Month: July 2022

It’s hard to start a business from scratch, especially if you are not loaded and well connected. Mostly it feels like pushing s**t uphill. The fun part though; because you are pushing, you can’t see clearly up ahead, so you don’t know how far you still have to push.

And although now, it’s a One-Man show, (and the answer to any problem is Upskilling so I can fix it), I’m going to try to bring outside help to launch and manage the Indiegogo campaign.

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by LaunchBoom . They offered to run my Indiegogo campaign, and sent me links to campaigns they ran. As tempting as the offer sounded, I know I can’t afford them, so I offered them a post-pay arrangement, which wasn’t good enough for them.

This got me thinking, as I’m not a marketing specialist, why don’t I hire one and offer to pay a commission from the Indiegogo campaign? So I advertised the position on LinkedIn.

Happy to say that I’ve received a few resumes over the past few days, and I’ve been corresponding with candidates for the position of Campaign Manager. By the way if you know someone who is interested, please let them know, I’m looking for a Storz & Bickel user. Link to the job ad

The hope is after a successful campaign, I can hire this person as a Marketing Manager, allowing me to focus my time on product development and sales.

Speaking of which, I’ve been working on a Cooling Unit’s Automatic Cleaner, the device is in it’s first prototyping and testing stage, but I’ve been happy with the results.

The device will be able of cleaning up to two Cooling units at the same time, and while it will take around 45 minutes to finish it’s cleaning cycle, it will be buzzing by itself. All you have to do is diassemble and then assemble the clean Cooling Units.

The seals need to be removed and cleaned separately, or replaced depending on their condition.

Cleaning the cooling unit has been a problem for me from day fourteen, and I find it to be a dreadful task. For that reason, I went and bought two extra cooling units, so I don’t have to clean as often. One big dirty afternoon.

But now I don’t have to worry about it. I’ve been using the first prototype for couple of cleans, after a few modifications it will be 100%.

I’m aiming to bring this product to market for less than $100, which will make it a valid solution for the cleaning problem.

Apart from that, I’m still waiting on a few things before I can move forward. Like the 3d printing samples and a quote from Barkley Plastic, so we can start discussing any further cooperation.

I’m aiming to Launch the Indiegogo Campaign in August, anything before that will be impossible, I know it feels like things are slowing down, but like climbing the hill, things tend to slow down just before the top, just before rolling down hill. Or it could be just my wishful thinking 🧐

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading and stay safe, Peace ☮️

I tested positive for Covid on Saturday, so I wasn’t able to work to full capacity this week, especially with the Mighty sitting in the pit stop, as my lungs were given the Black and Orange flag the first few days.

Nevertheless, I have exciting news regarding Production: An important figure in the plastic industry has reached out to me and offered to quote the grinder, and I’m not talking about someone in sales, I’m talking about a Chairman of a major international plastic company.

I share my post to few Facebook groups and Mark Harwood the chairman of Barkley Plastics commented on my last post saying that “This product should be moulded and not 3d printed” and offered to quote the product.

At first I didn’t know who I was talking to as I was as sick as a dog. I continued answering other’s comments about moulds, cost and other things and not answering his offer as I didn’t want to say something wrong. I was so sick I wasn’t thinking straight. I just needed time and luckily he was patient.

The day after testing positive was the worst day for me. I couldn’t eat or drink, no vape and no sleep, it was an awful 24 hours. The race was good though, but that was it.

Monday when I was coming back to life, I started communicating and shared the CAD files with Mark on Tuesday. Now I’m waiting to hear back. I’m very, very excited and hopeful.

I’m sure that Barkley plastic is not after what’s in my bank account now, and a successful man like Mark will not bother with my product unless he sees a real potential in it.

Barkley Plastics, is a major name in the plastic industry and trusted by companies like BMW, McLaren, Jaguar, and Nissan, The list is long…

For the grinder to be made in the UK by such a reputable name will be a major leap forward. This will be a real high quality product.

Now to bring the product closer to market and achieve maximum customer experience enhancement, I had to use my “yet to be” assets to create a second product that will benefit my “yet to be” customers.

The product is a package of five Filling Aides, in five different colours, so you can tell what strain is in which Filling Aide. At the moment I’m thinking transparent, white, red, green and orange. Maybe we will release pink and blue on Valentine’s day.

The five Filling Aid package should retail around the $30 USD (price is not final yet) but in order to achieve this I had to consider a different material. I have been advised by industry experts to use food grade PC instead of Peek. So based on their advice I’ve decided to make the plastic parts out of PC, which will allow us to release the Filling Aids in different colours, so you can use a Different colour for each strain.

When starting an Indiegogo campaign, you have to choose the product’s stage.

As I want to choose prototype, I have to provide the video and the pictures mentioned above. While recording the video, the 3d printed plastic teeth didn’t fully function, not the way they should anyway.

As you can see in the picture my 3d printed teeth are not complete and not strong enough, (not as strong as normal plastic), so the video didn’t pass my quality control.

For me to be able to record a video I will need functioning teeth, so for that I’ve ordered the Aluminium parts to be printed using Selective Laser Melting (SLM) from Craftcloud3d. I have to say though that things don’t sound promising as they came back to me with a few serious problems.

If we manage to solve them, then the parts are supposed to arrive next week and I will be able to record a video with a fully functioning grinder. Otherwise, I have to find someone else to print or CNC the aluminium parts so I can record the video to use for marketing and start the Indiegogo Campaign, Link to the pre campaign if you didn’t sign up.

Thanks for reading 😊 🙏 and catch you next week ☮️

I want to start with a big ONE,

The Price:

Up until now, I couldn’t commit to a retail price, I had a target price when I started working on this project, but throughout the quoting phase I wasn’t sure if I will be able to achieve it, but now I can say with confidence that the grinder set will cost between $45 – $50 USD.

That’s for the set, of one grinder & one filling aid, the option of adding filling aids will be available, incase you need more than one filling aid, one for each strain.

Shipping will play a big factor, at the moment shipping is really expensive, but I have to say; This is very, very close to the price I had in mind when I started this project, I wanted my product to be smart, good looking and affordable.

And here we are, this is the only grinder in the market that is made to fit the Mighty & Crafty vaporiser, and it’s made of high quality materials with a slick design and affordable price tag.

Regarding the design, I have made a slight change last week after using the filling aid for a week, I decided that I hated the thread. so I made a custom thread, and as you can see in the picture, the old thread on the left, it was a standard thread, and you had to turn 3 X 360 degrees to open or replace the lid or the grinder.

On the right the new thread.

Now it’s only 55% of a full circle to open or close the lid or the grinder, which will get me good reviews according to my son, he thought the old thread will get me bad reviews, I totally agree.

Moving to a different subject, at the moment I’m working on few strategies to bring this product to market:

The first one is to find dealers in Australia:

Now I obviously prefer to find one dealer for Australia that will order a minimum of a 1000pcs and that way he get the exclusive retail rights for Australia and I get to launch my product.

A less favourable option will be to have a dealer on the East Coast and a dealer for Melbourne and Perth.

Or I have to find five dealers one in each city.

All these options are on the table.

Another strategy is Indiegogo.com, And as you know from my previous post, I have started a Pre-Campaign there, Link if you like to sign up

And a third strategy of ordering a 100 pieces, where the Aluminium is made on CNC and the plastic is 3d printed, that way I can bring a small patch.

The downfall of the third option is that, the 3d print quality is not as good as the moulding and it’s far more expensive, four times to be exact, but I don’t have to buy moulds for the first run.

Marketing wise, I will be recording a video this weekend with the prototype, showing how it works and explaining the product.

That will allow me to start my campaign on Indiegogo.

So that’s it for this week, I feel like this post is the end of the week meeting, it’s good to tell even if no one is listening.

Until next week ☮️