Suzy and Jill Chapter 41: New direction

Filed: Suzy and Jill @ 6:25am on October 8, 2014 No comments yet! :(   Word Count: 586
This entry is part 41 of 39 in the series Suzy and Jill

Suzy and Jill

Jill and I were left in our new office. Granted, we’d probably not work often from here, but it was yet another major milestone.

It might not be much, but moving was admitting that my company would never grow back to its former glory.

I would most likely never hire additional employees to help us out and even if we did, it would be one or two and not a whole major development team.

It would also mean kissing goodbye to many of my former clients who only worked with major firms but even then, we were usually barely able to delivery, because, I had to admit it, Jill was the most gifted employee I ever had.

Granted, most designers worked for their own portfolio and not for the boss and by sleeping with the boss, Jill had different motivations.

Still, she challenged me, like when she once again pushed to get into 3D printing.

“Jill, I thought about it and even if more affordable than in the past, we’ll never make enough prototypes to justify the costs.”

“No, you don’t get it. We’re not just going to do the prototyping. We’ll offer to make the production too for small entrepreneurs and even our own projects.”

“Jill, designer make more money designing than going the hassle of planing production.”

“Oh, I get that. What you don’t understand is that I propose a brand new business model. When people with zero skills want to have a 3D project, what do they do? They hire a designer, that’s us, then shop a 3D printing firm to have a quote for a fixed quantity, say, a thousand for small objects or maybe a hundred for bigger ones and finally, secure a loan for the initial run, right?”

“Pretty much”, I replied, skceptical.

“But what about on-demand 3D printing? No one does it?”

“With good reason”, I explained. “The prototyping itself is too expansive. Most people need only 1 copy for personal usage, so you lose in the long run.”

“Exactly, but what if we include the first prototype in our design fee. Then, printing additional copies is just a matter of reloading the proper file and running the program. We already did the setup and bill it in the design fees.”

“Hum. Interesting…”

“And we do that, we have already secured design and production, so we can also offer to build their website and handle their distribution for them.”

“Yes, for a fee…”

“Of course, for a fee.The goal is to make money after all”

“But can we really make that much money, for all of the trouble it will give us.”

“We’ll hire when we need to. I mean, We already do the designing and help with the prototyping. But we can hire a person at minimum wage just to feed the 3D printer and package the production. At first, we’ll do it ourselves and then, hire someone part time and slowly increase their hours. I’m sure we can find someone. Plus, as an added bonus, they would have access to the printer for their personal projects so in the end, it’s a win-win.”

“Don’t we need a bigger 3D printer?”

“Sure, but we’ll do a kickstarter. The rewards will start with some models, and ramp up to full design packages. We can even send our next few clients to it so it moves fast.”

“Are you sure people will support us?”

“Have you seen Kickstarter? A good person is people who want to have their latest 3D model printed anyway. We have the knowledge, we’ll have the device. We even already have the clients!”.

“I guess we can go for it…”

 

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