Custom Products: 1, 2, 3 Easy!

Making custom products day in and out to me is quite easy as that’s all CNCROi.com does, when I go to the store, I have a tough time buying commodity items as I keep thinking of how much better they would be if they were made tailored to my requirements instead of the masses.

We’ll run through the steps involved with making that custom product just for you and your business, it’s actually quite easy once you get the hang of it.

Custom Products: 1, 2, 3 Easy! BUDGET

You’d think that with endless design options using infinite material combinations that the whole process would be quite overwhelming but in reality, CNCROi.com can make just about anything BUT I’m pretty sure your budget isn’t nearly as flexible.

By far the easiest way to start down the process of custom products is to choose a price point, I don’t care how much you are reselling it (if you are wholesale) but I do care about how much there is in it for my company as it will dictate design, material and fabrication processes at my end.

I fully realize that for some people, thinking of your spend before you have a custom product produced is quite a mind shift, but it’s a necessary first step as our store shelves are endless but your budget isn’t.

To give you an idea, here is basically the same product, a hanger of all things, with radically different price points that are essentially the same design.

Which do you think is the cheapest and which is the most expensive? Well, plywood is the cheapest followed by wood laminate then acrylic.

Is it possible that the acrylic could be the cheapest? Absolutely!

How? Well, now we are dealing with VOLUME and price per unit. If you want a one-off, it will cost a lot more on a per unit price than a thousand and the acrylic in the video is quarter-inch (6 mm) but could have been an eighth (3 mm) and the sizing could have been different as well.

When you go to a retail store, you have a selection in the low single digits of the same thing at different price points, for CNCROi.com, we start with budget and then work our way through design then fabrication.

I posted the last hanger to illustrate another consideration, application. Who is this custom product for? If you are going for a specific demographic, having that product fit that niche does limit your potential customer base BUT it also increases your margins per sale.

Something to keep in mind, that’s why flowers sold on Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day are so damn expensive while if you bought them the next day, they can’t give them away enough. Supply and demand at work!

Custom Products: 1, 2, 3 Easy! TIMELINE

Another factor that CNCROi.com needs to know right out of the blocks is when do you need your custom products for?

I can’t count how many times I’ve been contacted for a custom cake topper for an upcoming birthday that was happening TOMORROW and they needed it ASAP. I told them to go to the dollar store as even next day shipping isn’t that fast and reliable, it’s not like a birthday is ever a surprise is it?

CNCROi.com does a lot of work for the custom manufacturing and mill work industry where the lead times are generally a few months away, the reason for this is simple, they, just like us, are part of a grander wheel that’s slowly spinning and none of us can miss the next rotation so everything needs to be planned way ahead to make sure all that needs to be set-up is.

We also do a lot of work with individuals who want something to give or hand out, and in those cases, we generally have a few weeks lead time and that’s what works best for everybody involved.

We’ve “next day” shipped stuff to New York City and you know what, the shipping costs were more than the production ones and design through production is crazy fast and stressful for everybody, if at all possible, I prefer the slow and steady approach especially when material testing is involved and volumes are unexpected.

To give you an idea of timelines, we make a lot of custom welding tags, we have lots in stock as a result in our most popular sizes across a few material types.

But sometimes, a welder or fabricator needs something custom sized and spec, which is no problem, but it generally throws out the “24 hour turnaround” we offer on the above tags into more of a week or two (spec depending) process.

Sometimes, the customer gets lucky as CNCROi.com generally produces more than what’s needed for just such occasions, so we can accommodate them with something close to spec without the longer turnaround time but this is highly dependent on how many and what they wanted done.

So, having a budget and timeline are incredibly important, the sooner we have this, even if it’s a very rough range, the closer we are to the finishing line by a very long shot!

By its very nature, custom is easy but unpredictable as we are sometimes making things for the first time so sometimes a bit more time is needed to work out the production kinks.

Custom Products: 1, 2, 3 Easy! VOLUME

CNCROi.com recently completed a project that involved over 50 custom corporate awards made out of Maple that came out absolutely amazing so here’s an idea of how that goes about happening.

1. Customer sends us design ideas they like from an internet image search.
2. CNCROi.com works with client to get the budget, material, design and volume sorted.
3. We produce a 3D render for review by client.
4. Customer makes a few changes, we updated 3D render and upon approval make a prototype.
5. Prototype is mailed to customer, they review and make a few design changes.
6. Another prototype is produced, this time, to speed things up, we send them photos which are quickly approved.
7. We purchase materials and get right into production while sending photos throughout the process for customer to see.
8. Production done, all packed up and shipped.

In this case, it was many units and as it was a design made to their specs, a physical prototype was sent before ALL of them were made for both our and our clients peace of mind.

For smaller production runs or things that aren’t nearly as complicated, some steps could have been skipped, for instance, we recently got a job making a custom machine tag, yes, “a” meaning “one”.

We don’t need to send a physical prototype, we don’t need to make a 3D render and all we had to do was to take a few photos to confirm materials and their results.

For larger volume projects, it’s always a good idea to get photos and if needed, a physical prototype (sometimes to a different scale) in order to make sure that expectations at both ends are met before going into a massive run of products.

This isn’t needed for machine tags or smaller items because not much is unknown, it’s a design engraved or cut but for more exotic custom products, time must be alloted to make sure everything goes smooth across the board.

Custom Products: 1, 2, 3 Easy! Milestones

CNCROi.com likes milestones and communication with our customers, it lets us know we are on the right track and for our customers, they always know where things are in the pipeline, where it was and where it’s going.

On things like welding tags, it’s generally just sending a photo of the tags before they go out in the mail but for things like custom corporate awards, its pictures of raw materials, assembly, engraving etc… this assures that when our customers get the final product, it’s exactly what they wanted and they also learned a bit about how it came about.

I hope this blog post helped you understand a bit more about the process around getting some custom products produced by CNCROi.com, it’s actually quite transparent and straight forward once you understand how everything comes about.

If you need something custom, contact CNCROi.com right now!