Making it Cheaper!

One of the important things I learned from the VIUD's KickStarter was that its price was on the high end so finding a way to reduce that price is now at the top of my list of things to do. At first glance it may appear that there is little that can be done...the prices used on the KickStarter were the lowest I could get them at the time but there are a few areas we can look at and perhaps their combined effect can result in a notable price reduction.

Sales Method

Using KickStarter as the sales method introduces a not insignificant amount of overhead on the price which includes:

• KickStarter fee (5%)
• Credit card fees (3-5%)
• International shipping

If we compare the VIUD's prices from the KickStarter and without this overhead we can see a good sized difference:

Model	KickStarter Price	Base Price
Al 16GB	$199	$151
Al 32GB	$219	$164
Al 64GB	$249	$183
Al 128GB	$299	$241
Al 256GB	$419	$346
Ti 16GB	$319	$250
Ti 32GB	$349	$264
Ti 64GB	$399	$282
Ti 128GB	$449	$340
Ti 256GB	$599	$445

The effect is more significant in the more expensive models...the 256GB Ti is already over $150 cheaper! 

Technically some of this overhead, namely the credit card and shipping fees, will have to be included at some point but removing them from the VIUD's list price is an important step. 

Case Material

We can evaluate the case materials to see if any trade-offs can be made regarding price. The current two case materials, Aluminum 7068-T651 and Titanium Grade 5, were chosen as they are among the highest strength alloys of the respective material. Unfortunately, this also means they are more expensive than other alloys. 

Comparing a few common alloys:

Alloy	Tensile Strength	Cost
Al 7068-T651	95 kpsi	Low-Medium
Al 7075-T6	75 kpsi	Low
Al 6061	35 kpsi	Low
Ti Grade 5	120 kspi	High
Ti Grade 2	40 kpsi	Medium-High

For the Aluminum VIUD we can consider moving to Al 7075-T6 as this alloy is still very strong and it can make the case manufacturing price a bit cheaper. Experience has also shown that it is much easier to find a machine shop able to source and work with 7075 than 7068. For the Titanium VIUD we will stick with Grade 5 as the more common Grade 2 is significantly weaker and we can have the Titanium VIUDs be a "premium" model to match its higher price.

Case Manufacturer

The VIUD's case is the largest portion of its manufacturing cost comprising 50-80% of its total. I've already sourced a bunch of machine shops for the case production and choose the cheapest one. At least the cheapest one that was able to make the case and not screw up royally. There was one, unmentionable, shop that failed miserably but did offer much lower prices. Perhaps another search and production test will reveal a shop with a lower price but still good quality production.

To make a long story short, I found a few dozen potential shops and ordered VIUD case samples from four of them for evaluation purposes. All four shops had lower prices than my previous manufacturer and 3 of the 4 managed to supply cases with pretty decent qualities as seen in the below pictures:

Case Manufacturer A

Case Manufacturer B

Case Manufacturer C

Case Manufacturer D

Three of the manufacturers supplied pretty much identical parts with very good quality. Manufacturer A was the notable exception with completely unusable quality, literally! The threads were so bad they wouldn't screw together even after trying to fix them. You'd think you would want to do your best work when making samples for a potentially larger order.

Potentially Good News....

I still need to fully test the VIUD case samples from the newly sourced manufacturers to make sure the cases are worthy of being used in the world's toughest USB drive, but it looks promising at this point. Based on the average quoted price of the 4 suppliers I should be able to get the list price of the cheapest VIUD model (Al 16GB) well under $100 which should make it much easier to convince people to buy it. 

KickStarter: Lessons Learned

While the VIUD's KickStarter campaign was not successful it was still useful in what I learned in from the process. 

Video Making

Prior to starting the campaign I had done basically no video capturing or editing. All KS campaigns require a decent looking introduction video so I started practising by making a variety of VIUD testing and documentation videos which I put on the VIUD's YouTube channel. I quickly found a few important things about making videos:

• Lighting -- Even getting half-decent lighting for a simple video can be difficult. Partial sun in the video is no good as it ruins the video's contrast/brightness levels and stands out too much. Direct bright lighting is bad as it tends to reflect off my glasses horribly. I found that using some high-intensity halogen work lights reflecting off a wall or ceiling gave a decent effect with little effort.
• Background Sounds -- I didn't realize how loud all the various background sounds could be until I tried to make a few videos. I live near a school, busy road, and plane route and it was a challenge to record a video outside that didn't have some sort of background noise interrupting it.
• Public Speaking -- I've never been a good public speaker and that much was obvious from the first few video takes. I've since practised speaking more slowly, carefully pronouncing words and trying to keep the inevitable "ums" and "ahs" to a minimum.

The first few videos definitely took more than a few takes to get just right than the recent ones.  I'm particularly proud of the KS campaign video (see below). It won't win any awards and is not as nice as some other KickStarter videos but represents something I couldn't do prior the quest for the VIUD.

VIUD KickStarter Campaign Video

In addition to the video creation I've also had to learn some basic video editing. For now Windows Movie Maker was sufficient to create my basic videos and I've had to learn things like joining movies, transition effects, recording and adding a voice over, sourcing and adding music, and basic credits. Nothing fancy but definitely a little learning curve there. If I had to make more videos I would definitely want to look into getting a better video editor. 

Marketing

I'll readily admin that I'm first and foremost an engineer/physicist and have little to no marketing/sales knowledge or experience. While I tried a little promotion of the VIUD shortly before I started its KickStarter campaign I quickly found out I did far too little and much too late.

I found a few companies after I launched to help promote the campaign, for a price of course, and I wish I had known about them before hand. One was BackersHub which sends out an email newsletter to inform their clients about KickStarter campaigns and offer deals to some of them. Another one, Ayudos, offered a press release and promotion on their social media accounts. In addition I spent a lot of time after the campaign started trying to contact sites and reporters who might be interested in the VIUD and its story. I also ran a Google AdWords campaign that at least resulted in a lot of traffic to the campaign and blog.

Unfortunately, my few attempts at marketing didn't yield very much. In hindsight I should have begun aggressively marketing the VIUD and its KS months before the campaign actually started. This would have given me a much larger audience and a better chance at getting the required funding. 

Price

The high price of the VIUD was definitely a significant barrier in getting people interested in purchasing it. Part the problem was that the KickStarter price includes the KS fee, credit card fee, and shipping. For example, the cheapest VIUD (Aluminum 16 GB) might have listed for $150 on an online store with a good profit margin but on KickStarter the additional fees bumped that price up to $199 or more. The $179 early bird price I was offering gave me almost no profit.

Reducing the cost of the VIUD mostly involves reducing the manufacturing cost of the case itself. On the 16 GB model the case is currently 80-90% of the overall manufacturing cost. I've already got quotes from a half-dozen different manufacturing shops and the one I've chosen was actually the cheapest by a good margin. There was a considerably cheaper one but it failed to supply anything usable by a spectacular margin.

This leaves me with the unenviable task of looking and trying out a few more case manufacturers to see if I can get a better price.

The Next Step...

After spending a solid two months almost exclusively on the VIUD and its KS campaign I took a short break for a few months in order to get caught up on all the other work I have to do (or had been ignoring in other words). I'll be looking for new suppliers for the manufacturing of the VIUD case to see if I can get the price lower for another attempt.

I've considered trying another KickStarter campaign (you can simply create a new project to try again) but I'm not so sure that KickStarter is a good choice for this type of product. I'm more leaning towards just purchasing a few hundred initial VIUDs and creating a simple web store to sell them from. Either way will take a little more consideration to decide exactly what to do.

KickStarter Campaign Over

The VIUD's KickStarter campaign finished this morning and, unfortunately, we didn't reach our funding target. While I'm disappointed, the entire experience was educating and I received a lot of great feedback to sort through. Development of the VIUD continues with the primary goal of reducing the manufacturing cost to get its retail price a low as possible. 

Keep tuned to the blog for future VIUD news and development posts including a post-mortem review of the entire KickStarter experience.

KickStarter Campaign is Now Live!

The VIUD's KickStarter campaign is now available!

Reddit AMA - 9 October 2014

I'll be doing a Reddit AMA starting on the morning of 9 October 2014. The below image is used as proof for that thread.

History of the VIUD

A little video about the history of the VIUD and some of the design revisions and prototypes it has been through. See it below or directly on YouTube.

Can you do this with your USB Drive (Part 2)?

A short video on something you shouldn't do with just any USB drive. See it below or directly on YouTube.