Later, when you mostly saturated your target market, you're mostly earning on the sales of spare parts (which you produce in bulk every few years and sell from your inventory). Also, you now have to enter the next market or let go of most of your people. That cycle then repeats, and maybe you re-enter a market to make the next version of a product.
Did you think about a kickstarter to bootstrap with a mechanically relatively simple product, and on which you could compete with a relatively small mark up? E.g. a coffee grinder over a fully automatic coffee maker; or probably something even more simple.
Honestly, I could not think of anything that would make me miserable more than battling up from ground level in this kind of market, using my few personal savings as collateral. Kind of the same reason I don't intend to get into politics.
Yes, I'm giving up on a chance to make something better, but I won't make anything better from an early grave.
I'm content to work for a company that I think is making good products. I have never worked for a company making cheap crap, and I hope I never will.
Maybe we both "just" need to find a niche (or simple enough) product that can be started as an extended hobby. But I fear these are often not very interesting or won't even make us millionaires. How about electric tooth brushes, have these any relevant flaws these days?
Another small thing: We have a cat toy that moves via vibration (they love it), but the 3 tiny 312-type cells only survive for at most 30m. We even tried those specced for hearing aids (180mAh instead of 30mAh), but they seem to have trouble with the current and don't live much longer; so using it is not only moderately expansive, but produces a lot of unnecessary waste. A small LiPo with USB-C charger could fit, but of course then the margin would drop sharply.
But I prefer useful contributions to society.
What I find absurd is the re-badging of appliances. A clothes dryer or a gas furnace is a very simple device. So simple, in fact, that you will find the same control board inside a wide variety of seemingly "different" products.
Though I'd say it's more a critique of the belief that "the market" must be "right": on the manufacturer/investor side that "immediately profitable" is the main goal and that "cheap right now" is the goal on the customer side. In fact this is now so normalised that customer and consumer are almost synonymous, even for things that should, by rights, outlive the customer without being consumed.
Both these views can be rational (if you, the company, go bust this year, you can't make a good product ever, and you, the customer, may well want a blender now, not in 10 years when you can afford one that will last another 20). But they result in a Hotelling's Law joint race to the bottom (with a froth of shatteringly expensive artisanal Veblen-esque goods more for fashion then utility at the opposite end).
Perhaps "the market's" view of value is not actually a good description of long term utility.
And probably the most galling part of this is that with same amazing manufacturing methods and process control used now to shave a product to just barely good enough not to be warranty returns, you could produce wonderful products on the other side of the line[1]. Probably for only a few percent off the bottom line. But then you'd get pounded into the economic sand by corner-cutters and double-dippers who sell multiple bad products to the same customers in sequence.
[1]: The difference between a MOSFET driver circuit that fails after a year and one that basically never fails could be pennies, say.
But assuming the 1. outcome is both morally "bad", 2. and a realistic prediction, 3. which happens to be a necessary consequence of capitalism; and also 4. it's safe to assume that moral judgement of the consequences also apply to the cause: Well then yes, if all 4 of these hold, then my post carries hidden criticism of capitalism ;)
1. I don't need a digital clock or timer on my appliances
2. No loud beeps whenever a touch button is pressed or a dial is turned or when the microwave is done
3. No blue LEDs that somehow light up the whole room at night
4. Physical dials where it makes sense (temperature, time etc) instead of clunky touch crap
After my kid randomly pressed a bunch of buttons on our stove the alarm kept randomly turning on, sometimes in the middle of the night and I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn it off. But one day it stopped.
Plus points: you can turn the beep volume down.
Minus points: without a manual you would never in a million years figure out the magic sequence to get into the menu and when you did what the numeric menu codes mean.
Had a electric kettle that also beeped. I removed the piezo buzzer.
Physical dials will break eventually. The touch crap doesn't feel as good to use, but actually lasts longer if it's well made.
If you're asking about inkjets, they're all a scam. Don't buy one.
Total Adressable Market is the nerds who care, i.e. barely anybody.
On the other side, the thing is still working, but it's only been 8 years.
But I do agree about the TAM, which is why it's contingent on being an idle billionaire.
Speed Queen washers come to mind. They are commercial washers that laundromats would install.
A home washer might cost $500. That’s what I spent and got 10 years out of an LG (and still going).
A Speed Queen might cost 2 to 2.5X that.
Most people don’t really care to buy it for life. $1200 now or $600 now isn’t a hard decision.
People will just take their chances.
Then, importantly, stick to it and not ride laurels all the way down to the bottom of the barrel. And refuse to sell out to larger competitors who will then gut quality.
The reason it's on my Magic Billionaire list is because I cannot imagine I'd get the investment to set up a brand that isn't designed to squeeze every last penny out of the products, but rather simply provide "just good" products.