Bro I wish my costs were as low as $450
Do me a favor, Donât misrepresent yourself. Do what you can and learn while you go. Big claims (company) and ad campaigns will get you into trouble quick. Youâre not a company. Youâre a builder just buying parts from other builders. You still have a lot to learn. You seem like a good guy. And you already have a head start with followers on youtube.
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First off, welcome to the community. I want want too discourage you, youâve got a great start. But you need unique features to set you apart.
Thatâs the problem with using diy parts⌠Your paying retail market, and then need to markup them up again on your end.
A simple board with no thrills or frills like this is not bad, but you gota find factories to make you specific parts to make it affordable. Iâve been planning on selling completes for over a year, but Iâm nailing down every piece to be custom made. I might not do a few custom pieces to start (like the vesc), but custom hub motors, iphone app (and soon to be andriod app), custom trucks, custom hollow core decks, and cell fusing 18650 battery packs are all goals before I would personally consider building boards for sale. Iâm working on a custom VESC design too, because you need to separate yourself.
I originlally thought I could do what your doing, but when I looked at the cost, to build what I would sell and buying at retail, would cost me $2800 USD. Thereâs no room for markup with out having gouge my customers.
No offense to torqueboards, but his parts arenât known to be the best of quality either. Certain parts have been known to work well, but the VESCs commonly break (and anyone whose big in this community knows this and actively tell people not to run FOC on it), some motor mount issues in the past (though a lot do swear by them these days), and the power switch he sells has not ended well for most. I would recommend @psychotillerâs parts or @chaka. These are made by people who push their boards hard and build high quality parts.
You need to follow whatâs going on in the DIY community very closely, because the VESC trademark thing is months old. Everyone knows that trampa owns the sole rights to use the VESC name.
Again, I donât want to discourage you, but rather encourage you to make more of an effort. You need to nail the quality of every part down. Because if something breaks under normal use, itâll cost you your markup or more to fix it. Thatâs dangerous, because you need revenue to keep developing and prototyping. You shouldnât be paying more than $30 for a simple motor mount if you order if from factories with your design and $50 for a large 6374 motor. I know your paying more than that for a smaller motor. Your markup to be sustainable needs to be around 50%.
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Yeah you are right, I do agree that he should have something unique about his board, and I think that since is a newcomer to the market, he will have to develop that with time 
You do make a good point though, especially with the amount of new people on here daily.
Mike I came here to say that i loved your first couple of videos, clear, helpfull and just beeing a good guy to the community.Your videos for Mboard now almost a scam
Lately you have been trying to just make a fast buck. In my eyes your as scamming people out of money. Your video about "making your own battery: 1#- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h0qhQqU2Sg&t=2s But waitâŚyour making the batteryâs almost exactly the same as this guy 2# https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY7FwffZ5vc&t=1s
The guy in the last video clearly links to everything from Aliexpress. And what you do is almost a exact copy of his video, almost down to the name.
All of your parts come from Ali express at the time of making that video.
You only use a slightly different spotwelder and you skip/mixt a couple of his tricks. You even admit that you have no clue what the numbers on the spotwelder mean âbut they work out for meâ. Last week you made a new video about a âsolid state relay switchâ and i guess you are using one? But the better term is deadman switch or safety power switch.You are using of the shelve parts and just reselling them in a huge markup. Here are the pictures from your video and your site
Notice that in the first picture he just covert it with a piece of black tape. In the photo from his site where he sells it he just âblacked/greyâ out the name of the company who makes these. And after almost 10 secondes on google i found.
Its just a part from the company Emcotec, and its just a safety switch. You knew calling it a safety switch would be to easy to just look up, so you sayed âsolid state relay switchâ. This way you could sell your over priced switch for 60 bucksâŚ
Sorry if this is not the place call him out on this BS, but psychotiller/Evoheyax even told you that what you are doing is really iffy at best.
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Wassup Mike 
Glad to see you join FINALLY !!! I was wondering why you wasnât here.
You were the first DIY eSkate video I watched on YouTube about a month ago. Because of you, you inspired me to build one my first board and I didnât it
I wanna thank you for the inspiration. This site also helped me out a lot so check it out and good luck man 
Its fine to have a company whos building a board based on multiple diy suppliers part. A price markup is normal and I dont see that as an issue. If it cost 500usd and sold for 750usd and people still buys it, then why not. You donât even need a unique selling point if people buy your product anyway⌠I am not trying to defend the guy, but money is also made possible by filling a gap in the market. Say you have a business in window cleaning, you really dont need a unique selling point right?
Enertion is also not unique at the beginning, but eventually they are making something new.
I think the price markup can be calculated as build cost labour and that should be just fine. Good luck with sales!
Thanks for the feedback.
I just want to put out there that Iâm not scamming anyone. I learned how to build battery packs on YouTube just like Iâve learned how to do a lot of things. I just felt like a video could be made geared more toward the needs of electric skateboards vs ebikes or other smaller applications.
Figured if what I was trying to teach people was too intimidating or they didnât have the tools I would just build them a battery. People asked for them in the past, thought it was a good idea.
And I donât buy anything from AliExpress. Sure aliexpress might offer some of the items I sell as well but aliexpress is not my supplier.
While building my first electric skateboard I found it to be a huge pain the ass to import anything from out of country. I had been wishing that someone local had already done it to sell to me to save me some time.
If anyone would like to go out and find similar or the same parts from the supplier of their choice I absolutely welcome them. But if they are willing to pay more for the faster shipping then they have the option too. The only goal was really to speed up the process for some and to make it possible for some of my international viewers to get parts as some countries have trouble with certain websites.
And for the switch I honestly donât know what brand that is. I get mine from someone else(maybe thatâs where my supplier gets theirâs? Iâll look into it. I could possibly be getting marked up too). Also just price matching my switch to DIYElectricâs. Not trying to steal business from dexter.
Iâve only made the videos Iâve made because my viewers repeatedly asked for them to be made. Iâve only sold parts that my viewers have messaged me asking me to offer. Just trying to help people out. A lot of people are on a time crunch and donât want to wait a month for a simple part to come in the mail. Bringing the shipping time down from 30+ days to 2-3 days is well worth the extra money to me. Might not be worth it to you. Some people are adamant about spending the least amount as possible while others just want to get their project done and are willing to spending a little more.
For the amount of work I put in I donât make much. Just trying to help out the community. Thanks for the feedback again. Just wanted to put my thoughts out there.
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Have you thought about offering different shaped and sized enclosures?