Making and Selling a Stair-Climbing Dolly
starterstory.com
starterstory.com
This is just refreshing to read. I don't like the product, but this was a good read and detailed explanation of the issues/problems you can find of making a physical product startup. I also enjoyed the honesty and down to earth writing of the author.
IMO, if you want to succeed with QVC, you should market a widget to the elderly/uneducated?
Basically the equivalent of todays "Gimme your content and I shall provide EXPOSURE via my instagram followers"
https://vendorportal.qvc.com/documents/10184/0/QVC-Vendor+Qu...
The only thing I saw that sorta was related to the comment you were replying to was "Our customers are affluent, educated, digitally savvy — and loyal. Over 90% of our sales come from repeat customers" other than the 90% sales figure, that's just meaningless marketing fluff, no data/figures was given to back it up. The rest was just about the logistics of selling on QVC.
I was more surprised by how QVC requires vendors to pay thousands for QVC's own prep, like makeup and hair, among other things. Seems like a scam all around...except unfortunately the junk they vend seems to be selling.
But its nice to see how far a little engineering development and solid (but not genius) marketing can take somebody.
When I heard the phrase "stair climbing dolly" I immedietly thought of the three wheels on an axle design.
My first search found this from 2007, but 1906 is just as good.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221786654_Climbing_...
The vast, vast majority of startups aren't inventing anything new that didn't exist before, either. You don't need to come up with a novel invention to have a successful business; it's usually sufficient just to do something at lower cost, or do marketing better.
Lying matters. We're not talking about some kind of white lie to make someone feel better either. It's lying to make money, which we should all agree is bad.
They certainly make it appear that way, but it's a lie.
I've seen very similar dollies more than a decade ago, as did others in this thread. Their patents are either invalid or cover some minor aspect to make an impression that they invented the three wheeled stair-climbing mechanism.
What they're claiming to have invented is a specific folding dolly that uses the 3-wheel mechanism.
> The UpCart ® line of products solve this problem with a unique line of all-terrain folding carts and hand trucks that have been engineered to reduce effort while going up and down stairs and over irregular terrain
A casual reading of this sentence leaves the reader with the impression that their carts are unique because of how they reduce the effort of going up and down stairs and over irregular terrain. This is corroborated further by other messaging such as their logo.
However, that is a lie. There have been similar other carts with exact same wheel setup.
The only unique part of their product is the folding mechanism, and they are clearly trying to project that uniqueness onto the wheel mechanism. And it will definitely work on people who have never seen such wheel setup before.
Just because you'd prefer others be more stringent with it doesn't mean that everyone else is lying.
A cable package or car loan does not magically become a GREAT DEAL just because a billboard said so. We're just used to constant lies and aggrandizement in advertising, so all that bullshit looks normal, entirely expected now. It's still bullshit though.
The message is, whether or not it is original (looks to be a no), is how he and his partner managed to succeed in launching the product and earning millions in revenue.
I take it that most people here aren't developing, launching, and marketing their own products and creating a company out of it, and don't really care about learning anything from the article.
People in general, but especially anonymous people on the internet are more interested in calling fraud, and telling you why you have no right to success.
I see the same thing on /r/entrepreneurs, MMA forums, YouTube comments, and here. Doesn't matter how hard you worked or how successful you are, even if you're the top fighter in the world who trained for a decade taking hundreds of blows to the head - people will make sideways excuses for themselves by shitting on you.
Meanwhile reality asserts itself and this guy and his partner has made millions by themselves and have established their own independence.
And the takeaway from HN is "My grandma used this 3 decades ago," and "I don't like the text and phrasing on his website."
This is empty marketing not invention.
Mullets were OK
Mid-rift bearing shirts for MALES were OK (even in Net Fabric)
Computers were cool
Phreaking was 1337
Captain Crunch
Movies were fantastic (minus the pedos who were tormenting the great kid actors of the day)
Transformers
Space Lego
NES
etc...
> Captain Crunch
> Movies were fantastic (minus the pedos who were tormenting the great kid actors of the day)
You might want to read up on what Captain Crunch has been up to the last decade or so
More often than not the idea itself isn't really what makes or breaks a company, it is the people executing that idea that gets it out in front of people.
> The UpCart Deluxe combines an all-terrain three-wheel chassis with a folding hand cart, with unique engineering that makes it easy to bring home the groceries or haul a cabinet up to your fifth floor apartment. UpCart improves stability, is capable of “walking” over irregular terrain and always folds flat for compact storage.
There are pictures too.
Is it a radically new invention. No, it's an improvement or variation on an existing product.
At best they re-invented the thing, but they certainly did not invented it.
Ah! you can still buy them; here's one you can fold: https://www.google.com/search?q=carro+dela+compra+con+tres+r...:
IIRC, the F-117 stealth fighter was built in a similar way. Many of the parts were from other existing planes e.g. the avionics were from a F-16. This mean that the stealth components were cutting edge whereas almost everything else was battle tested and well understood.
Thanks for the link!
http://www.golf-charade.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/caddie...
As an example, I shipped 50 units of product to Amazon and got it to their fulfillment center on 12/5. Their published deadline to get things to a fulfillment center in time for Christmas shipping is 12/9. As of today, exactly 0 of those units have been processed and made available for sale, thus completely missing the holiday shopping season and leaving me with a long-term storage bill since it will now take 2-3 months to sell through them. Good luck getting any help with something like that. On the flip side, I did an A/B test last year vs. this year using vendor central vs seller central for a different product and saw about 2x sales volume for the former. So it's really something you just need to test and make a decision on yourself.
First of all, his business was never going to be a monopoly, patents or no. More importantly, I’d feel very uneasy owning a monopolistic business, considering how much I hate monopolies. But maybe that’s why I’m not rich and other people are.
Who exactly gets convinced by such fluffy wording?
Anyone know if there is a sas website that offers this.
I'm not sure I would have preferred this back when I was still moving furniture for a living, as a furniture dolly with belts along the back/spine will slide up a flight of stairs without much trouble.
It's one thing when founders claim to be revolutionizing this or that when in fact some major changes are afoot. For example, Zuck can make some lofty claims in terms of 'connecting people'.
But when people make some random thing that's been around for a while, in some niche category and then hustle us with this 'revolutionizing mobility' rubbish ... it instantly hurts credibility so much I wonder why it is that it even works, how are most people not turned off by this kind of stuff immediately?
From that sentence forward, I assume this is about the credibility of a Ronco late-night infomercial something or other.
Edit: I should note the rest of the article seems highly authentic. Maybe dropping the 'we're changing the world' narrative would tighten up the messaging, that said, maybe that kind of stuff works on regular folks.
It's been drilled in to people that unless you are changing the world with your business, it's not worth doing.
I think something like, "Discovering innovative products to make difficult tasks easier." is an honorable and worthwhile pursuit as a business. But everyone wants to be the next gates or jobs.
Making difficult tasks easier is a much more laudable goal than revolutionising everything. Many things don't need overthrowing and replacing with a different regime. Wording intentional. :)
Thankfully we have Advertising Standards that require all ads to be "Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful" or the ads can be banned. All sanctions are published and often end up reported in the news. More serious breaches can be referred up the chain for fines.
Surprisingly this is industry self regulation, at least in the UK, that mostly works OK. It applies to internet claims, ads and websites too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_Standards_Authorit...
When practised one does get to spot the key phrasing used to "lie within the regulations", the doublespeak like how people felt this or that our something appeared to be better or more lustrous when [paid] users were asked.
One time was a "travel to X for only £Y" and when I checked the actually cost was at least double the advertised price, there was no such ticket available. Not even under limited availability.
I've seen the same thing since, but not checked if it was the same (train) company.
> Not in Europe.
Check out this Nutella commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nM3EjYEks) where a family is consuming mass quantities of Nutella (a palm-oil, hydrogenated fat, and sugar concoction). Ferrara has been pushing this stuff for years as a wholesome breakfast ingredient. In fact, Ferrara was sued in the USA for making dubious claims about Nutella! (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/04/26/151454929/nu...)
> [...overblown marketing rhetoric...] instantly hurts credibility so much I wonder why it is that it even works, how are most people not turned off by this kind of stuff immediately?
Most folks, I think, just ignore the lofty claims and accept that that's the kind of BS one hears in advertisements and they set their expectations accordingly.
Does it work better than making honest realistic claims (eg "This product is, at best, marginally better than a regular portable dolly and you probably don't even need it.")? I think that marketing folks have something to say about that, that's their job after all. It doesn't matter what you (or I or many people on HN) think.
:-)
The comparison to Zuck with this thing is laughable. Is this device slurping ALL your activities regardless of if you want it or not? Is this device and its creators trying to scam you into accepting app updates so they can further spy on you?
Is this device capable of ANY spying?
NOPE.
What this device SHOULD have is a fitbit which measures how many steps you have used it on - validating its existence. Period.