Canât fault the product development teams at all for smelling a huge opportunity to design a bad-ass piece of hardware with costs irrelevant. Who doesnât want to do this? All those well-finished, machined aluminum internals are like lab equipment. As the article says âhopelessly expensive to manufacture and assembleâ⌠just a laughable concept, but if the backers had the dough, who wouldnât take their money?
Really interesting teardownâŚand I suppose a valid point - if this product were launched at $99 or 149, would we have felt it to be as ridiculous? Probably not.
His points about things like the tiny radius details on the CNC parts seem like they hired an engineer from Apple who thought CNC time came at no expense, when in reality those parts probably couldâve been forged, cast, or formed for 1/10th the price.
Fuse Project: Didnât Frog used to say they take projects that make them rich or make them famous? I think FP must have gotten some $$$ for their work. Bravo!
Moreover, I remember a story from my Uni days. One prof was hired by Cray Supercomputers to design a new box. His firm kept bringing up that it seemed like their was no future in supercomputers and they should do a Cray PC. The company went bankrupt before the new super computer box design was made.
As designers, we can try to make clients see that their business model doesnât work, but at the end of the day it is their decision.
If your hired by a saddle company, donât tell them you want to design a car.
Itâs a fair point. As a product, obviously the juicer meets itâs functional requirements. Iâm sure it could smash rocks if you tried.
Whatâs more amazing is how far up itâs own ass Silicon Valley is to pump 120M of capital into the idea. I can just picture a coffee shop parking lot full of Teslaâs and i8âs with guys talking about how amazing this product is going to be as they all break out their checkbooks.
The guy seems to be a decent designer (based on the stuff he actually designed pre-FP hype), and hires other good designers. But he is very, very good with PR âspinâ.
Interestingly, todayâs BSNYC was ripping on Best Made again for selling over-priced, bedazzled axes.
But the spin you refer to is âthereâs a sucker born every minuteâ. I find it sad when one of the âthought leadersâ of design will do anything for a dollar. I have no problem with people making crap, i do have a problem when it is celebrated.