Starting a business, quick question

hey there, i’m either super novice about skateboarding AND electronic/mechanic, but i love to learn. i discovered electric skateboard because of casey neistat about 3 weeks ago, and i’ve NEVER heard about it before. I first wanted to buy one because i walk a lot and it looks pretty fun, but i wanted something much smaller than a longboard, so i can carry it arround, like a cruiser. didn’t find any electric cruiser to buy on the market, and most of the suppliers don’t ship in europe anyway.

we thought with a friend that it would be a great opportunity to start a business. we basically want to take orders from french people interested of buying an electric skateboard who have “specifics requests”, then we buy what we need, what the client wants, and ship it to him. the client buys exactly what we ordered to build it + the shipping + i don’t know… 30% of the total price for the labour…?

i suppose that i am the 9999th to came up with this idea, but not in france i guess… so here is my question:

can we start from nothing and learn everything about electronic and mechanic by ourself (internet), or we really need to have studied/worked in electronic/mechanic to make this project run correctly ?

thanks for reading me.

ps: i suppose we would not drown under orders in the beggining.

You will need a lot of knowledge and information about this. And you may never know, you might get a lot of orders at the beginning, based on what I’ve seen from Enertion and smaller companies it is a hard job.

You can always start a business. Eboard is not miracle engineering that you need degree for to build one. Ofc its a plus if you have deep knowledge in electronic and access to mechanical equipments. But hey, you can always find someone or pay someone to cover up your gap. Difficulties are always around, but solutions are there as well.

What is your motivation to start a business in this sector? Do you see a gap that you want to fill or improve existing products? If your only motivation is to make money you will definitely fail - that is never a good business strategy.

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@Qg5 I think that it’s possible to learn everything you need to know without a formal degree. However, my suggestion would be to go and build a few esk8s of your own, and ride them a lot before you start planning a business. Figure out what your unique contribution would be to this field. It’s great to have a goal or a dream for the future, but without the requisite experience you’d do your customers (and yourself) a disservice by jumping into the market right away.

Lol welcome to the club. just a tip if you’re a novice in eskate boarding, don’t sell them until you have put years and thousands of dollars into perfecting them. Most of the people who do sell eboards, or at least eboard parts like myself have been doing so for 2+ years it maybe have been newly discovered to you but we’ve already been through it.

Also I will be highly sceptical to buy anything from you because you just said you don’t know anything about this topic. Why should I pay you for something that I know more about than you? Makes no sense to me. You need to come up with a unique solution to a problem - just reselling stuff we can all get from aliexpress or ebay will not work.

What is your motivation to start a business in this sector? Do you see a gap that you want to fill or improve existing products? If your only motivation is to make money you will definitely fail - that is never a good business strategy.

As i explained on top, i couldn’t find anything that i liked, i don’t want to ride a longboard, it’s way to huge for me, especially in Europe where we have small roads. Rare are the suppliers in Europe anyway. So yes you could say i want to fill a gap.

I think that it’s possible to learn everything you need to know without a formal degree. However, my suggestion would be to go and build a few esk8s of your own, and ride them a lot before you start planning a business. Figure out what your unique contribution would be to this field. It’s great to have a goal or a dream for the future, but without the requisite experience you’d do your customers (and yourself) a disservice by jumping into the market right away.

I wouldn’t start directly by taking order and sell boards. I want to learn everything that i need to make boards “à la minute”. The point of this project is that everyone get what they exactly want. A board that they could do by themself, except that i build it for them, so they don’t have to struggle in tutorials for weeks.

Also I will be highly sceptical to buy anything from you because you just said you don’t know anything about this topic. Why should I pay you for something that I know more about than you? Makes no sense to me. You need to come up with a unique solution to a problem - just reselling stuff we can all get from aliexpress or ebay will not work.

My question was if i could learn everything on internet. I’ve never said that i would sell anything without having knowledge about my product.

Lol welcome to the club. just a tip if you’re a novice in eskate boarding, don’t sell them until you have put years and thousands of dollars into perfecting them. Most of the people who do sell eboards, or at least eboard parts like myself have been doing so for 2+ years it maybe have been newly discovered to you but we’ve already been through it.

“You”, are not the center of the world, you might be doing that for years where you live, it may have a lot of competition where you live, but here in France there is nobody… Besides, i don’t imagine starting a big firm, i’m sure a good website, a garage and a few hands would be enough for what i imagine.

There is a gap!

There aren’t enough small cruisers for people who don’t want to go super fast on longboards.

I hope it gets to a point where we have different brands out there that are differentiating themselves by style and creating products for different riding styles. Just like street skateboards.

I’m currently trying build my first board as a mini cruiser. However with there are 2 big problems that need to be solved.

  1. Wheel size. Most setups here are using 83mm to 90mm wheels. This is for space for motor mounts and or for space for hub motors. This makes it necessary to use longboard 10" trucks.

  2. Wheel base and space. Most setups here are using 20" wheel base boards. This is for space for battery packs and ESCs/Vescs. The big wheel base is also for stability because these things are going like 30+ mph.

The current trend I’m seeing here is that people generally want long range, fast speeds and torque for taking off.

In order to do a small cruiser you are going to have to sacrifice all three. I still think it could be fun. But Im gonna wait till I finish my 30" cruiser with 90mm dual carvons and a 12s1p battery. This is a more tried and true setup that is still small.

Look at @RunPlayBack 's stuff. Hes doing some awesome stuff. Also look at @LEVer and his Carvonskate brand. He’s a helpful dude and is selling some mini cruisers that might be worth looking at.

Good luck!

@mikey I like the small cruiser idea, currently doing the same thing. I do wonder though, why 12s? You said you don’t need a 30+ mph build, even on a 30" deck I really don’t see the need for more than 10s

Because I never built one before and 12s / 10s is suggested for the dual carvons.

Also I got dual carvons because I weigh 180lbs (used to be 195 before I started building)

So I was just being super careful about getting something too underpowered for me.

I suspect I may have overdone it a lil. But I’d rather start there then spend $1000+ on something I couldn’t enjoy.

Very true, dual carbons should be fun as hell. How much is your wheelbase?

Its an Arbor Rally 20" Wheel base.

Looks awesome! (I haven’t seen a thread, have you created one?) Post some vids when it’s done :slight_smile:

I have no previous experience or knowledge of electronics and I’m currently building two esk8s…so yes, definitely can learn enough online to build a board…learning enough to problem solve for the inevitable customer issues will be more challenging. Love the entrepreneurial spirit. Good luck to you.

Btw, you should check out this guy. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iICbvBtkKpg

Yes we can!