

Cardboard economics - freyfogle
http://stevecoast.com/2014/06/26/cardboard-economics/

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vomitcuddle
It's made of cardboard. You don't need a laser cutter to cut cardboard. Just
use some fr&ckin' scissors. Also, just because someone won't sell millions of
these things, doesn't mean they can't source materials at a price cheaper than
buying them from Amazon. $3 worth of Velcro per unit? Seriously?

Some people here are really eager to burst somebody's bubble. Gosh.

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SteveCoast
Nobody would use scissors to fulfill a kickstarter project.

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serf
Where did you find that price listed for velcro? Was it a velcro kit for
consumers that included pre-cut squares?

McMaster-Carr sells five foot by one inch lengths for only a dollar or two
more than your list price, and that would be enough to produce many units..

When dealing with such a low cost item to begin with isn't some accuracy
required to fully understand the margins of producing the thing?

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genericuser
The lenses were under a dollar each before off amazon before during Cardboards
unveiling. While this does not mean you would be able to get them for that
currently, it leads me to personally believe that if you bought in any sort of
volume you could probably do much better than his $9 estimate.

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SteveCoast
It was based on the $4.50 cost in the comments from the reseller plus looking
at alibaba. I'm not claiming it's super accurate.

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cwyers
Well, remember that the dodocase you mention sells for $25 with RFID, not $20.
So you don't have to be off by a whole heck of a lot on each individual
component to end up with them selling the thing at cost, or maybe even making
a little on each unit they sell.

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rahimnathwani
There is a new listing on taobao for a plastic device which seems to be
compatible with google cardboard. It costs about 25USD.

[http://tb.cn/eLdYpYy](http://tb.cn/eLdYpYy)

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kqr2
Does anyone know who built the cardboard models for Google? It would be nice
to know how much Google paid per unit.

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Mandatum
They were die-cut which ~60-80 to be made (from a supplied .eps). The actual
cardboard cutting/cost for that size, at a common weight would be <$0.80c/unit
for quantities of 100+.

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oasisbob
Came to raise the possibility of die-cutting, as I've looked into it quickly
in the past for another project. (Cutting panels for a geodesic dome.) Was
rather surprised then that the tooling costs were so low.

Appreciate you taking the time to provide more details.

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Mandatum
You can tell by the nicks on the side that they've been diecut - those nicks
are created by small nicks on the blade, usually made during manufacture.

