Completely agree here. I've spent the last year and a half building Pistol Lake - we make men's shirts.
There are the few of us who want to spend the years it takes building manufacturing and operational expertise necessary to build an online-first direct-to-consumer company - and there are a huge number of things in our favor:
1. easier to build audience than ever before
2. costs overseas are changing and making domestic, short-run manufacturing more economical
3. allowing you to keep less inventory, and if you don't have a billion SKUs, turnover can be rapid
That said, it takes a long time to build the expertise and a long time to make a good product, period. Nothing will change that. It also takes a unique skillset to be able to be creative in the design of things, process driven to build scalable manufacturing and logistics, technical enough to manage an e-commerce platform and sophisticated customer acquisition/economics hacking, etc.
Ultimately, I think there will be hundreds of designers going online-first, direct-to-consumer, making incredible things, and we all benefit from it. Couldn't be more excited about this maker revolution.
There are the few of us who want to spend the years it takes building manufacturing and operational expertise necessary to build an online-first direct-to-consumer company - and there are a huge number of things in our favor:
1. easier to build audience than ever before 2. costs overseas are changing and making domestic, short-run manufacturing more economical 3. allowing you to keep less inventory, and if you don't have a billion SKUs, turnover can be rapid
That said, it takes a long time to build the expertise and a long time to make a good product, period. Nothing will change that. It also takes a unique skillset to be able to be creative in the design of things, process driven to build scalable manufacturing and logistics, technical enough to manage an e-commerce platform and sophisticated customer acquisition/economics hacking, etc.
Ultimately, I think there will be hundreds of designers going online-first, direct-to-consumer, making incredible things, and we all benefit from it. Couldn't be more excited about this maker revolution.