UPDATE
So, we had a meeting this past weekend. Sorry it took so long to update you guys, but it looked like the forums were down a couple of days ago, and I've been a bit busy.
We have officially found a viable production site. I have included some pretty cool pictures that were taken on site. As you can see, the carbon fiber is of great quality. The facility already produces carbon fiber race seats, spoilers, bumpers, helmets, exhaust pipes, and more for the automotive market, as well as other things (that I'm not quite sure what they are) for other industries. They are experienced and will definitely suit our needs. There are certainly other companies and factories out in China that have inferior products which are really out to screw you over, but we believe we found the highest quality production site we could use. We hate "eBay quality" parts just as much as anyone else.
I am very excited about this, and we are estimating that by the fall, we can actually have a product. What this product will be, however, is a different matter.
Here's the issue.. in order to produce parts, we need the toolings. A mold is pretty expensive (thousands of dollars) to produce, and I'm not sure if we can even afford to have a mold for more than one product at this point.
Maybe we can... or the case may be that we will have to wait until we actually have some revenue from the first mold in order to move on to the next one.
The good news is that a mold can be used for thousands of units... we just really have to be careful in picking a first part that we can actually sell a high enough quantity of in order to afford the next mold/product. Also, we can still get to work designing and engineering new products while the first item begins production, so there isn't a months-long wait to start production on something different. But the matter is... at this point in time, we don't know what the initial product should be, and this is where we need more help from you guys.
So.. if you guys had to choose ONE thing that you want, that nobody else is doing right now (at least to start off with)... what would it be?
Our other option would be to try and find something that works across more models. This wouldn't be ideal, but it would guarantee a bigger customer pool so that the (hopeful) success of that product would allow us to continue with more focused products. Kind of like how Porsche sells lots of Cayennes which help fund what everyone
really wants. Okay, not exactly the same, but similar. I haven't done enough research at this point in time to know what could work for this, though.
What do you guys think? What one product would you like most? Can any consensus be reached? Also, what do you guys think of the carbon fiber itself? Good quality for China? Good quality overall? Is everyone still interested, or is this just a pipe dream?
And now, some pictures
Rolls of carbon fiber
Carbon fiber spoiler
Mold for a race seat
Rough molds for bumpers
Carbon fiber helmet
Not sure what these are, but they look nice
Carbon fiber pipes/tubes
Thank you for looking!
