Manufacturing the Bow Rest

(I have been laid up with the flu, too sick to do much of anything for the past week, hence the lack of a post.)

In October, 2005 I had contracted to have a 34’x60’ metal building put up for a workshop. This was to free up our basement and garage which was cluttered with snow blower, riding lawn mower, small garden tractor, motorcycle and tools. I had no idea what I was going to do with all that shop space at that time, but I wanted to move into the workshop before winter so I could garage our vehicles. Mother Nature poured frozen water on that plan; two days before a cement pad was to be poured we got eight inches of snow. That put the building on hold until spring.

From my last post you will recall that by the spring time I had decided to manufacture the Compound Bow Rest and Holder myself on a small (500 units) scale and try to market them. The shop building I had already contracted seemed like an ideal “factory”, only a mile from our house. I wanted to have some inventory of the Bow Rest in time for bow hunting season which started October 1. While my shop was being built, I sought sources of supply. My concept at that time was to contract out to have pieces made, and I would basically put the Bow Rests together, paint and package them and they would be ready for shipment. How naïve! The quotes that came back for producing the parts were so high that each Bow Rest would cost me about $100 by the time it was ready to ship. This was more than I could charge, and it left nothing for profit.

When reality set in, the whole tactic changed. I was going to have to manufacture the parts myself, and to do so I would need machines to make the parts consistent and interchangeable. It took the next three months of frenzied activity to first design, and then to build the jigs and machines. Most of them failed to perform satisfactorily as first conceived, and some went through as many as five model changes before being deemed satisfactory. Much more ingenuity and creativity went into this activity than into the invention itself! I gained a new appreciation for those who provide tooling for manufacturing.

The shop building was ready for occupancy about July 20, and after moving in the setting up of tools, jigs and my machines used up August. I hired a friend from our church, a recovering alcoholic who had been dry for 18 months, to help me with production work. The weekend before he was to start he fell off the wagon and did not show up on Monday morning. I stopped at his house to see why and he was falling down drunk. I drove him to a hospital 30 miles away to dry out, but that ended his employment before it started. Fortunately my son came for a month long visit from California shortly thereafter, and between the two of us we were able to make parts for at least 100 Bow Rests. Approximately 20 were assembled, painted and ready to be boxed. We learned by adding up the time for each step in the manufacturing process that I took slightly more than 4 hours to manufacture a boxed bow rest. That is if nothing broke down during the process, which turned out to be a totally unreasonable assumption.

The positive side of doing my own manufacturing was that people were very interested in seeing how the various machines worked. All were powered by muscle, and particularly children had a ball making metal "belt loops", bending loops in 3/16" rod for the spreader, and cutting 1/4" steel rod for the boom. One 12 year old remarked after trying several of the machines, "This is the best day of my life!" Touring the "factory" created a lot of local interest in the Bow Rest.

The costs for raw materials in the manufacture was very reasonable, coming in at around $9.17 per Bow Rest, but the packaging cost even more, $15. This is because two “cookie cutters” for cutting the cardboard box and an insert had to be made. The 8”x48”x2” boxes and inserts themselves cost only $1.20, but when the cost of the cutters was added in the cost per box for a 500 lot was $12. This was discouraging! Putting a label on the boxes with pictures and description would have been another $5.45 per box if done by the box maker. This is because the major cost for the label is setup, and 500 boxes is a very small run. I opted to have self-stick labels printed for $3.25 each and put them on myself. Total cost then for a boxed Bow Rest: approximately $24 plus a half day’s work.

Continued in my next post.

The Vultures Circle

Continued from my January 24 post.

A patent is only a nice decoration unless you can make money with it. As soon as the patent issued I started getting mail from companies that want to represent you in presenting your patent for licensing. Within two weeks I must have gotten ten of them. Their tactic:

1. Flatter-“We have chosen your patent from among thousands as one that has great commercial appeal.”
2. The hook-“These are products that we have helped introduce to the market”, with pictures. “We believe your invention has similar potential.”
3. The price- Their fees for services range from up front fees of $600-$35,000, plus from 5-30% of royalties, but you did not learn their prices until you called them and endured the hard sell.

The experience reminded me of a common scene in western movies, vultures circling over a dead or dying critter. I am sure some of the companies were legitimate and do give valuable service for your money, but being a skeptic, I checked better business bureaus and on line complaints. What I found left me skeptical of all of them. Every one of them I investigated had numerous complaints by people who felt they were ripped off. Not wanting to join the ripped off club, I put together a brochure with pictures of the Compound Bow Rest and Holder and a description of what it does and how it works. Then I searched Google for web sites of companies that sell bow hunting equipment, and sent emails from their contact page with pictures I had taken for the brochure. Most did not even answer, but those that did basically said to get the Bow Rest manufactured, and then contact us. One company did send a letter saying that they were looking into licensing the patent, but I never herd further from them.

Since I had tried my tactic for four months and failed, I thought perhaps I would try one of the companies that had originally contacted me about licensing. I got a letter from one of the cheaper services that had contacted me previously, offering me a special deal. For only $50 they would represent me to manufacturers for licensing. If they got a hit they would share in the royalties. This sounded like a pretty good deal to me. At least they think enough of my invention to put some of their time and money into seeking a license. I sent them my brochure so they could reproduce it and also have additional information concerning the invention in addition to the patent.

Two months went by and I had heard nothing from the company. When I called I talked with someone who had no knowledge of me or my invention. I was told to wait another month and I would hear from them. I did. I got a letter stating “Sorry, nobody was interested in your invention.” No explanation of what they had done or who they had contacted. Hmmmm! It sounded to me like I may have been scammed out of $50. I’ll bet they did nothing. They probably sent the same offer out to all the inventors as a follow up to their first letter. A $50 fee for nothing is as good as $600 for time and effort on their part. But as I admitted earlier, I am a skeptic. They could have done something on my behalf and I would never know.

Shortly after this experience I received a letter with another letter with an interesting offer. This company offered to make the product in China (they have offices both in China and the US) and they would market the product for 15% of the net profits, with 85 going to me. They wanted $13,750 for “tooling”, $9,212.50 upon signing a contract and $4537.50 when production was ready. While this was interesting, it was too risky considering that I would have to borrow the money for tooling. I decided I would rather take my chances making the product myself and introduce it in the market on a small scale rather than jump into an enterprise with both feet. Perhaps it won’t sell. Besides, could I trust this company since all of the risk is mine, but they get paid up front? Like I said, I am a skeptic.

Continued in the next post.