Woodpeckers $289.00 measuring tool vs. mine made from scrap and paper clips.

[RobS888]

I think it is theirs as well to an extent if they are losing sales because of exorbitant pricing.

 

[Packard]

If there were no copies there would be no choice, the Domino is a good example of that as was the Fein Multi Tool and the Lamello Biscuit jointer before that. How many baulked at the original (not the Domino) but eagerly bought the knock off from Asia when they became available? The criticism of WP prices does not align with people who work for WP wanting a decent salary or living wage, do the critics think those employees should suffer because some here think the price is too high and should work for less just so someone can buy the product cheaper? As a general rule and this forum is a bit immune to it most woodworkers could not afford any sort of machinery if it was not made in Asia, sad but true.

My only criticism of WP is the "One Time" thing. I could see making different (lower volume) products only one or twice a year. You might have to wait, but it would still be available. The buy it "now or never" is simply annoying. They have the tooling, the design was already done, so those expenses have already occurred. At this point, it would only cost the time and material.

As far as copies. That is the point of the patent process. It offers some protection to recover the initial cost of getting something new into production, then it expires over time. This seems fair to everyone. It allows the originator to profit from the idea and making it to market with a new product. Then if it turns out to be something that has enough consumer interest, others can produce something similar at a lower price point, if they can figure out how well enough for people to actually buy it.

The thing is that they are a CNC heavy manufacturer.  They basically have programing costs, material costs and setup costs.  They probably have minimum lot size for anodizing. 

So if their programming costs are $500.00, and setup costs are $500.00 and minimum lot charge for anodizing is $500.00, then they have $1,500.00 in fixed expenses.  If they sell 500 units, they have $3.00 each in fixed costs.  But if they only sell 75 units then they have $20.00 each in fixed expenses.  That is assuming that they are either using billet or an extrusion that they currently own tooling on. 

Computer controlled would be CNC metal milling machine, CNC laser marking machine, a CNC water-jet or wire EDM machine.  Each operation would have a fixed programming cost and a fixed setup costs. 

I don't think that they have much in the way of tooling.  That is why they love to make all these variations.  They use existing tooling for extrusions and increase their extrusion consumption.  That reduces their cost per foot of extrusions.  But history will treat them harshly.  They will be known as the company that made exquisitely crafted, but largely unused equipment.  25 years from now you will find largely unused iterations of their equipment for sale with only collectors of obsolete equipment as possible customers. 

 

[Mini Me]

Without trying to be argumentative it is obvious you have never run a business and had to pay all the backend costs of one the size of WP. I won't argue the cost summary you have posted because I simply don't know but I have owned 3 businesses, one currently involved in woodworking. 

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Without trying to be argumentative it is obvious you have never run a business and had to pay all the backend costs of one the size of WP. I won't argue the cost summary you have posted because I simply don't know but I have owned 3 businesses, one currently involved in woodworking.

I don't know who you are referring to here?
I have no intent to argue at all, just trying to learn/understand?
It seems to me that since they have already done the R&D and even actually produced the products, they could always do it again. Then, at least in part, some of those expenses have already been covered. Which is why I offered the idea of making some of these products annually.
It seems that they are leaving sales on the table in the first place, and I can't be the only one who is annoyed by the concept. To me, that's a bad business model.
I have absolutely no idea what size the company actually is? They are here in Ohio and as far as I know, in just one facility? But none of that really indicates how big they are, other than "not huge/world-wide"

 

[jeh]

If there were no copies there would be no choice, the Domino is a good example of that as was the Fein Multi Tool and the Lamello Biscuit jointer before that. How many baulked at the original (not the Domino) but eagerly bought the knock off from Asia when they became available? The criticism of WP prices does not align with people who work for WP wanting a decent salary or living wage, do the critics think those employees should suffer because some here think the price is too high and should work for less just so someone can buy the product cheaper? As a general rule and this forum is a bit immune to it most woodworkers could not afford any sort of machinery if it was not made in Asia, sad but true.

My only criticism of WP is the "One Time" thing. I could see making different (lower volume) products only one or twice a year. You might have to wait, but it would still be available. The buy it "now or never" is simply annoying. They have the tooling, the design was already done, so those expenses have already occurred. At this point, it would only cost the time and material.

As far as copies. That is the point of the patent process. It offers some protection to recover the initial cost of getting something new into production, then it expires over time. This seems fair to everyone. It allows the originator to profit from the idea and making it to market with a new product. Then if it turns out to be something that has enough consumer interest, others can produce something similar at a lower price point, if they can figure out how well enough for people to actually buy it.

The thing is that they are a CNC heavy manufacturer.  They basically have programing costs, material costs and setup costs.  They probably have minimum lot size for anodizing. 

So if their programming costs are $500.00, and setup costs are $500.00 and minimum lot charge for anodizing is $500.00, then they have $1,500.00 in fixed expenses.  If they sell 500 units, they have $3.00 each in fixed costs.  But if they only sell 75 units then they have $20.00 each in fixed expenses.  That is assuming that they are either using billet or an extrusion that they currently own tooling on. 

Computer controlled would be CNC metal milling machine, CNC laser marking machine, a CNC water-jet or wire EDM machine.  Each operation would have a fixed programming cost and a fixed setup costs. 

I don't think that they have much in the way of tooling.  That is why they love to make all these variations.  They use existing tooling for extrusions and increase their extrusion consumption.  That reduces their cost per foot of extrusions.  But history will treat them harshly.  They will be known as the company that made exquisitely crafted, but largely unused equipment.  25 years from now you will find largely unused iterations of their equipment for sale with only collectors of obsolete equipment as possible customers.

I may be missing the obvious but I do not see how squares, measuring devices, and even items that have very limited applications will ever become obsolete. Computers, battery platforms (for just about anything) and devices dependent on them (such as the CNC machines they use to make their tools) will be obsolete in the next 10 years. The precision afforded by their hand tools will never be obsolete. An example tool besides CNC machines is the Shaper Origin. When the screens cannot be sourced and the screen dies the tool will be nothing but a paper weight.

I will not pretend to know their business model, but I know that you cannot get anything programmed for $500 other than possibly printing a name. Your estimate of fixed expenses makes it more than obvious that you are way out of your lane discussing a manufacturing business.

It is fair to say that WP's more esoteric tools will be impossible to find with so few of them having been made. Some of their tools definitely have a limited audience.

On thing no one can contest is that they are very well made and accurate given the price and they do not have any other company to compete.

 

[SilviaS7]

Be sure to check out banggood folks, many of the Woodpeckers designs have been copied, are surprisingly good quality and can be had for a small fraction of the cost Woodpeckers asks for them! Regardless of how some may feel about it, those options are here to stay.

This is sad.  Why advocate for people to buy from folks stealing their product ideas from others?

 

[Mini Me]

Be sure to check out banggood folks, many of the Woodpeckers designs have been copied, are surprisingly good quality and can be had for a small fraction of the cost Woodpeckers asks for them! Regardless of how some may feel about it, those options are here to stay.

This is sad.  Why advocate for people to buy from folks stealing their product ideas from others?

That is reality, someone brings something to market and it gets copied, it happens even between manufacturers in the US. Have a look at some of WP's products and they have done the same.

 

[RobS888]

Be sure to check out banggood folks, many of the Woodpeckers designs have been copied, are surprisingly good quality and can be had for a small fraction of the cost Woodpeckers asks for them! Regardless of how some may feel about it, those options are here to stay.

This is sad.  Why advocate for people to buy from folks stealing their product ideas from others?

Woodpeckers didn't innovate many of their items they are improvements to some people, but the square, the ruler, even the drill guide aren't new ideas. They make fancy items for people to spend a lot on and feel good about.

 

[ChuckM]

Ideas cannot be patented.

Ideas and inventions are not the same thing.

 

[Packard]

The cost of tooling was a manufacturing restraint.  It kept manufacturers honest with their customers.  Their customers knew that it was not likely that a manufacturer would introduce a product with $100,000.00 in tooling spent before the first item was produced unless they had a lot of confidence in the design.

But with CNC machining, that hurdle is eliminated and replaced with a setup charge.  So manufacturers have carte blanche to make silly products.

You won't find Festool producing products without doing significant research and testing.  Between the plastic molds, the casting molds and all the minimums for the accessories, they probably cannot introduce a new product for under $250,000.00 in investment. 

So they have meetings and do cost analysis and survey their customers.  Then they finally decide to make a prototype and test it. Then they make revisions and test it again.  If they are responsible they will also do field testing. And finally they produce the new item.

But a CNC based company like Woodpeckers has a different process.  They sit around and toss out ideas.  Someone says, "That sounds good.  Let's try it."

"What's it gonna cost to try? "

"$250.00 programming charge for the milling machine; $300.00 programming charge for the laser marking machine; we're using a stock extrusion so no tooling charge there.  And $400.00 minimum lot charge for the anodizing.  So that's $950.00 plus the per foot cost for the extrusions."

"All in favor, say 'aye'".  (All approve.)

"Anything else new we can try?"

Without the obstacle of tooling, frivolous products will proliferate. 

 

[Bob D.]

Not necessarily frivolous, but maybe too expensive to manufacture
when you had significant upfront design and tooling costs.

As you said now that on-demand manufacturing is possible for many
items thanks to PC based software and CNC, specialty tools can be made
at more reasonable prices than having a short run which would have high
per unit production costs.

What is reasonable? It's what market research shows people are willing to
pay for that 'better mousetrap'. If it saves you time and/or allows you to do
your job safer and more accurately, is it really overpriced or just more than
it's worth to you.

 

[Packard]

My point is that a tool from Festool or DeWalt or Makita is highly likely to be useful because they most likely did extensive research prior to tooling up for the tool.

You cannot be as sure of that fact with CNC manufacturing methods. 

I forgot add 3D printing (plastic parts) to the list of CNC methods.

 

[Mini Me]

The cost of tooling was a manufacturing restraint.  It kept manufacturers honest with their customers.  Their customers knew that it was not likely that a manufacturer would introduce a product with $100,000.00 in tooling spent before the first item was produced unless they had a lot of confidence in the design.

But with CNC machining, that hurdle is eliminated and replaced with a setup charge.  So manufacturers have carte blanche to make silly products.

You won't find Festool producing products without doing significant research and testing.  Between the plastic molds, the casting molds and all the minimums for the accessories, they probably cannot introduce a new product for under $250,000.00 in investment. 

So they have meetings and do cost analysis and survey their customers.  Then they finally decide to make a prototype and test it. Then they make revisions and test it again.  If they are responsible they will also do field testing. And finally they produce the new item.

But a CNC based company like Woodpeckers has a different process.  They sit around and toss out ideas.  Someone says, "That sounds good.  Let's try it."

"What's it gonna cost to try? "

"$250.00 programming charge for the milling machine; $300.00 programming charge for the laser marking machine; we're using a stock extrusion so no tooling charge there.  And $400.00 minimum lot charge for the anodizing.  So that's $950.00 plus the per foot cost for the extrusions."

"All in favor, say 'aye'".  (All approve.)

"Anything else new we can try?"

Without the obstacle of tooling, frivolous products will proliferate.

Not even close to reality. How much did the building cost, how much to run the retail side, how much do those sitting around the table cost....etc etc.

 

[Cheese]

With the cost of tooling changes, that hurdle is eliminated and replaced with a setup charge.  So manufacturers have carte blanche to make silly products.

But a CNC based company like Woodpeckers has a different process.  They sit around and toss out ideas.  Someone says, "That sounds good.  Let's try it."

"What's it gonna cost to try? "

You've nicely summed up the advantages of CNC equipment...what is the cost of trying something different? You could call that a modern form of lean manufacturing.

What are silly products? Thanks to CNC, the "silly products" of yesterday may be the mainstream products of today. Products that years ago were considered to be frivolous because of their many fixturing constraints and tooling changes are now considered essential items because of the ease of CNC machining.

30 years ago, If you purchased a Mazak CNC turning center you reserved it for producing your most important/expensive/premier product. Well times have changed and companies have seen that the CNC, though still expensive, has more value added than that. Producing silly products with a CNC has become a viable business and a lucrative financial endeavor.

 

[Cheese]

My point is that a tool from Festool or DeWalt or Makita is highly likely to be useful because they most likely did extensive research prior to tooling up for the tool.

You cannot be as sure of that fact with CNC manufacturing methods. 

No...this assumption is absolutely just that...an assumption. CNC is a just another manufacturing method and to say that if you use CNC equipment then you'll be sloppy in your QA analysis of the product is pure bunk. Sloppy manufacturers will always be sloppy no matter what manufacturing technologies they use.

 

[Cypren]

I know it's not popular, but I'll step up to defend the OneTimeTool mechanic.

WP is a fairly small operation with limited equipment. Producing products, even with CNC, is not like running off simple models on your home 3D printer: they usually involve multiple parts, many of those parts need to be produced or altered on different machines, and you're constantly trying to optimize your total usage of the equipment in your factory for maximum throughput. For many of these jobs, they almost certainly need to know, in advance, exactly how many units of a product they intend to produce in order to plan an even vaguely efficient utilization of their machinery.

For high-demand, routine-sales products, this is pretty easy because they have a fairly good idea from historical sales how many they're going to need in a given time frame. But for new products, there's nothing to gauge demand except for preorder data. And if you just list a product for sale, very few people will preorder it: instead they'll look at it, think, "oh, that looks neat, I'll take another look when it launches", and you've learned nothing about their actual likelihood of purchase. Ditto if you just have them click a "notify me" button on a website or something similarly low-commitment, low-effort: lots of people will click it, very few of them will actually buy it, and you'll wind up with tons of unsold inventory on your hands.

With this in mind, I think it's completely reasonable for WP to have limited-time preorder windows, putting some time pressure on the customer: if you want this product, it's not guaranteed it's going to be sold in the future, and you need to commit to your intent to purchase by a specific date far enough in advance to inform the production planning. OTTs that are successful have often become standard inventoried products (see, among others, the delve square, track saw guides, indexable combination squares, etc). Others that are middling successful sometimes (though very rarely) recur later, the bar gauges that kicked off this thread being an example: they were originally offered in 2019 and seem to be doing a second production run now, which suggests they had a market, but not a large enough one to justify continuous production.

The alternative to this strategy is not "everyone gets what they want and nobody feels marketing pressure": that only happens in the fantasy world where WP has infinite manufacturing capacity and can manufacture everything on demand as orders are placed. Instead, it's either "WP just sticks to proven high-sellers and doesn't try to make experimental products at all" or "WP introduces new tools in tiny batches, a few people get them, everyone else who might have bought them gets disappointed, and WP learns very little about overall market demand and whether it should keep making more".

 

[Bob D.]

^^^ well said.

 

[RobS888]

^^^ well said.

Very well said, however, I don't think that was the point of this thread. It is more of the cost for their tools not the manufacturing approach. If the approach has an effect on cost then when a tool moves from OTT to regular shouldn't the price go down?

 

[Bob D.]

I don't think that would be the case, they are still low numbers as far as units produced.

If it's something that you have to periodically setup/reconfigure all your various machines to make a couple dozen or even a hundred or two units and you can't make anything else then I think not.

If you had the machines necessary to leave everything setup and just go and turn it all on and run off a couple hundred units maybe you're right.

 

[Cheese]

It is more of the cost for their tools not the manufacturing approach. If the approach has an effect on cost then when a tool moves from OTT to regular shouldn't the price go down?

Not necessarily, the original OTT production run may have been using temporary tooling or single cavity molds. Once OTT is elevated to Production status, multiple nests/fixtures will be needed or multiple cavity molds may be needed. The price to tool a temporary, aluminum, single cavity mold would be $15,000 while the price for a production quality, hardened steel, multiple cavity mold would be $150,000.

In most cases the original prototype/temporary tooling is relegated to back-up service only and sits on pallet racking until it's needed again...if ever, which adds more costs.