to
do so.

Even if the design itself were completely new (which I don't think it is), I'd
be very reluctant to say that a calendar design idea is something that should
be given a legal monopoly, so that even if someone else were to come up with
the idea independently they should be barred from doing anything with it.

So I wish good luck to the poster, and thanks for clean design, an informative
and interesting post, but also this: please compete on execution rather than
trying to get the state to grant you a monopoly over an idea that is at best a
small incremental change to designs that have been around for ages.

~~~
epo
How to completely miss the point but use it as an excuse for some half-assed
rant about patents. The repeated ignorant, ill-informed, incorrect amd emotive
use of the word 'monopoly' merely betray your naivety.

~~~
kybernetikos
> How to completely miss the point

The post did not make a single point, but a large number of interesting
points. I was responding to this one specifically, which the original author
gave an entire headed section to:

> Yes I wanted to file a patent. If I work my ass off for something I don’t
> want it ripped off. I don’t want to lose money in the future due to bad
> business decisions in the past. I hate software patents like the next guy
> but physical inventions deserve some kind of protection.

Your criticism seems to imply that I should have to address every point that
the original author made in his post which would be insane, especially when
other commenters have already addressed them better.

> The repeated ignorant, ill-informed, incorrect amd emotive use of the word
> 'monopoly' merely betray your naivety.

I'm happy to be naive, but nevertheless, you're more likely to cure me of it
with arguments rather than personal attacks. I will defend myself somewhat
though:

I could possibly accept emotive, but ill-informed, incorrect and ignorant?
Good alliteration obviously, but here's the thing: patents literally _are_
state granted monopolies.

You can see them mentioned as such on the patent wikipedia page. The Mirriam
Webster definition includes in its definition for Patent (noun):

> 2a : a writing securing for a term of years the exclusive right to make,
> use, or sell an invention

> b : the __monopoly __or right so granted

[http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/patent?show=0&t=13...](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/patent?show=0&t=1377696704)

Patent law in the USA has a lineage going back to the _Statute of Monopolies_
in the UK.

I find it strange to imagine how someone could reject the assertion that
patents are temporarily granted state monopolies, but feel free to educate me
out of my naivety.

------
mbesto
_Lesson: Sell your product ASAP, IF there are sales, THEN continue and build a
brand and site around it._

This and the accompanying graphic are 100% spot on. It's amazing how many
times we continue read this same exact advice and continue to empirically
ignore it in practice...especially for us techies. Sell first, build next.

~~~
gioele
From a software point of view, this is what I like to most about GitHub: using
the README.md visualization as your web site.

Before GitHub and README.md, when you published your source code you also had
to create a small website, just to let people know what it was, how it worked
and where to reach you. With GitHub you just write a quick README.md and you
have published your acceptably nice homepage.

With a simple README.md you do not distract yourself with creating an
homepage, writing a CSS, maybe even installing a CMS. Obviously you can create
a site later on, but only if and when it is really needed.

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svasan
Very insightful and open. The point that stood out was how selling trumped all
other tasks/activities.

The same thing was echoed by PG in the inc.com article that was posted
recently [1].

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293)

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dabernathy89
Not that it will help you now, but WooCommerce is by far the best free
WordPress e-commerce plugin I've used. They charge for extensions, but it's
also very easy to extend. I created a custom payment option in just a few
hours.

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OriginalAT
Thanks for the post! A lot of great insight, and a bit of inspiration as well.

My only thought: You're going to use the profits to get rid of that PT Cruiser
correct? ;D

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pkorzeniewski
Absolutely great read and tons of advices! I'm all in software right now, but
I'd love to release a physical product one day.

