Painful Common Mistakes ❌
I want the cheapest option.
Selecting your supplier based on price and not thinking about scaling early in the process is a key mistake most companies do.
- Scaling needs expertise & resources, especially in a context of component shortage. Ask yourself that question: are expert & resourceful suppliers among the cheapest?
- Remember that just because you designed your product internally, it doesn’t mean you know how to handle a supply chain past the prototyping stage. Manufacturing at scale is a totally different game.
- Price is truly important but always in relation to the lead time and quality/features you get against it!
I want to control everything.
Going too deep into the supply chain trying to control every single supplier of every single part is a sign that you lack trust in your partner. If you don't trust your supply chain partner, don't work with him to begin with.
- What's the point of selecting a supplier only to end up doing all of the work by yourself & doing it wrong on top of that?
- Are you sure your qualification processes are better than a professional EMS'?
- What is a supplier? It is a key partner for you handling a whole supply chain in the background. You should leverage that instead of providing weak Alibaba leads.
- Have you heard about design for manufacturing and product validation?
- Expect quality issues to arise: who is responsible for quality issues arising from customer-appointed suppliers? It might be impossible to define responsibilities which will dramatically slow down your project at best.
Focus on Success instead 🚀
Focus on high-level KPIs.
Contract on your business's most important KPIs in order to leverage your partner's expertise & resources into an obligation of result.
- What’s your scaled target volume?
- What’s the corresponding target COGS or MSRP?
- When should you hit the market for maximum efficiency? Remember that once you’ve launched your crowdfunding campaign, what should go wrong will go wrong but you now have a hard deadline!
Focus on Investment, Marketing, Sales & Distribution.
Offload the rest to your supply chain partner within a clear project management process:
- Offload the engineering, manufacturing, supply chain & scaling complexity onto the right partner - supplier selection should be about that, not about price only! Do not trade your future scaling success against a better price on 50 prototypes, it does not make sense.
- Contract based on above target volume, target COGS & target lead time. Add some project execution & transparency guidelines.
- Now that you freed up a LOT of time & have an expert contracted on solving your complex problems, go focus on raising money and/or working on your market distribution to increase your chance of success.
We have received too many emails like the one below and/or heard horror stories of great projects that won’t be able to meet their customers on their promising market.
![](https://assets-global.website-files.com/6013cfc7d68326005344ce1d/62da48abddddd27ac9fb35fd_Screen%20Shot%202022-07-15%20at%201.35.03%20PM.png)
Component supply issues usually means poor design choices or lack of execution speed or anticipation. Don’t fall in that trap by making the right choice from the get-go!