My background is in hardware, manufacturing, and electromechanical devices.
You're starting on the wrong end. Don't brainstorm products.
I have been around entrepreneurs for 20 years, including more than 10 years of advising them, and this is never how successful businesses start. It is how a lot of failed businesses start, though.
You should start with a single question: what do I have an unusual (or unfair) advantage doing?
This could include:
- knowing a lot of potential customers (for a B2B business)
- having skills that you could charge your company $0/hr for (like digital marketing or software development)
- lots of your own capital
- deep understanding of an underserved target market, ideally from being in that market yourself
If you don't have one (or ideally more) of these things, don't start a business. It's not a good idea for most people anyway.
Once you can identify who you can sell to more easily than most people, then you can decide what to sell them. And you still might not find anything.
"Things that don't compete with China" is a small and unbelievably capital-intensive space, and it's exclusive to things like military and trade secrets. You can't just jump into one of these.
Quite a few pieces of technical climbing or whitewater activity gear.
In the US at least, sofas are often assembled in the US out of parts imported from China and Southeast Asia.
> Quite a few pieces of technical climbing or whitewater activity gear.
Also in the US, the biggest brands are all either 100% made in China or they parts are made in China and then assembled here[1]. Certainly many of the important metal parts are made in China.
1. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/black-d...
https://dmmwales.com/about-dmm
Also Pyranha Kayaks for instance