MG, reading your various threads I have to say you are quite a talented designer and fabricator.
Personally, I'm not; much more of a bolt turner in practice. I do occasionally have a bright idea, or at least one I think is bright. In that light, I offer you my current bright idea....
Have you tried shopping these to the van conversion houses? Sports-mobile and any of the sprinter conversion guys? Heck, even the vehicle interior parts folks who produce the aftermarket seats, or the truck body manufacturers? Some of those guys have crew set ups with out the versatility of fold away seats.
It seems to me that the idea for the seats is somewhat revolutionary, certainly practical to a multitude of different layouts.
I'd sure consider using them along with the seat brackets when I get back to my roots in a van set-up.
Best of luck with your projects. I certainly enjoy seeing what you come up with and how well
it's executed.
Thanks so much Riley! I appreciate the supportive words and thank you for following along with my builds! I enjoy working on this stuff and I'm glad to hear that others like to see how things turn out.
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I've kind of eluded to it before in previous posts but I'll just come out and say it here... I'm an engineer, not a sales guy. There, I said it. The cat is out of the bag. It's funny actually... I'm more likely to stand there and talk you out of one my products by showing you how and where components could fail than I would be trying to convince you that you can't live without it.
![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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That being said, I have shown photos of the finished product to several shop owners who should have had an interest in a design like this seat and the response was... "meh". Meaning an underwhelming response to say the least. That's not to say that someone somewhere wouldn't be all over it. It just means that the people I've had a chance to show it to so far haven't been interested.
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Aside from being non-salesy, I really don't have the time shop this design around right now. I've got a full-time job, a wife, two babies, my business and all its ongoing projects, my house/property and I'm in school again after 13 years to pursue a degree in Computer Science. These seats are low on the priority list to be honest. If I could make 50-60% margin on every unit I produced, maybe I'd bring them up the list a little. As it is though, I can barely get out of them what I have into them (in low quantities) so there isn't enough reward for the work that has to be done.
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I've offered to no less than a dozen people a higher-than-average commission on every product of mine they can sell. I have a couple things that might be a pretty good income for someone if they got them into the right stores too. I don't have a lot of time to sell and I don't have a lot of sales skills so I try to find people who can do what I have trouble getting done. I've had a lot of people say they're going to get right on it but I haven't had to pay any commissions if you know what I mean.
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Look, I've got the design and manufacturing covered. Any product, any volume...you name it, I can find a way to get it done. But no matter what the product is or how easy or how complicated it is to manufacture, without a sales channel, there is no point. I'd love to have the problem of trying to figure out how to make thousands of these...that's my bread and butter. I'm really good at making that stuff happen. I just don't have the time or the skill set to go out on the road (or get online), show these around and sell them in the quantities that are necessary to make it worth while.
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