This
page
addresses the cost of production. We engaged a
plastics engineer who has done the primary engineering drawings for the
tooling. He has estimated that the molding cost to be about
AUD$45 (USD$28).
.
But of
course the production cost doesn't end there. Here is our
estimate:
|
|
|
Action or part
|
$AUD
|
$USD
|
|
Molding in plastic (estimate) |
45.00 |
28.00 |
| Three
springs |
0.25 |
0.16 |
Three
pieces of bent
wire
|
0.25 |
0.16 |
|
Assembly
cost |
4.00 |
2.65 |
Shrink
wrap in plastic
film
|
0.15 |
0.10 |
| Shipping
carton (to hold four)*** |
1.00
|
0.70 |
Royalty for the designer
|
4.00 |
2.65 |
Cost to find and appoint
distributors**
|
0.50 |
0.30 |
| Amortization
of tooling
cost |
0.50 |
0.30 |
|
Freight
allowance |
4.35
|
3.05 |
|
|
|
TOTAL
|
60.00 |
38.07 |
**
You (as manufacturer)
are going need a small budget to find distributors whose sales reps will make
presentations to individual owners or operators of public toilets (more on that later).
***
The best quote I got was from Echo Cartons who quoted AUD $4.00 each carton
(divided by four Rollfast in each box is AUD $1.00).
We
strongly suggest you make a sales video professionally. We had one with
Mark I and it was devastatingly effective. If we showed it to a
distributor they invariably said "Where do I sign" and to a client they
immediately said "I'll take XXX of them". So the video is a vital tool
that is essential for the whole operation.
Distributors
would then give each sales rep a copy of the video, and even the
most hopeless rep can make a sale every time. All the rep has to do is
place his laptop on the clients' desk and say "may I show you a five minute
video that will change your life........?"
Distributors
are easy to find in any city
by looking in Google - just put "toilet tissue distributors in
(Sydney, Bangkok or wherever)" and you now have hundreds of names you
can send a copy of the sales video to. You don't need to go there! You will never need to advertise
this product!
Of
course that would work for sales within the country you are in and surrounding
countries but for other parts of the world you would need to go
there and set up with their own tooling and assembly lines because
sending containers long distance is probably unviable.
With this simple selling system that works so well, the only limit to sales is how fast you can assemble pack and ship them.
Don't think in terms of one assembly line but several and probably
three shifts around the clock as well. Later you will probably use
robots.
Finally be warned about the "snowball effect". Here is what happens: a rep
from company A makes a presentation of Rollfast, gets the sale and then
lands the tissue contract which he has been after for years. When company B finds out why they have lost
that contract, they can't get on the phone quick enough to ask you to become
a distributor too. So once Rollfast becomes "known" you will
have anxious distributors crawling out of the woodwork begging you for the product; you may have a problem
keeping up with demand; that is what happened with Mark I.
It is suggested that you pack Rollfast four to a carton for shipment to the distributors
to save on carton costs. We did this with Mark I (which were packed six to a carton) and specified that
all orders had to be a multiple of six and that worked perfectly.
