
Hackaball: 15 lessons learned from the first 18 months in hardware manufacturing - melissacoleman
https://medium.com/the-many/hackaball-hardware-lessons-a4d14c69670d
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jaboutboul
This is a GREAT post. The single best piece of advice I could give to someone
trying to mass produce hardware in China is to link up with a production
agent, at least for your first run. The savings you will realize in time and
sanity due to their understanding of the Chinese manufacturing process,
culture and their network on the ground far outweigh the costs.

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melissacoleman
Thanks! We went by the recommendation of someone who had already worked with
this particular production agent. By working with an experienced agent you
essentially buy their trusted network, which takes away some of the worry
around working with people whose work you can't monitor on a day to day basis.

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jaboutboul
Yes that and its essentially like hiring an off-site PM ensuring that all the
ducks stay in a row. Second to that, using a really good set of set of
communications tools for async chat and issue trackers really make it a lot
less painful. They communicate very differently there and being able to keep
everyone on the same page is priceless.

