Cool! If we stick to ‘diy’ made board (made by many) you could maybe be responsible about the deck part!
Though it looks like u got some other skills on your hands… so we just need to start attracting more ‘talent’ to see in which direction can this all go
I think a ‘Diy version’ for Usa market might work quite well!
Especially if final price can be competetive enough with what is already available on the market (I know there are high end and low end - chinese boards sold through amazon. Not so sure about the middle group.
/ @ TorqueBoards might be in that category but @ chaka is probably above with their CarvOn /
Alibaba prices are stepped up because of these reasons: license to stay on alibaba, fee to be among the first results, salary for somebody who speaks english, crazy high dollar-yuan conversion, crazy expensive mandatory bank account in Chase taiwan.
These add up to 15-20% increase on the price you get as a chinese customer.
Perfect then!
Just to give you an example of a possible customer:
When we think about esk8s we think about young people, or not so young people with a passion for electronics, mechanics and speed, and casey neistat.
Talking to my dad (who’s a lawyer) I realised there are many people who don’t need it as a hobby, but as a last mile vehicle instead. Those people don’t have much time, have money but not enough to justify 1600 euros for 5 miles a day, and want the stuff ready. I haven’t even taken my board on the streets yet, but I already got enough attention to probably sell a couple of completes if I build them. A compact eskate could be perfect for them, at the 750€ price point. Compact and carriable boards should be one of our main concerns if we want this market to go big
Yeah, I knew it was something about 100 €, I was already thinking about trying to get some more innovative things on the market through this, with maybe a 1000 € version with improved bms, vesc (or maybe a new esc) and so on, helping to develop the community
750Eur for a quality made board, does soung quite good!
I hadnt thought about it that far, primarly thinking about the first customers being close to diyers or diyers friends who just want a board to get around!..
Though, I would say that for a ‘casual’ user more work might be needed when crafting the right materials (info) in an easy to understand form (similar like many kickstarter projects get presented)…
This is not impossible (to make and market ‘commercial grade’ board) just outlines the difference I want to make on how I understood ‘future customers’ of this board
I would say you are a bit on ‘par’ here with @lox897 who sees crafting a well enough made board would be the best way to do it… (also to keep cost and price relatively down and low)
I’m not talking about anything big yet, but people here where I live like a lot when something is made by somebody they know/they’ve seen around. I could easily get stopped by someone while eboarding and get asked to get them a board like mine. That may seem easy, just buy parts and sell, but without stock and having to rely to what’s available at the time isn’t the best. Having an organisation behind could mean some kind of stock distributed through the small members who joined the group. And I wouldn’t sell batteries made by me, I am not qualified (I mean, I’ve done mine but I had no other chance) and I could get in trouble, so having a standard of parts to just connect through this small community would be key
Yeh that is part of the idea we are going into I think… I do hope this develops till a somewhat succesful product… but I would say again… everything is gonna be dictated by outer sources and also insiders who are willing to develop such a thing
I missed your reply before… but your idea is also nice!
This way it would come together with @longhairedboy ‘configurator’ for the parts… Someone would need to calculate total costs involved in shipping parts around…
Though, this might be more like Kickstarter oriented project already and probably (shamefully) we would maybe need to do some licence-ing. Im not even sure how these things properly work to be able to market on kickstarter level…
If we’re gonna have a $750 board made by builders. Let’s make it just as fast as any main board on the market (45-50kmh), and have 25km+ range. We’ve got to make ourselves look good. Just saying, this would kick the other boards out of the market if we can pull this off. $750 for a super powerful board is pretty damn good. Especially if it looks nice
Going with Vesc I think we cant go wrong on this Higher speed setups dont require that much bigger batteries I think, and we could always set up different modes, so first time riders dont go all nuts on +50kmh (30mph)
Here’s another open-ended question: What to do with the profit? Obviously there’s compensating those who help supply parts but what about the designers? Who decides who gets paid what amount?
-personally, my vote would be to put excess profit into research and expanding the industry instead of someone’s pocket, but suppliers still need fair compensation and I just don’t know who would have the rights to decide payments…
Well… I would say it is hard to discuss this question at such early stage but thinking about it already now is wise…
Im not sure but at some point it might need to have an official organisation where all of these matters could be discussed… but for now, while no parts and no money has come in yet, I think it is way too early to adress this…
Any profit made should be decently / equally distributed among everyone who took part…
How much each one would receive would probably be up to the main parties involved at the end of this project since they would direct the cash flow anyways… someone is gonna be there to click that purchase button anyways…
I’d say for the first 20+ boards all profit would go back into the boards for mould costs, additional stock etc. Maybe each role would have an hourly rate in the future. Such as builders $20-30 an hour, or a payment per board. But what @Okami said, it’s too early to decide.
and also insiders who are willing to develop such a thing