Bob Baddeley was invited to speak at TEDxMadison on June 1 about manufacturing and the lessons he learned after spending 3 months in China and then manufacturing in the U.S. anyway. The video is now online, and if you can…
Blog Archives
Book Review – Selling To China
Full disclosure: I was contacted by the author and sent two copies of this book. Despite a slightly misleading title, this book is definitely appropriate for anyone whose business involves China in any way. Selling To China is about dealing…
FCC spells FUN
Initially, I was very excited about adding wireless capabilities to my product, and I was even more excited to find a plethora of available solutions in China. I could get any kind of remote, receiver, transceiver, encoder or decoder, FSK,…
Danger to your health
China is hazardous to your health. A good friend of mine with the startup Nomiku recently took ill while working on production in Shenzhen and had this to say: Ugh, just found out the meds I ate have lead in…
Useful fakes abound, too
China is fraught with fake parts, but that’s not always a completely bad thing that will ruin you. Sometimes it’s something that will save you lots of money because it works well enough for your needs and is readily available.…
Fakes abound!
At the electronics market there are lots of booths of people selling iPhone cases, USB thumb drives, cell phone trinkets, and other useless but high margin plastic things. They prey on the thousands of visitors from around the world who…
Pit of Despair
Sparkfun has an interesting article on something they call, the “pit of despair.” It’s the point of volume production where you’re more than you can make easily at home, less than you can go directly to a contract manufacturer, and…
Another perspective of the Electronics Market
Occasionally I get contacted by other people in or near Shenzhen who have also written about the craziness that is the Shenzhen electronics market. Here’s one such post. Mitch Davis has an interesting perspective about forming lasting relationships with people…
Thermoforming Factory
For the product I’m building (A portable electronic scoreboard), the enclosure is large; 18″x10″. This is pushing the limits of injection molding without using a giant press. It’s certainly too large for a 50 ton press, and the 200 ton…
Interview with a former Foxconn employee
After reading this post about rioting workers at Foxconn, I thought I should respond with what I saw when I was in Shenzhen. The workspace where I’ve had my base of operations for the last two months has an employee…