Box making hinges ...........

[Phil Pascoe]

I read an article on the same tack the better part of 30 years ago by a turner who had stuff in a gallery on sale or return. He had a one off bowl in the window for 18 months at £45 without selling it and after reading an article on marketing decided to give it one last try at £90 - it sold within a week
A guy at the club did a quote for a small patio for a woman in St. Mawes - he made it expensive enough, or so he thought until he spoke to the woman'd daughter. How much did you quote, she asked - £8,000 he replied. Oh .......... you'll have to find an excuse to put it up if you want the job - her neighbour paid £12,000 for hers and mother won't spend less than her neighbour. (He didn't do the job.)

 

[OscarG]

I sold some furniture through Liberty, London, many moons ago. I thought it was really expensive when I sold the first one to them. The buyer rang me up after having it on show for a few weeks and said something like "lots of interest, Mike, but we haven't sold it yet. I think we've got the price wrong". My heart sank, as I was half way through making the next one at that point, and I didn't want to cut the price I got for it. He continued "I'm going to stick £1500 onto the price, and see what happens". He was back within a week ordering the next couple, as he'd not only sold that one at the higher price, but had taken deposits for 2 more . There's nowt so queer as folk.

Similar happened to Gibson guitars in the 80's. They came up against newer, cheaper (but still excellent) Japanese instruments, unable to compete they went the other way, bumped their prices way up, from $700 up to about $1500 for exact same product. The more their prices increased the more they sold.

Madness!

 

[Marineboy]

I'm not defending his behaviour. I'm just opposed to attacking people simply because of their heritage/ background, especially on the grounds that they are a "parasitic wastrel" when they are actually earning a living making things.

To avoid any confusion, my wastrel comment was in relation to his mum.

 

[MikeG.]

Ah, well then I have much reduced grounds to disagree with you.

 

[MusicMan]

I have several patents myself and used to look after the IP of a small public company and a couple of startups. It's expensive. To get adequate global cover and to maintain it costs around £30,000 every year. That's excluding any legal costs in defending it if challenged. Patent law is not designed for the small inventor. I am not a conspiracy theorist but it is certainly the case that full-on patents have been designed (by lobbyists) for the interests of large companies. So Apple, LG, Intel and the like do a lot of patent litigation and it is worth it for them, where we are talking tens of millions or more. I did a consultancy/research project for a very large company once, which resulted in a patent. I never made a penny in royalty income from it; their purpose was to show they had freedom to operate vis-a-vis another big company with a similar patent.

The effective purposes of patents for small and even medium size companies is (1) to demonstrate that they have IP that is worth investing in, in order to attract investors (who have a touching, naïve faith in patents) and (2) to demonstrate that they have freedom to operate in that product area. They may also invest modest amounts (some thousands) in experts who scrutinise existing granted patents to see if they are susceptible to challenge, which they often are.

For a small size company (I am talking of annual revenue in the 1 - 10 million region) to patent something and defend it against another company who want to rip it off is usually impractical. They can slow things down a bit, that's all, while they exploit the first-to-market benefits. You can very easily go bust proving that you are right. It is generally better to accept that your patent gives you freedom to operate and can slow down the opposition a bit. Open publication of your invention gives you almost the same rights.

As for an individual making a clever invention; the only benefit will be if s/he can licence or sell it to a big company who can exploit it. Yes it is cheap to get the first steps in a patent, and that is the point at which you market it. There are cases in which an individual has done this (Workmate?), but they are very rare indeed. And the market needs to be large. £40,000 is small.

To take out a patent to cover a device for a small market and expect everyone else to be ethical about it is not what happens, regrettable though it is. Of course I have sympathy with Crawford, but he clearly needed a better advisor when he drafted the contract with Linley (which should have included a copyright/ no copying clause - admittedly hard to negotiate).

 

[thetyreman]

I sold some furniture through Liberty, London, many moons ago. I thought it was really expensive when I sold the first one to them. The buyer rang me up after having it on show for a few weeks and said something like "lots of interest, Mike, but we haven't sold it yet. I think we've got the price wrong". My heart sank, as I was half way through making the next one at that point, and I didn't want to cut the price I got for it. He continued "I'm going to stick £1500 onto the price, and see what happens". He was back within a week ordering the next couple, as he'd not only sold that one at the higher price, but had taken deposits for 2 more . There's nowt so queer as folk.

Similar happened to Gibson guitars in the 80's. They came up against newer, cheaper (but still excellent) Japanese instruments, unable to compete they went the other way, bumped their prices way up, from $700 up to about $1500 for exact same product. The more their prices increased the more they sold.

Madness!

yes TOKAI! they're great guitars, better than actual gibsons, I've played a few of them, they sound amazing.

 

[thetyreman]

just look at Tesla..not the company, the man, he was undoubtedly a genius, lots of interesting and amazing things he invented first without doubt that were claimed by edison, it's been going on for a long time.

 

[Tasky]

Nice little drive by.
Must remember that next I need it. : )

What have I missed?

 

[MrTeroo]

You missed the latest of many, many examples of how Noel doesn't have the first idea of how a moderator should conduct himself....

 

[Tasky]

You missed the latest of many, many examples of how Noel doesn't have the first idea of how a moderator should conduct himself....

I thought it was about me somehow managing to quote myself, despite actually quoting StuartPaul's words...

If that's not it, I guess it's just some in-house joke I'm not aware of?

 

[Noel]

Nice little drive by.
Must remember that next I need it. : )

What have I missed?

I thought it was an amusing line Tasky, "my martial arts instructor..." to remember when in a less than safe or threatening situation, or indeed as a funny remark.
Maybe I should get out more... : )

 

[Trevanion]

I'd also be pretty peeved if somebody had copied one of my ideas, but it's not like it's not happened before.

A good recent example is the Titemark marking gauge by Glen Drake, It's a premium tool and costs £90. Workshop heaven has now started selling a Taiwanese Titemark knockoff for £35. Is there any difference between the two? Not really except for some really subtle ones and some slightly different grades of materials. I haven't seen any uproar about it.

You cant think "nobody is going to steal my idea" because they most definitely will, that's the cutthroat business for you.

 

[ColeyS1]

Anyone else wondering if someone's gonna share a link to the cheap hinges- just so I can look at the quality myself.....

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[Lonsdale73]

I sold some furniture through Liberty, London, many moons ago. I thought it was really expensive when I sold the first one to them. The buyer rang me up after having it on show for a few weeks and said something like "lots of interest, Mike, but we haven't sold it yet. I think we've got the price wrong". My heart sank, as I was half way through making the next one at that point, and I didn't want to cut the price I got for it. He continued "I'm going to stick £1500 onto the price, and see what happens". He was back within a week ordering the next couple, as he'd not only sold that one at the higher price, but had taken deposits for 2 more . There's nowt so queer as folk.

Similar happened to Gibson guitars in the 80's. They came up against newer, cheaper (but still excellent) Japanese instruments, unable to compete they went the other way, bumped their prices way up, from $700 up to about $1500 for exact same product. The more their prices increased the more they sold.

Madness!

yes TOKAI! they're great guitars, better than actual gibsons, I've played a few of them, they sound amazing.

I remember a Tokai advert in Sounds causing huge consternation. It featured a photo of a young woman apparently pleasuring herself with one of their instruments and was captioned "Tokai is coming!"

 

[Lonsdale73]

Anyone ever fitted one of these hinges? Are they meant to protrude from the back of the box?

 

[Racers]

I have fitted some they do protrude slightly about 3mm.

Pete

 

[Marineboy]

Anyone ever fitted one of these hinges? Are they meant to protrude from the back of the box?

I’ve used these. The centre line of the hinge pin needs to be in line with the rear of the box to ensure it opens properly.