prbuckley

Don't you think higher end brands have an aversion to selling on Amazon? Having tried to sell a brand product on Amazon I have found that the Amazon customer is very price sensitive.

First off congratulations on having a business that has lasted 100 years! That is a rare accomplishment these days.

I think you both have an interesting perspective on the future of apparel and e-commerce. The one thing that I think deserves mentioning is that it has been getting easier and cheaper to own the means of production so you can convert raw materials into finished goods with out holding lots of inventory. You also need the manufacturing capabilities if you want to do mass customization.

My limited experience with this has come over the past 3.5 years building DODOcase.com. We ended up building all of our own manufacturing and hold less than 2 weeks of inventory, while over 30% of our online sales are one off custom built products.

My hope is that the future is brands built online that actually make their own stuff. I agree with Jamie that the brands of tomorrow will have to be more hands on but just holding inventory and shipping D2C is not enough, I think they will have to own and master the manufacture of their own products.

Not to mention shows like American Greed!

One reason is that leather is a waste by product of the demand for meat. If we made artificial leather it wouldn't really lower the number of animals that would need to be raised.

Why is this even a debate about expense? Even if it cost the government $0 to store data on all americans and send agents to search peoples homes and question them it would not make it right for them to do it.

This is a basic question of what freedoms individuals have. If you make the laws so complicated and or secretive that no one can comply with them then the entire system fails. You have 3 letter agencies running around selectively enforcing overly complex/secret laws then the very foundation of what the law is meant to do breaks. Selective enforcement equals political influence equals the Rule of Men, not the Rule of Law.

If you don't live in Utah how can you support this guys business? I commend him for standing by his principles.

I think it has to do with how much fuel is in the gas stations storage tanks. When the tanks get low they pump more slowly. I think it has to do with the pressure created by the weight of fuel pushing gas out of the bottom of the tank faster, there is more potential energy to push the gas faster in a full tank, mass x gravity x height equals potential energy.

It might be a good idea for Kickstarter to only release the goal amount initially until the project lead can prove they meet their initial pledges. The remainder can get held in an escrow account and released once the project is off on the right foot.

I think this project is meant more as a proof of principle. You can't expect a new technology to jump straight to better then what is commercially available on day one. It can still hold a lot of promise for developing into something better then what is available today. (disclosure: I am roommates with the main guy behind this)

This is my housemates project, glad to see it doing so well. Way to go Antony.

They have to give most of that to the credit card companies. I am not sure how much of the 2.75% they get to keep but I would guess less then half, maybe even only a quarter?

I have actually recently been doing a lot of research on ESOPS. Back in the 90's congress passed a law that makes it possible for a company that is 100% owned by an ESOP to pay ZERO corporate income tax!

If you have a startup that is cashflow positive and generating taxable income you should look into this. I am still leraning a lot about it myself. This link was useful (I have no affiliation with the law firm, just thought they did a good job describing the details)...

http://www.seethebenefits.com/showarticle.aspx?Show=687

I commend the Lockitron team for pursuing their own corwdfunding effort and then open sourcing the system. You may have just opened up a chink in Kickstarter's armor.

If Kickstarter cracks down on product related projects maybe we will see a new crowdfunding platform emerge that is friendlier for those trying to fund and launch physical products. Kickstarter should be careful here or they may be creating an opportunity for a serious competitor to emerge.

They had reached $74,000 I believe.

This is the best fund raising announcement blog post I have read. I like how it starts out with putting fundraising in perspective, it is part of the journey and not the accomplishment.

"Google just announced that it will produce its highly-acclaimed Nexus 7 tablet in the United States. " wow! I didn't know Google was doing this. The fact that they can sell that tablet at such a competitive price and make it in the USA is saying a lot.

That is given the poor tools we have to date to diagnose the disease. I think the really promising thing about this development is the possibility of earlier warning and being able to test new treatments before the disease progress's so far that someone is going in to ask the doctor what is wrong.

My father has Parkinson's, it is an awful disease.

This is like putting a retail investor up against a highspeed trading algorithm on Wall Street.

It seems like the telco's are the ones making out here. They charge Amazon some ridiculous fee to deliver the content and they charge the consumer for a data plan for the device.

I don't have any information on the details of this deal but if it is a typical series A then that 9 million represents a 20-30% equity stake in the company. This means for a 10x return for investorss the company needs to grow in value to ~$360 million.

Sadly my father has been a victim of this sort of thing. He has been transfixed by the idea that a Bank in Ghana has an $8 million dollar inheritance for him. I have had so many conversations with him about this being a scam but he won't believe me.

I don't take offense to your comment, in fact I think you are partially correct but your view is to simplistic. I don't think you appreciate how difficult it can be to provide care for some one with old age/dementia or a neurally degenerative disease like Parkinsons or Alzheimer's. Caregivers need more tools and this would be one that would help for some people. It wouldn't replace all the other things that you need to do as a Caregiver, technology is just another tool that can be used.

You do feel a great guilt and sadness watching someone you love slowly wither away over years. You are always thinking of ways to help but the hard reality is that there isn't a lot you can do except provide companionship.

But what do you do when you need a job to pay for all the other care this loved one needs? These things compete for your time and ability to provide companionship 24hrs/day. If I quit my job and moved across the country to take care of my father their wouldn't be any money to pay for the nurse's, medicine, and doctors. Plus all the other complexities of life that this would create for my wife and our plans to have a family. Caring for a sick person is complex.

Super interesting! Thanks for posting this link.

Skype for the sick, create a service that does scheduled calls (ideally video calls) to the elderly and infirm for a fee.

I had this idea because my father suffers from Parkinsons disease and gets quite lonely in the house during the day. He lives in Florida and I life in California and I can't call him as much as I would like to given the time difference. I know he gets lonely and would love to just have a conversation with someone during the day. I would pay to have someone skype him for 20-30 minutes in the middle of the day just to provide some conversation.

I am guessing that there are many other people who are in my situation with sick or elderly relatives. I know I would pay for a service like this and you would be bringing happiness into peoples lives.

Hi Wyclif, If you are interested in books/book binding and programing I would love to speak with you. Shoot me an email at patrick (at) dodocase (dot) com.

cheers, Patrick

This would be even cooler if you could display wind speeds at different elevations above the ground. I am guessing that at a certain elevation you have higher winds that kites might be able to capture energy from.

There is a multi-billion dollar industry based around making smells property, perfume.

Nice work guys! Congratulations.

I bet that there are lots of companies that have interesting project ideas but not enough resources to bring them to market. Do you really think it would become a pre order catalog? I think letting business's get information about what people wanted ahead of time would increase the quality of projects/products being created.

I don't understand why they would want to keep business's off of kickstarter. It seems there is a real opportunity to provide this service for small business's.