As a designer and complete bike nut I’ve been wanting to design and sell little bits and bobs for bikes for the longest time ever and last night at 1 AM I had some wonderful ideas! (Couldn’t help it and even had to get out of bed and fire up my PC to throw something together in CAD for a quick instant quote)
How’s the general space for selling bits and bobs like stainless steel zip-tie-on bosses and cable guides? I’ve got some lovely clean and long lasting designs in mind that I can have manufactured for a quite decent price nowadays. (~€4/pc manufacturing cost for a lovely stainless universal bottle boss)
Would love to get some made, test, refine, test again and start a little business on the side that designs and sells these kinds of thingies.
I think there is a lot of honor in putting out good ideas for frame makers to make more modern steel bikes. Good on you for that.
Good vibes don’t make a business though.
Setting up a commerce site, taxes, insurance, taking payment and all of that can be messy. Maybe some of it is easier in EU or other regions. I would likely approach current supply houses for distribution rather than spin that up myself.
We do pretty well manufacturing and selling the teeny bits and bobs like water bottle bosses, cable stops, and such. I’d suggest to do your homework because there are other small business manufacturers making small batches of parts, too.
I totally agree. Making parts is the easy part. Selling them is the more difficult for sure, especially if you’re selling internationally. Transport, taxes, fees, headaches.
I did this at a strictly hobbyist level about 15 years ago. In all cases it was for something that I needed and I just made extra to sell.
I made three different products:
Tabs for racks. I had them waterjet and shaped for 5/16 and 3/8 rack tubing. Many builders making rando-style bikes and racks bought them from me, and then one of them asked if he could take it forward — which was great for me. Now there are half a dozen sources for these things, but at the time there weren’t any.
I made a fixture for checking frame and fork alignment and sold these through a post to the framebuilders list. I machined them out of aluminum plate on a small CNC mill in my basement. I thought I’d make 20, but ended up making 100. My buddy Hahn Rossman then got a more capable machine and redid the design in steel and still sells them.
I made a kit for a fork jig out of 80/20. These just ended up being more work to produce than I wanted to deal with, but the drawings and photos are there and a lot of people have made jigs inspired by the design.
Anyway, if you think you have something unique to offer then I’d just make a small run and sell them and see where that takes you. Do what you can to make shipping easy. In my case that was figuring out the right size container for each of these things and having lots of those on hand. I did my orders through PayPal invoice (there are probably better options now) and had it print me labels so that I could just drop off packages once or twice a week at the post office and have them go out.
Etsy and Ebay are both great for selling small amounts of custom-made items. Instagram and Facebook can be leveraged to get the word out and drive potential customers to your product.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned about doing business being difficult. There’s a lot to learn, but if you’re passionate about the subject(s) you’ll figure it out. My only business advice is don’t be over-leveraged – it doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t help you grow. I mean that with respect to finances but also inventory, time, everything. Keep it lean.
Start with a small batch of a couple parts to feel what the market says and grow from there if it goes well
I’m definitely not over-leveraged on finances hahaha I’m such a cheapskate and “play it safe” kinda guy. I’m keeping my day job for the foreseeable future so I have no reason to go all in immediately.
