I have a new effect called Turbo Tube that will be released October 31st, 2013.
During the development and early stages of Turbo Tube I was getting very frustrated with trying to locate a company that will make it affordable for me to manufacture and produce the effect. Most of the research for the material I needed guided me to China or somewhere else overseas.
I have a crazy story to tell you. When I was looking for a certain material I contacted a company here in the united states. It was a company that actually makes the material. The material was very expensive to purchase here in the United States. I explained to the owner that I'm a magician and I created a magic product that I will be selling to the magic community. I told him that the magic community is somewhat small so I will only be purchasing in quantities of few hundred. He chucked and said "Well we only sell in large quantities of five thousand, you're better off contacting the company in China that purchases our material."
This was a HIT of reality too me. I thought "You have to be kidding me!" So let me make sense of this. It's cheaper to buy from a company that ships their product to another country from the united states and then that foreign company then ships it back to the United States to the person/company that ordered their product or part and it cost less then if I just went to the company in theUnited States and bought from that company that actually makes the material I need? Whew!!! take a breath. Breath in breath out. It started getting very frustrating as well as disheartening for me.
Is this where our great country is heading? I mean we used to be the BOMB with manufacturing. It was our heart and soul America. What went wrong? Well a few things, mainly greed for companies wanting to make as much as they can and pay as less they can to it's workers. The other perhaps over charged unaffordable health insurance that is forced onto companies combined with very high taxes that they have to pay. When you put that in perspective can you blame the companies for moving overseas?
Thank goodness for my persistence on things. After researching tons of companies I was happy to finally find a company that is practically in my backyard. The owner of the company has been very accommodating as far as letting me purchase in short orders. I guess the one thing I learned in the research end is that if you are persistent doors will eventually open for you and you will be able to find what your looking for.
Not only was I lucky enough to find a company right here in America where I can get the material to make my Turbo Tube, but I can actually make it better as well as cheaper then another country who manufactures and sells a similar product. I would like to urge magic inventors that live here in the United States to try the best you can to buy material and make the effect yourself here in the United States and help build the magic community. We have a lot of potential with taping into this market and doing some great things. If we just try to bring our prices down a little it might help with making a turnaround for us in the United States as far as the magic community. Many companies overseas are ripping us off and not only that, some are doing a unacceptable quality of work.
Now don't get me wrong1 there is plenty of countries that do make good product, but aren't they doing the same thing? following their countries DREAMS!
In the developmental research stages of your magic product it's not only a good idea to find the cheapest pricing, but the lightest material for your product as well. You have to ask yourself what would be the best material to use for my product? Do you have to use wood, metal, plastic, cardboard and so on? material plays a very important role not only in manufacturing your product, but it also effects the cost and shipping of your product. If your going to sell the product yourself you have to add the shipping cost to your product. If you are selling your magic product to a distributor you will most likely be shipping 25 or more which could easily get pretty pricey with shipping costs due to weight, but if you can use a lighter material that won't effect the quality of your product. Sometimes the distributor will pay for the shipping, but if you can make it as light as possible it can ease the shipping charges that the magic distributor has to pay and they will appreciate it.When you're thinking about selling a magic product you have to factor in every cost. Anything that is left out could cost you a potential added profit or even worse can make you loose money.
You even have to figure out the packaging. I was helping one magician out not to long ago and he figured out all the expense except the packaging. It's a good thing I pointed that out to him because he could of been making next to nothing after you add up the supplies and labor of the product.
To better understand lets say that the dimensions of your product are 6X6X2 you have to find a box slightly bigger for your product to fit into. I know that part is a no brainier, but once you find the correct size box you have to then figure out the exact cost of each box and add it to your cost of your product. I highly recommend using www.uline.com for any packaging needs for your product. They do a nice breakdown of how much each individual piece costs.
It gets a little more challenging when you are purchasing supply that comes in a roll form. For example packing tape. Many magicians selling their product don't even consider the cost of packing tape. Look at it this way. Anything that involves you having to pay money is a cost that you need to add on to your product. Even if it's just a penny.
Le me go deeper into what I'm talking about. Lets say you buy a roll of packing tape for $5.00 and you get a hundred feet of that tape. Now lets say that when you are packing you product up and tapping it that you use 12inces of tape per box to tape it. You have to figure out how much each piece of tape is and add that onto your cost of your product as well. There are some excellent tools on the Internet to do inches, feet meters conversions. I use google for figuring out conversions.
For example if your packing tape is 100 feet long you have to figure out how many inches are in that 100 feet. For some that could be a no brainier, but for the mathematically challenged go to google to help you.
Once you figure out how many inches are in a hundred feet you next have to figure out how many boxes you can tape up using 12inches up tape. To figure that out all you have to do is divide 1200 into 12 inches and then that will tell you how many boxes you can make which in this case will be 100.
Next you have to figure out how much money it cost to seal up 100 boxes using 12 inches of tape where the tape cost $5.00. To better understand the figure you must take the cost of the tape which is $5.00 and divide by how many boxes you can make using 12 inches of tape. $5.00 / the quantity of 100 boxes which comes out to .05 cents a box totaling $5.00 for the 100 foot roll of tape. Last you have to take all the expenses and add them up as well as figure out how long it takes you to make each product. Once you figure out how much product you can make in an hour you have to then figure out how much you would like to make hourly and factor that into the supply cost. Lets say all together it costs $7.00 to make your product, but it takes an hour and a half to make 7. You would simply have to retail your product high enough so you, the distributor and magic shop can all make money. You could sell it on your own, but unless you have a huge network of magicians it will be difficult. A magic distributor however can help you out a great deal with getting your product to the magic shops or online stores. They have the contacts and networking ability which is a great advantage.
Am I making sense. I hope this helps you.
Since my new discovery of inventing and producing magic I found that it isn't about the money for me. It's more about doing something with my gift and talent and sharing it with the magic community. I take a lot of American pride in the products I create and do my best to make it look as nice as I possibly can.
I hope to inspire other inventors to try to network and find out other magicians talents besides magic. You never know there might be magicians that have other talents that could actually help you with getting your magic product off the ground. I love looking as well as purchasing magic products that are well made. It makes me think and wonder about the amount of work that goes into such a product. It also inspires me to want to create such a product that well give the same kind of feelings and experience to other magicians and hopefully ignite a spark for them to create magic.Producing my own products has been very rewarding. I have even gotten my family involved with helping me manufacture my products. I think it's a great way to teach kids at an early age the business process and what it takes to put a product on the market. You can get them involved with something simple such as placing the product in a box a throwing some packing foam into the box. Kids are so eager to help and it gives them a feeling of self worth and confidence doing something and contributing as well as getting off those video games. LOL
If you happen to know any magicians or magic companies who create their product right here in the United States please feel free to post their name, website and name of product so magicians that visit this blog can see all the magicians wonderful products that they manufacture right here in the United States. Please post your info in the comments area in this blog post.
As always thank you for your time and visiting my blog.
Imaginator
No comments:
Post a Comment