But still, most of those things are one time costs: product development, failed products, fixing defects, certification. once you have completed those things, you can keep selling the successful product for decades right? especially now that the pace of innovation is slowing down. I mean just look at the clothing industry: a t-shirt today is the same as it was 10 or 50 years ago, right?
I would imagine things are super high tech and new, would need some iteration in their first 5 to 10 years, but after that, I don't know.
the costs that scale with each good sold is: Support, cost of returns, Sales, marketing, etc.
Constantly amazed at folks who don't appear to have any relevant experience pretending to educate folks who clearly do. You managed to list 4 things before punting to "etc." and 3 of them were lifted from the parent without modification. Can you explain how the only thing you added, marketing, scales per good sold? Why is "fixing defects" a one-time NRE and not related to the volume of product produced?
But who can forget the stellar recent hardware companies like Fitbit, Jambox, Sonos, and Pebble all of whom waited a minimum of 5 years before bothering to introduce a second product.
Name something built by a hardware startup in the recent past or imaginable future which would be designed once and built for 10 and 50 years exactly the same.
Jenkins valves. Same cast iron gate valves for a century.
Ad from 1924.[1]
Current product brochure.[2]
Jenkins used to advertise that one from a 19th century water main had been removed because the line was being re-routed by a water utility. The valve was cleaned up and put on display, and after a while, when everybody was tired of looking at it, it was put back into inventory and went back into the ground, probably to serve another 100 years.
It also says that will be built almost the exact same for the next 10 to 50 years. In this case I would consider recent past everything going back to around the start of the 20th century.
Unless you're selling paperclips, it's never that easy. There's always constant work to be done with any reasonable complex modern product, especially if digital.
I would imagine things are super high tech and new, would need some iteration in their first 5 to 10 years, but after that, I don't know.
the costs that scale with each good sold is: Support, cost of returns, Sales, marketing, etc.