Juicero Plans to Lower Prices and Cut 25% of Staff
fortune.com
fortune.com
https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensi...
> One Giant Misstep
> The vast majority of the complexity of the Press is driven by one simple problem inherent in the machine’s design: the massive force required to press the packs across the entire surface at once. The machine must apply equal pressure to ~64 square inches of surface area at once, meaning the drivetrain must be able to apply thousands of pounds of force to squish all that produce.
> On the contrary, when a human hand squeezes the same pack, we naturally use a very different technique [fingers create large amounts of pressure over much smaller surface area]
> I have to believe the engineers that built this product looked at other ways of pressing the juice, but if the primary mechanism could apply force in a more focused way it could easily save hundreds of dollars off the shelf price of the product.
That blog post is high art.
I've gotten used to AvE's unboxing by now and in fact look forward to it, but I remember it being jarring the first few times.
It really is the most ridiculous product. Even if it were engineered properly to a reasonable price point the entire product is unnecessary and wasteful. The difference between selling bags of juice vs. bags of mostly juiced pulp that you have to finish yourself is definitely not worth $800 or whatever they were trying to charge. On top of that they added DRM, some goddamn subscription thing, required internet connectivity, and every other annoyance you can get in a modern product.
The time spent setting up this machine, throwing away the bags, electricity used, resources used, etc VS peeling an orange seems comical and sad.
Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the sources on this. All of this breathless superfood wankery is really polluting the search results.
http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/digestion-kale-11913.html
http://gi-north.com/kale-good-for-you-and-your-digestive-tra...
Like AvE says, it's really not. Elegant engineering is exactly meeting your design requirements (assuming your design requirements are good). It's far far easier to overengineer everything. It's also wasteful, since all that extra capacity won't be utilized.
Sure, if you selling juicers to businesses. Juicero is selling a lifestyle, not a product. Nice design is then a part of engineering.
Fruit juicers have existed since I can remember. The real selling point here is the juice packs. The nice machine is so that people don't realize what they're doing, which is basically buying pulped juice then letting the machine pour it into a glass for them.
You and I can disagree of course. I'm not finding issue with your opinion -- just offering mine.
I should also mention I'm Canadian and pretty much nobody talks the way AvE does. His accent and vocabulary are purposely exaggerated.
Source? I've seen no empirical evidence to support this notion.
> "heat it up"
No they don't, not even close. My Green Star twin-gear and my Omega 8001 auger juicers both heat up juice WAY more than my Omega centrifugals. My centrifugal juicers also don't produce foam in any meaningful quantity.
These are very different juicers, meant for different tasks. My Green Star is the only juicer that I can use for leafy greens and sprouts, and it's brilliant at those, but it's useless for bulky things like apple, carrots, and beets.
My Omega centrifugal juicers, on the other hand, can't do greens worth a shit, but they'll suck nearly every drop from apples/carrots/beets, leaving just a slightly moist pulp behind.
Your Vert juicer is interesting. Can you really do both apples and greens? Can you juice really dry shit like kale and wheatgrass?
Oh yeah it does it all. It's a fantastic unit. Picked it up on a 50% off sale for like $150.00.
One of my favorite mixed juices to make with it is: kale, green apple, lemon, habanero, cilantro, ginger. It's like drinking fire but it's invigorating and has a great flavor.
Seems the lesson learned here is that unlike software, physical goods require an experienced up-front design that can't be haphazardly iterated on by new-grads to be fixed later.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability
I'm not so sure software is any different. I think a large part of software's reputation for low quality and buggy software is due to this.
By contrast, the mechanical internals and motor controller are simultaneously over engineered, and in some places poorly engineered. It feels like a young team trying hard.
BTW, not throwing rocks. I'm sure I would have done many of the same mistakes years ago.
Also, AvE is great.
My first hunch would be to use rollers, like getting that last bit of toothpaste out; I can't believe that it operated as an actual press.
It really is beautifully designed though. I figure the engineers were either forced to make a 'juice press' for marketing, or took it too literally.
I was in a similarly fated startup. It was super cool to design stuff with no regard to usability or cost, but the gravy train ends at some point, when you realize you've been making something nobody wants.
The fastest path to validating the business plan is usually the right one.
i never understood what I was supposed to get from one of these over traditional methods or even regular juice. Oh I get the concept of just now squeezed but part of these sales rely on being competitive in pricing and it never felt that they were even trying
Probably because he realized that trying to be the Steve Jobs of juicing wasn't going to be as fruitful (heh) as initially thought, but still wants to be a part of any potential exit.
The product was designed to specifically to justify the business model of the DRM pulp packets and thus MRR for the purpose of revenue and growth. Everything about it looks like they designed the packets and juice pulp DRM features first, then backfilled the rest of the mechanical design to support the REAL features (keeping people buying your fruit packages) and not the FAKE features (juicing?).
Many people talk about the ring roller/ toothpaste squeezer method being easier. Of course! But how do you do DRM with that? It's trickier. How do you scan the barcode and also keep your customers from using off brand K-Cups, I'm sorry I mean, fruit pulp packets.
It's obvious for $800 they could have designed an amazing conventional juicer, which actually would be a better product. But how do you get monthly recurring revenue out of that and thus justification for raising millions in venture capitalist money?
Juicero is a great example of dark hardware design and a cautionary tail about the hubris of the "if you build it" risk management strategy.
We can rag on the guy who engineered the juice pressing bit, but it very much looks like a junior guy right out of school who didn't have an adult in the room telling him that his $800 first effort was beautiful but needed to be redesigned to be under $50 in parts. Everybody needs that experience to understand how stuff works in the real world.
When the founder wants something that doesn't make sense, you try to reason about it, you try to get other voices helping in a chorus that something doesn't work, but when the founder is the one with the money, the vision, and the ego, it can be impossible to move them off their idea regardless of the merits.
You need some business expertise for start-ups, but too much would be a huge red flag for me personally.
That would actually be really cool and useful!
The cost structure of a subscription-based, home-delivered, fresh, semi-prepared food product is not going to, even at scale, be close to price-competitive with a juicer from Bed Bath & Beyond and some fresh fruit from Whole Foods. Juicero will, by its nature, always be a premium product situated well beyond any home juicing options.
I bought a morphy richards blender/juicer for £24.99, I pick up a bag of fruit near the end of it's shelf life for 2-3 quid from the market on the way past.
Cost per serving about 20-25p.
Cleaning is taking the center out and running it under a tap, this was an insane product however you cut (or pulp) it.
But wow did they go about it wrong, charging $699 for a machine that does a worse job than your bare hands!? Was there not one investor who did a technical due diligence? I'm so surprised.
The actual technology works...just not well enough, and scaling it to be an order of magnitude more useful is probably physically impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA
The talk by the uBeam CEO he links is also pretty infuriating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgnU2aXM2c
Her core hypothesis that experts can often get stuck "inside the box" is certainly valid, but on the other hand "I sat down and solved complex engineering problems in a few minutes with pencil and paper" (almost an exact quote from the talk) is just plain dumb. Not to mention the not subtle implication that good engineers are all socially retarded...
If you flip that around it's more clear: If you don't have excess funding, whether it's a VC funded startup or an internal project at an established company, you don't have the resource to epicly over engineer solutions; ergo it's only the ones with massive funding that do so.
A well designed machine would probably be more like a roller on a worm drive mounted on some stamped sheet metal. It would look totally chintzy but get the job done and cost a fraction of what the Juicero cost. It would still be a stupid product that would probably fail, but at least the hardware wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.
Some of this all works together, would they have been here with a workable, reasonable product? Probably not, they would have been just an appliance.
But with a completely unreasonable product, they get to flaunt it's ridiculous merits as value. You could even imagine marketing around the full press having some bs nutritional value versus not.
*Whoever
(sorry)
Instead they ended up with a costly dud.
I don't own one, but I heard from early buyers that thing is expensively useless.
but somehow it receives less laugh and the company is still operating.
but of course, the nest company has an ambition in smart homes and iot also, not just making thermostats.