Posts from everslick in thread "[Poll only for interest] How do you think about buying a Mega65?"

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Quote from everslick

When the MEGA is ready to be produced they will decide a number (by whatever means [my guess would be by starting a pre-order campaign]) to produce and that number WILL determine an exact price to break even for that single patch of devices.

And here we are at the "chicken-egg" problem again:

If they start pre-ordering the Mega65 they have to name a price for it. And they can not name the price without knowing how much items they have to produce because the costs depend on the number of pieces.

When they decide to start production, they will decide for a batch size. Lets say 1000 pieces. They calculate the price and set a pre-order window. When the receive enough pre-orders within that window, they start producing. If demand is high, they can immediately start a new batch pre-order window. If demand is too low, they can cancel the pre-orders, recalculate with smaller batch size and start over.

Wenn man sich die Teileliste so ansieht und man weiss, dass die Gussformen nicht in den Stueckpreis mit einfliessen, dann kann man JETZT schon abschaetzen, dass sich die Kosten pro Stueck in Grenzen halten werden. Die grossen Brocken sind Tastatur, Gehaeuse, FPGA. Klar, Kleinvieh macht auch Mist, aber wenn ich eine Zahl sagen muesste, dann wuerde ich auf ca. 400-500,- tippen.

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The costs of production of the parts highly depends on the produced number of pieces. It'll make a great difference whether you want 50, 500, 5.000 or 50.000 parts.

So how will you calculate the costs of production if you don't know how much items you want to be produced? That's one intention why I started the poll.

I think what adtbm wanted to explain is, that the number of pieces is NOT really relevant, because they do not need to make money at the end. You are thinking from a commercial producer perspective (no offence) where you have to set the correct price before you even start designing a product. AND that price MUST NOT be too high to be successful, so the number of expected units sold is of EXTREME importance. OF COURSE everybody wants to have the MEGA as cheap as possible AND OF COURSE producing more makes it cheaper, but that's NOT the point. When the MEGA is ready to be produced they will decide a number (by whatever means [my guess would be by starting a pre-order campaign]) to produce and that number WILL determine an exact price to break even for that single patch of devices. if there will be a next batch, the price could be different.

IMHO that is the main reason for asking for donations for the case molds. It makes perfect sense, because the molds are the highest single cost and extremely relevant for the per unit cost and thus the most important factor regarding price at different numbers of units sold. This way they get this uncertainty out of the equation. VERY SMART!

All other parts are not that sensitive to numbers produced. I'd would guess when you aim for batches like 500-1000 pieces you are already at a good price point. making 3000 does not yield you much, and making 10000 is probably out of the question anyway.

All what I've seen yet, how the MEGA team handles different issues makes me believe they KNOW very well what they are doing. They have my trust, and my respect.

best regards...

clemens