My custom turbo kit
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Senior Member
Joined: Apr 2016
Posts: 790
Total Cats: 188
From: Atlanta
I spent a big part of my career as a design engineer. At first it was really exciting, getting to design new things and put them out into the world. I have something like 35 patents for medical devices. Soon I realized that there was a huge difference between making a prototype and making a single unit for sale to consumers, much less 10 or 100 or 1000. Also the difficulties of dealing with those inconvenient customers and their inconvenient demands. Then I moved into marketing, and learned the importance of choosing a good target market in the first place; someplace with high volume, good pricing, unmet customer needs and limited competition.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I have a lot of respect for the vendors here who have jumped that gap and sell good quality hardware for affordable prices. To the OP, it looks like you do good work. I think if you plan to scale this into a business, you have a lot of lessons to learn along the way. You’ve already gotten some pretty good advice in this thread, some of it from potential competitors of yours. I wish you luck, but I don’t know that this market has the pricing and unmet customer needs that I’d be looking for if I were in your shoes. Something I always said as a marketing guy: “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” As pointed out, most of the Miata market is cheap-asses, and the ones with money and sense either know how to DIY or can pay for custom work.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I have a lot of respect for the vendors here who have jumped that gap and sell good quality hardware for affordable prices. To the OP, it looks like you do good work. I think if you plan to scale this into a business, you have a lot of lessons to learn along the way. You’ve already gotten some pretty good advice in this thread, some of it from potential competitors of yours. I wish you luck, but I don’t know that this market has the pricing and unmet customer needs that I’d be looking for if I were in your shoes. Something I always said as a marketing guy: “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” As pointed out, most of the Miata market is cheap-asses, and the ones with money and sense either know how to DIY or can pay for custom work.
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That's fair. Making mistakes and learning from them is part of moving forward. I make mistakes. I learn from them.
The difference is that i'm not making the Fisher Price™ My First Turbo mistakes that you are, AND i still wouldn't feel comfortable taking peoples' money for building/designing turbo kits for customers. There's nothing WRONG with making mistakes. There's a lot wrong with making rookie mistakes and then coming in here guns blazing like you know something, and charging people for your rookie work.
That's the issue here.
That, and your attitude sucks.
The difference is that i'm not making the Fisher Price™ My First Turbo mistakes that you are, AND i still wouldn't feel comfortable taking peoples' money for building/designing turbo kits for customers. There's nothing WRONG with making mistakes. There's a lot wrong with making rookie mistakes and then coming in here guns blazing like you know something, and charging people for your rookie work.
That's the issue here.
That, and your attitude sucks.
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Senior Member
Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 650
Total Cats: -480
From: Israel
I come here much less in the last few years, the feeling I get every time is that I just stepped in a closed circle of friends that hate any alien and act like a banch of immature teenagers - this feeling does not encourage me to come back.
I do my study from books, dyno, track and other internet sources.
I do my study from books, dyno, track and other internet sources.
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