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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

I can tell you that this has two possible outcomes:

1. You don't sell enough to get by.

2. You sell enough for Chinese knock-offs to come in and offer a good-enough clone product for 1/3 your raw material cost.

Being a first world tiny shop in hardware is near impossible.

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(3) you make good looking gizmos which are not really worth copying seems to be the niche of “William”. Apparently the slides were about 150, and they’re externally simple but good looking. They’re out of stock but the shop has neat kinetic sculpture for high hundreds.

Could you get plastic versions for a third the price? Absolutely. Would you? Hell nah. I could see kits of spare parts to print and build your own, maybe, but not ready made.

If you search for "perpetual motion machine" you can find a ton of cheap knockoffs of this device. You can get a badly made wooden knockoff for $50 or quite a bit less?

There are a bunch of tiny hardware shops in the audio community that seem to be doing fine, for example https://neurochrome.com/

Of course, running a small business like this is not easy, but it's not impossible either.

When it comes to pricing products at absolutely outrageous multiples of material cost, the "audio community" seems to be in its own league. I don't think the desktop toy market is quite there.

You are then no longer selling the toy, but the “My one is OG” status. And the certainty that it will work. Once you reach a certain age fucking about returning stuff to save a few bucks seems silly.

Not just OG status, quality. The Chinese knock-offs truly are worse. I've seen this gadget on Youtube before, compared to one of the knock-offs.

Executive desk toys are a classic premium market!

Yes certainly. This is what I meant when I said "certainty that it will work". A low bar for quality, but a bar knock offs can't reach usually.

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