>> Coolest wasn't able to manufacture the exact cooler in the promo videos.
>> "The Coolest Cooler in that video was a one-of a kind prototype," Grepper said. "Ultimately it's not a scalable design – it's an industrial design."
>> The proof-of-concept prototype cost him $15,000 to make, he said.
>> Grepper had no idea how much each cooler would cost to manufacture.
>> "At the early stages, you simply can't get that information," he said.
A model != a DFMA'd product.
There's tooling costs (I suspect the Coolest Cooler has several hundreds of thousands of dollars in tooling needs), there's supply chain, etc.
This takes time, testing, dozens of iterations, etc.
He sold a product he didn't understand the real cost of. Not maliciously but because he was naive and didn't understand the process.
Knowing what your true landed BOM costs are can take over a year of modeling, making production samples, negotiating with manufacturers and suppliers, etc. Even then you wont really know the cost until you enter volume manufacturing since there's scrap rate and QA issues you run into.