Should I try to manufacture toasters?

I married into toaster moguls. When they sold out in '97, domestic toasters had been infeasible for years already. And this was for a company where all the knowledge, equipment, and facilities had beed paid for many decades before. (They invented the electric pop-up toaster for certain definitions of electric pop-up toaster.)

Toasters are refined brilliance, if done right. The concept of "done" is computed using an analog computer programmed by human experts. (Ok, its usually a bimetal strip but it is placed so that the cooling of the moist bread keeps it from going off and your lighter-darker input is biasing when it considers the toast done.)

Tear apart some toasters. There won't be anything in a modern cheap toaster that isn't absolutely required. Ask yourself why everything is the way it is.

Research the UL requirements. I have the corporate 2 pound copper ball that had to be dropped on things from prescribed heights and not cause malfunction. Make sure you can hit this targets with what you think you can build. Also check the CE, they might have more modern rules.

Be ready for litigation. Toasters catch fire. The toaster moguls were horrified whenever they saw someone's toaster under a cabinet. Decades after selling the business they were still being sued by mesothelioma suits for things like a repairman that got lung cancer and repaired home appliances, so he probably might have worked on one of their 1920's models with asbestos insulation. Don't let it stop you, but put the backup insurance into the expenses.

I do this for a living.

Setting up a small operation and doing the physical actions of designing, manufacturing and selling the toasters is the easy, fun and obvious part.

I figure what your looking for, advice wise, is what's not obvious.

A few things you'll need:

-Product liability insurance, this isn't isn't easy or inexpensive to get. You need to have a lot of the below in place to get it.

- UL certification (or equivalent) this can be between $10-60k in total, you need this for anything that plugs into AC mains, anything that has a heater, a safety function, etc.

- FCC EMC/EMI testing, you need this if you do any intentional transmitting, have anything with digital electronics, etc. This is also pretty expensive.

Then you need to iterate the design until you meet the above.

I'm sure I'm missing some things

I've had a similar idea, except in addition to toasters, it's midsize pickup trucks, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers...

What I've found is that regulations make it impossible to sell simple machines, labor costs make it impossible to compete on price, lawyers make it impossible to go to market without being sued, and consumers who say they want reliable, well-made goods will balk and buy cheap stuff en masse when it comes down to the wire. And that's if you actually succeed in designing and manufacturing a good product.

Someone could do it, I think. But I'm deterred by all the stuff I just wrote, and the people who succeed in businesses that seriously challenge the status quo are the ones aren't deterred by that stuff. And for every one guy who does succeed in pressuring the status quo, a hundred guys flame out... but again, guys who succeed aren't deterred by that either!

I think you are greatly over-estimating how many people would be willing to pay the cost of a North American made toaster. This would require an absolute ton of capital to do it on anything above a craft scale. The challenges of design, testing, certification (very important for a device that could burn your house down), manufacturing, supply chain, and support that are all specialized careers in themselves.

I've got more than decade of experience in designing products that are built in North America. I wouldn't touch a project like this unless it had a team of people with the proven manufacturing experience heading it up and some very convincing numbers about the commercial viability of the product because I don't believe they exist. There is good reason why the market only has commercial kitchen grade devices available.

I am a Software Engineer like you. I got started in making physical products in 2017 first with 3d printing, and today I do design for manufacturing.

This might surprise some here, but if you can do 100% of the design and get good at it, it's possible to bootstrap a hardware company, even as a solo founder. I know it because I've done it.

However I intentionally started with physical products with no electronics in them. I also tried manufacturing in the USA initially but quickly realized it to be uneconomical and too slow, especially for bootstrapped consumer products.

My advice: 1. make a breadboard prototype @ home & design the product on your computer 2. have prototype parts made in China until you are satisfied with the final assembly 3. once you have pre-order volume, have the molds & dies made in China, import the tooling in the USA and setup your own shop.

The other thing is getting good at Industrial design takes a few years, it's not necessarily intuitive -- you have to understand the processes that you are designing for and get good at making drawings and hiring shops. It won't happen in a year unless you just focus on one part/process, so I would team up with someone who has that experience.

Feel free to contact me, info on my profile, happy to chat & help out.

OK now I'm starting to think we live in the matrix - I've spend the last 24 hours (unemployed currently, you see) looking at toasters and designs, with the same idea. And because my toaster just broke.

The state of toasters seems quite dire. Most are basically the same mechanism internally with different style covers.

Some quick learnings/thoughts:

- why are they open at the top? Some expensive Japanese toasters are more like grills or ovens, and sealing in steam seems to be key to their hyped results.

- commercial toasters and some like west bend have 'drop thru' toasting, where the toast drops out of the bottom when done instead of popping up. Nice design.

- Two slot toasters always power both slots even when toasting one slice.

- Many toasters don't allow you to change the timer mid-toast. I mean you can change it, but it doesn't do anything until next cycle. Also few indicate how much time is left.

- crumb trays don't work for many toasters, they're too narrow compared with all the places crumbs fall.

- expensive 'old school' toasters like Dualit just don't have the features, and are too clunky.

- the toasters with windows toast much more slowly (use tube heaters instead of a 'grid' of nichrome) and the window is useless anyway since the heater element makes everything orange.

- One thing I find amusing is some reviewers are testing these $100,$200 toasters with regular supermarket chorleywood bread. I mean at least toast some actual bread, not foam.

Have you looked at other high quality toaster makers abroad?

Dualit is in the UK and has been manufacturing high quality, hand built toaster for a long time, but most consumers would balk at the prices they ask for their appliances and I doubt you as a startup would be able to manufacture a toaster any cheaper.

https://www.dualit.com/collections/classic-toasters https://www.dualit.com/collections/spares

Frankly, I don't even own one, in spite of being a champion of the "buy it once" mentality. But it's on the bucket list.

Let me put this into perspective as an outsider:

``` I have been looking at starting a business and am a Dentist with lots of experience.

I also love learning about masonry and construction, but have never actually tried building anything.

Lately, I have been interested in buying things that are made locally. One construction item that I would like to invest in is a brick house; I did a lot of searching online, and this seems to be something that has a decent amount of demand.

There does seem to be a market opportunity for high-quality houses made locally.

My question is: as a dentist with zero experience building physical things, should I try building brick houses? I have plenty of space to set up a small operation and a little capital to get started. What are the pitfalls? Has anyone with a dental background moved into constructing physical items like this? ```

Don't expect your former job knowledge to be of much use for this endeavor.

This does not mean "Don't do it!" but rather "Be aware of the scope!".

Good luck!

To mix in with other's comments.

It's always good to have a target in sight, but building a physical product with no experience will be a long, expensive journey.

I make physical and digital products as a consultant, the first thing I tell entrepreneurs is get to your first prototype. Not even an MVP, just something functional with the core features. Some times these are partial prototypes that work out various sub-systems. In this case, the actuation mechanisms, the heating elements with power, digital / physical controls, etc.

After that, the real work begins. You need to get to a complete working prototype. The other thing I like to say is just because someone else has made it, or something similar, doesn't mean I know how to make it. It just means it's technically feasible.

If you start looking at the parts of the toaster, you need to electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, material science, embedded software engineering, probably some industrial design and user experience design if you get that far. Even user research if you want to better understand the user and market.

Once you get to a first iteration, and typically before, you need to engage UL and FCC, usually through third parties to start testing for certifications and engineering refinement. You also need to start engaging contract manufacturers to understand how to work within limitations of their capabilities and your design.

A toaster may seem simple, but I assure it is not.

Then couple all of this with legal considerations as mentioned in other comments and whether or not it's even a practical business model. This is quite a large endeavor.

But if you are going to do anything, start small.

Given all of the regulatory obstacles and logistical headaches surrounding manufactured products these days, I personally feel that mechanical/electrical entrepreneurship is a path to ruin.

Since you're in software already, would it not make more sense to create a strictly-digital product? Keep your day job, work at your own pace on software products (ideally with a partner), and see whether the market actually wants what you're selling.

I'd say give it a virtual try :)

Fusion 360 is a horrible cloud lock-in, but it's also cheap and feature complete. Custom injection parts are expensive, but thin sheet metal you can cut at your local hackerspace. And now just try if you can design the mechanical functionality using only off-the-shelf screws and sheet metal parts with easy bend sequence.

The control stuff is easy and cheap. KiCad is your friend.

Once you have a prototype showing the rudimentary mechanical parts, you'll have a much better idea of the work and costs involved. Plan for about 8x mark-up from production costs to end-user price.

And last but not least, many projects die because they cannot access the relevant market cheaply enough. I used to sell bikinis online, which was fun and profitable in the beginning. But once all those other boutique fashion brands started spamming Instagram, acquiring customers became too expensive so the entire operation wasn't profitable anymore. So try to estimate how much it'll cost you to advertise to prospective customers.

Two alternatives:

1. Design a machine that uses air streams to eventually dehydrate the outer faces of the bread, then shoots puffs of pre-fabbed soot/butter mix on the result. Bonus: market for add-on soot/butter packs.

2. Design a machine that is by default always on fire, which will temporarily reduce the heat to a glowing red when you hit a button to make toast. That way failures merely return the device back to its original burning state (albeit with a temporary burnt toast smell).

Try doing a Kickstarter. Over the years, I've spent way more money than I should have on Kickstarter projects that are highly specific and non-refundable. Both of these characteristics will likely be important to leverage as you are starting out this venture. Kickstarter targeted advertising through Facebook and Instagram seem to be very good at getting your product in front of people willing to buy it - even if it's an expensive American-made toaster.

Once you have a prototype, you may want to consider getting a review by Technology Connections. He's done multiple on toaster design novelty:

https://youtu.be/zLFG068HtgM?si=LkiWH2n8mtZJ6JBK

https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y?si=eOFYQRVUNq-zqFaS

https://youtu.be/2vcdbtAca0Y?si=iKY-Y2CjhoABQeWd

https://youtu.be/bLk1cjZ4ll0?si=lZt3zngxOmeHdN22

You appear to have your heart set on toasters, and that's fine. A coffee roaster for the prosumer, however, strikes me as a more interesting product to make. I think there's still an opportunity to make a better or at least different product, and the area has been heating up recently. It's a lot like a toaster, if you think about it. And there's more opportunity for software and hardware integration ("roast profiling").

I also have a question: if a product is sold as a kit where the buyer performs the "final assembly", does that alleviate any of the burden with UL testing, FCC, or product liability?

Just here to give a ref to The Toaster Project[0] and its accompanied TED talk[1] from Designer Thomas Thwaites[2].

[0]: http://www.thetoasterproject.org/

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw

[2]: https://www.thomasthwaites.com/

I like to encourage you to go on this adventure to learn why a toaster made in USA could be the single most horrifying idea a founder can have. I would like to encourage you to become a founder and milk every insight out of this idea you can get. Don´t walk away now, go all in and learn in order to protect you from sinking years of your life into a bad idea (Spoiler: your next idea might be even worse)

1. research the cost of producing a production-ready physical product. You need millions of up-front investment and a couple of years of funding.

2. research how a toaster is sold. Spoiler: you need attention and access to a target audience. What would be your customer acquisition cost to sell 100K units?

3. what is the customer lifetime value of a person who bought your toaster? Spoiler: your competition might be a 10 USD made-in-china piece of crap, so people a willing to spend 25 USD on something that is not dead-on-arrival. How much do you need to charge for a made-in-USA toaster? 99 USD? 299 USD?

4. how much do you need to spend on branding and marketing to get the value of "made-in-USA" attached to the toaster? 10M? 50M?

5. how will your life look like, when you manage to pull this off to sell 10K toasters? My assumption: it will be a constant nightmare/living hell, as you now have a mountain of dept, high running costs and many people asking you to sell the next 100k toasters...

Slot toasters, or toaster ovens?

In an ironic way given your background, toaster ovens probably set you up against untenable competition: everybody who has ever built a toaster oven is currently jamming SBCs into them to run PID for "smart toasters". Prices are coming down and features are going up, plus these are product line extensions that create further price pressure on "non-smart toasters".

There could be room to do something interesting with slot toasters, which are sort of a forgotten category.

Maybe unrelated, but I have a Deciso DEC2752, which is an OPNsense firewall appliance. For some reason Deciso made it in the Netherlands instead of China or Taiwan. I don't know for sure how much cheaper, or more expensive it would be if it was Asian-made.

It's unique for sure. It's a bit pricey but other firewalls were less-than-statisfactory. Chinese Mini PC boxes were too little, Supermicro Front I/O boxes were too much. I don't exactly like Netgate's alternative either.

As someone who builds and designs hardware for music as a hobby since a decade (but to a somewhat industrial standard): Unless you have history in hardware or someone with a lot of experience in it, I'd advice against it, if your plan is to earn a living. If your plan is to learn something, go on.

Hardware is, well, hard. You will figure out why things cost the amount they do, and you will wonder why, till you find all the tricks manufacturers pull off – with the most important one being economies of scale. There will be many prototypes, and sometimes you will end with something that is extremely cool, but entirely to expensive for what it does. Sometimes things will fail for unknown reasons. There are tons of regulations your device will need to respect (and you need to know them).

Why don't you start building the toaster in your sparetime and figure out whether that object is a thing that could sit on the right spot in the market with some automation? If the answer is that you lack the hardware skill, I would caution against moving forward unless you got the market side all figured out and know your product would work financially. Then this would be about finding a person that fills your gaps.

Try to make one. Somewhere you won't set fire to. Fire risk would be my biggest fear with going for a toaster. Make sure you comply with safety regulations and get liability insurance...

Don't listen if people say it's too hard. They may well be right, or not, but they don't know whether you're the right person to figure out a new angle or not and it's easier to try something new before you learn all the ways it can go wrong. Learn those after you've made a couple of (cheap prototype) attempts

Don't read up too much on the how before you try. You want to learn how the competition works, but sometimes interesting realisations come from trying to figure it out yourself first without anything maki g you reject your apporoach out of hand.

But it will be harder than you think.

Just make sure you don't underestimate the marketing. Making a good product is less than half the job - especially if you're going to compete in a space where you're unlikely to be able to compete on price, quality isn't enough - you also need a convincing story about the quality.

I think in this case, a story about why you've made surprising realisations about a modern take of a return to something sturdy, reliable and simple might be powerful.

"I just wanted...(but modern products ...)" is powerful. Your product might or might not actually be simpler, but if you're going for people nostalgic for US manufacturing (which is larger than ever before, just employing fewer relative to output), then selling the idea that something has been lost with modern devices allows for both pushing price expectations and getting customers to forgive eccentricities that otherwise might be considered issues as long as the story justifies it.

I love this idea and the competition is fierce from Chinese companies. Check out Robam’s combi ovens, like this one: https://robamliving.com/collections/steam-oven/products/roba...

This thing can toast, steam, bake, and air fry. It is objectively good at all of those functions, and it is used every day.

The only thing it doesn’t have is the ability to add custom programs, but most of the built in functions can be used for recipes other than what they suggest.

That being said, if I could get the same thing at the same price point, made in USA, I would.

I also would like a properly engineered waffle iron that is made in the USA. The whole waffle iron market today is dogshit compared to the waffle Iron I got my mom in the 90s. It still works, it is easy to use and clean.

Somehow a similar design is no longer available on the open market and the options are all variations on trash.

Maybe off-topic, but having recently repaired a cheap-ass toaster, maybe some insights:

When you get a cheap toaster, they will probably have a design flaw: when the toaster pops up, there will be arcing. This means that the toaster will only last a few years. My repair was in this section. The heat eventually desoldered the mains pad on the PCB. You can maybe repair it once and get another year out of it, after that the PCB will be very charred and brittle. The fact that the PCB gets toasted a little bit every time probably isn't great for your health either, so I think I wouldn't recommend repairing toasters with this flaw, unless you have some clever plan to get around this problem. My new toaster is a name-brand one. And I don't see any light when it pops up, so maybe it's fine. I've also seen other name-brand toasters that were only replaced because they got filthy -- due to improper maintenance I must add :p

My toaster was mostly made of metal that was bent into the shape of a toaster, plus plastic on the outside. To disassemble it, you have to use pliers to bend some interlocking metal bits into a different shape. That should be pretty cheap to manufacture! The pop-op logic was very simple, not even sure if it used a chip or not. If it did, probably nothing digital, maybe just a 555. Single-sided cheap circuit board.

I want the following functions: stop button, extra long button, short button, single slot operation.

Most people are probably comfortable with a toaster that just lets you adjust the duration. But if you add sensors that can reliably(!) detect how much browner your toast or bread has become compared to when it was inserted, go for it. If that sensor goes haywire after two years, then don't bother IMO. If you can add odor or smoke sensors that react when the toast is burnt, that might be nice too. (Course they might go off when you run the toaster for the first time to burn off the lubricant(?), so that may add some complexity)

https://www.danielsen.com/jokes/objecttoaster.txt

> as a software engineer with 0 experience building physical things, should I try building this?

It is almost impossible to have a fully "US made" toaster. I expect any toaster will have quite a few "overseas made" components. At best, you might make "Assembled in US" toasters. You already received enough info on potential challenges in manufacturing toasters.

Instead, a good alternative solution might be to focus on making add-ons for toasters built by others. What are the concerns toaster users have? Identify those and see how you can solve some of those using software and hardware. For example, a few concerns might be around making a perfect toast or safety: how not to over-burn toasts, how to turn off toaster when smoke started to come out, etc. Solve a problem that toaster users might have.

I wonder if there is a way to engineer a 'smart' toaster (no WiFi or major chip mind you) that could improve the detection of burning. Maybe the use of improved PID controller / ability to brown to your desired 'shade' of toastiness. Would be interesting to see!

Fellow hacker here who invented a physical product I brought to market: No.

I sold it first chance I got because no software engineer wants to be in “manufacturing hell”.

You could bring this https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-to... back to market.

all your skills are moot if you don't know how to sell. Don't make the common mistake of "iterating in the basement" and when you need to goto market you flop around, spend too much time on a website and kinda expect things to "just happen".

I would not start ANYTHING before you figure out if you like this part of it, otherwise its just a "expensive hobby".

To figure this out, find something on Alibaba that costs a nickel that you think has some value, buy 10.000 units of it - figure out the shipping and import rigamarole and try selling it however you think works best.

if you like that experience and find it fun, and can "hack" it - return to your toaster.

I don't really get these "Made in " slogans. For livestock/plants/food/cuisine, or well known existing domestic brands, sure. But new businesses just using nationalism as a selling point is strange. That foreign land may have better standards for safety/manufacturing as your own. Fair profit lands with your local government regardless where stuff came from. Materials travelling around the world: what ensures your local craftsman will not use foreign materials or tools. A world where most production is localised is more environment damaging than the distributed economy we have now.

I have seen the lack of an American made toaster appear in several venues, so there is pretty clearly some interest in this topic. How many would buy one is another matter.

I worked for a company that made customized versions of relatively basic electrical devices and they didn't spend much money on it (couple thousand for the prototypes and the devices they disassembled to copy). The one pitfall they did note was that being the best in quality was difficult and expensive and focused on being valuable in another niche.

I am not sure that you need to make a good toaster. It may be sufficient to have an American toaster, even if it is no better than a typical toaster.

It would be nice to have an AI powered toaster that can provide me with early morning toast and light conversation.

Provided that blueprints are already finalized, and certain distribution eagerly awaits to consume the amount of product you intend to manufacture at the rate you intend to produce, it all boils down to raw materials and labor in an American fabrication/assembly facility.

When you do the math focused on the manufacturing task alone, you can come up with a baseline estimate on what it might cost to make each item and how that compares to what it will sell for, wholesale of course since this is just manufacturing.

This would be your "toaster baseline".

Now you may plan to produce an artisan product but toasters themselves are not only a commodity but the market has been saturated for quite some time.

You can't expect to compete with the mainstream on price or volume, but that's OK you're not going to be able to make that many to begin with.

Never mind how few you make, if you make money on every one, and through some excellent good fortune you can sell all you make, you will be profitable.

Whether that's enough profit in comparison to other oportunities, well you have your baseline to work from.

You might be able to find an alternative product (most likely addressing a completely different market), which can be produced at similar unit expenditures in similar facilities, but sell for a better price into its market in such a way as to be a much better choice. Maybe better off with something that's not a commodity, maybe so, you have to do the math.

If you're expecting the manufacturing phase alone to be a core value-adding operation.

I'd say you've found a slightly slower way of setting fire to your money

No, you shouldnt learn how to build toasters. You should learn how to find people that build toasters, and have them build an MVP, take it to market see how it sells.

I don't know about toaster ovens but I've been considering if people would start building 'smart appliances' but with stock open source software. Eg A 'smart tv' with stock linux or something like that. For eg. I like Amazon echo as a device, but I don't like the Amazon software ecosystem around it. Could you produce an open device with the same hardware capabilities?

About a month ago, I bought a toaster for Christmas, and, while walking in the alley and checking prices offline and online, I was mesmerized by the price strategies. With quantities that toasters operate in, their production cost is around a few dollars, and I bought one for $50 without any digital features.

If you are planning to build one in the USA, you will probably need to tell yourself what "build in the USA" means. Is it PCB printing, PCB assembly, plastic production, mold production, cool design features, coil design, final assembly, or some combination of the above? You will be surprised to find some of the requirements to put "made in the X country."

I do product development professionally, so take the comment as my bias, but it is a light project to start with as there are minimum components, you can build the entire thing in the garage, and it is something that everyone around you can give feedback on. Almost like an art project.

Anyway, I would love to share any info you may find useful to start. Email in the profile, if you are interested.

Read the book first, in 2010 a UK man built one from scratch as best he could

http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568989970/

I don't think it's a good idea, for many reasons which are better-defined elsewhere in this discussion.

That said, if you do decide to do this, it would IMO be foolish not to contact your congressional delegation (probably state legislators too) and try to get something. On-shoring manufacturing is politically very en vogue in DC right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could get some kind of grant, tax credits, liability waiver, guaranteed government orders, or something else to "entice" you to do this in your state (maybe even shop around among states/municipalities and see if you can get them to outbid each other).

This isn't exactly pro-social behavior, but it will probably work, where "work" means you will be able to extract something, not that you will be able to turn your toaster business into a going concern.

This depends entirely on how much money you have to waste.

I'd suggest, at the very least:

* Hiring somebody who knows manufacturing to walk you through what you need to set this up.

* Figuring out the cost of building a toaster in the USA

* Figuring out the regulatory hurdles.

* Figuring out if the people who keep clamoring for a national toaster infrastructure are willing to pay the actual money that requires.

My experience is that a large number of people who profess to want built-in-USA want this only at a price point meeting current toasters. But with much better quality.

If I were to jump into this market, I'd seriously consider running this as a lifestyle luxury item business, charging the few true believers a fortune for a "bespoke toaster hand-made entirely in the U.S.A", build them to last forever, and then maybe automate and build out into the mid-range from there.

I'd still only do this with somebody with manufacturing knowledge working with/for me. And ideally with somebody else's money.

Physical objects are literally the worst thing to sell. As a fellow software developer I urge you to stay the hell away from hardware. So many things that can go wrong with a physical device that you can do nothing about.

Also, it’s expensive as hell getting the proper certification for whatever you’re making, even if it works well.

If you make one like the Sunbeam Automatic Beyond Belief toaster, and you can keep the price <$150, you've got at least one customer.

-edit- After thinking about this a little more, I could go higher than that price point. But higher than that and I'd want any non BIFL parts to be user serviceable/replaceable.

Wish I could offer more than best wishes, but I am in a similar boat: pondering some product ideas while working as a SWE.

This line caught my attention - "I also love learning about mechanical engineering and manufacturing"

How do you go about that? Have you found any good books, YouTube videos, etc. that are accessible for us SWEs?

I've been trying to buy a toaster for the last two months.

People seem to either get the cheapest models, or some get "the Smeg" or another expensive name brand that has the same designer product in a zillion colours.

There are a few mid-price models (like Bosch) that still seem to be manufactured "locally", but for some reason they are hard to find at the moment.

You can't compete with the stream of cheap crap from China (I'm not implying that all of those are bad; just brand labels slapped on random products). The question is if you can become "the Smeg" and have people pay extra for your name. That sort of brand recognition will take a lot of time and effort, and need to be aimed at a certain kind of customer that has both money and cares beyond the appliance's function.

>I also love learning about mechanical engineering and manufacturing, but have never actually tried making anything.

I strongly recommend you hire professionals for this. I've worked as a Product Manager for physical products. There is a gulf of knowledge between designing something in CAD and designing something that will endure the rigors of toasting for 20 years. The previous sentence doesn't even cover the gulf of knowledge between taking a prototype to a design that's meant for mass production.

I'm interested in creating a portfolio of open source appliances. Stuff that will last for life (or is at least repairable). If it's a "smart" applicance and open source, you don't need to worry about your appliance spying on you or being at the whims of a vendor who bricks your device for whatever reason.

Ask yourself why you want something that is made in the US. I have long had the same bias, and I am trying to understand it myself. Is it perceived quality of the final object? Do you feel that the environmental impact of shipping is worth overcoming? Do you want to keep money in local communities? Do you just think Americans make things right? What’s your goal here.

Also read about the too numerous to count HW kickstarter projects that 10x their funding goal and then still never deliver.

Also go read everything [Bunnie Huang](https://www.bunniestudios.com/) has written.

Since toasting is a non starter, I've been wanting an heirloom quality artisan salad spinner, maybe you can look into that. Everything out there is plastic junk that breaks too fast. Where are all the stainless spinners???

A fairly obvious note, and aside from the technical discussions, 90% of your challenge will be marketing. You need to build a brand that exudes quality and value.

I have zero idea about marketing and branding, but it's damn hard/expensive.

Find a way to bring back this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y&t=0s

I'm curious what is a good quality toaster in your mind?

Also, why does it need to be "made in the USA"? There seems to be lots of expensive "high-end" toasters. Is your only setting point "made in the USA"? Does the population of people who care about "made in the USA" overlap with people who are likely to pay for this toaster vs the $19 toaster from target?

https://www.target.com/p/kitchensmith-by-bella-4-slice-toast...

If I had money and was looking for a high end toaster, I'd pay $200+ for a European toaster like SMEG. It'd be more for the aesthetics than the functionality.

When you're paying that much money for a functional item, you're buying into a story. When you have a SMEG appliance, you're buying a sophisticated identity and a conversation piece. You're telling people you appreciate Dieter Rams type industrial design.

Somehow a Made in Michigan toaster doesn't have the same cachet. Neither do Black and Deckers or Cuisinarts.

(that said, Breville from Australia is getting away charging $200 for its toasters)

A few thoughts.

1 - do it. Absolutely do it.

2 - I love being around first time entrepreneurs- they don’t know about the bumps ahead in the journey so they just plough through. This is a great thing. Once you’ve ploughed through, you learn about all of this and it either causes you to be too afraid to do another, or to try to warn everyone else off by describing how impossible it is (doesn’t work and doesn’t help), or you get the bug and keep building more and more. 3) You’ve identified what seems like an awesome opportunity. Go chase it. Don’t spend too much time talking. Endless talk is the death of entrepreneurial endeavors. Do more talk less. Sounds like a super fun opportunity during which you’ll learn so much along the way.

4) Two entrepreneur credos:

A) when you see an opportunity the door is already closing. Get moving. Did I mention more talk less do?

B) the universe is interesting. The moment you start on an endeavor, the people you need to be successful just come out of the woodwork. It’s like you become attuned to the universe. Just gotta pay attention. Sorry - sounds preachy, but I’ve found it to be true over and over again. It’s like they find you through the cosmos.

Don’t listen to the naysayers. Those who say it can’t be done should stand aside for those who are doing it.

Welcome to the entrepreneurial journey. Pretty much the most fun you can have in business.

All the best.

> as a software engineer with 0 experience building physical things, should I try building this?

No.

You’ll feel really bad when your homebrew toaster burns down somebody’s house and kills their kids.

There are very many fields you’d need expertise in to do this at all and you don’t seem to have much of an idea of what you don’t know. Getting hardware products off the ground is hard and requires tons of time and money. After all of that you’d have a really tough time selling anybody on the idea of buying your toaster which would have to be much more expensive than you imagine.

You would have to start on something way simpler.

All I can say is my biggest bugbear with toaster is the crumbs just all fall out despite having a way to catch/release them. So that is a good problem to solve.

Also make the slots wider. For things like Turkish bread.

People might _say_ they want something made locally, but when it comes to _spending_ money, they mostly care about price and quality, less about patriotism.

Compare the paper 'Prejudice is Free, but Discrimination has Costs' https://cdn.mises.org/14_2_3_0.pdf

In any case, if you are interested in fancy toasters, you might like to have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

It almost seems like you're asking for permission. Instead, start this project if you're passionate about it and post your progress here on HN. I'm sure you can get lots of presales that way.

I think it might be worth starting with pure mechanical simple goods, and working from there?

E.g. Specialised bbq tongs might be an easier entry point, allow you to build up the machinery, drills, laser cutters, mould injection equipment, etc. Putting the electronics aspect aside for now will mean you can get things to market now, rather than that extra level of design, QC, legislation etc.

0-to-toaster is a big jump, and we wouldn't attempt a monolithic deliverable like that in software-dev...

Regardless of how good the product is it will be remade 10x cheaper and sold on Amazon and Alibaba by manufacturing in China. They don't play fair, they don't need the certs or product requirements you do. They are allowed to sell defective by design products and there are no consequences. Domestic producers are liable for everything. There is a reason domestic products failed. Any kind of rekindling is soon extinguished when you saturate customers willing to pay top dollar.

I personally lament the total lack of quality kitchen appliances and would gladly pay a premium for quality long lasting appliances.

I think that a toaster is a good place to start!

In Australia toasters are a weird product category. I cannot see any correlation to price and features/quality. The colour and style seems to be the only thing that separately them. I think a toaster that is objectively better than other toasters would be cool, but I've but it would be hard to beat my 10 year old A$20 Kmart toaster. But I suspect it would be a very difficult market to break into.

my toaster is pretty crappy - i'd buy your toaster!

my list of complaints

- strong smell of chemicals when i first started using it - can be hard to remove things without burning myself e.g. english muffins - sometimes it burns things/sometimes it doesn't toast them enough. i have figured out which settings work for some common use cases, but it feels like a toaster should be able to figure it out w/out crazy complexity.

I assume the safety protocols required are an immense challenge. My recent toaster, for example, didn’t stop cooking and caught my cabinets on fire.

I would like to buy a good toaster. I’d easily pay $100, maybe more.

It seems all the toaster models are pretty crappy. They’re hard to clean. It’s hard to guess how to set things to toast properly.

But it’s acceptable. I don’t like using my toaster, but I do.

I think there’s some small market in improving things that everyone uses because they must, but makes people angry to use (cable, phone service, air travel, toasters, etc).

Absolutely do not use your own capital for this. Make a compelling presentation and shop it out to investors. Use a mixture of logic, financial figures, and storytelling. Do not start from scratch, but get the most experienced people for your team. Remember: manufacturing is the lowest part of the SMILE curve. That's why things are not made in the USA.

Although I feel sad for saying this, what I think is sane is: don't compete with the Chinese.

Unless you can build an audience of extremely loyal fans. In that case, I'd suggest to start pitching your vision for a US-made toaster and sell a refundable pre-purchase (like 10% of the toaster).

If you can't attract a large enough fan base, you won't be successful, I'm afraid.

Hi. I'm a software engineer, and I'm here to burn your house down. ;-)

You'll need traditional engineers (mechanical design and electrical), and people who actually know manufacturing operations from sourcing to shipping.

Perhaps a way into this kind of business is to do it in reverse: Lend your software skills to a manufacturing business and soak up as much as you can about how it works.

A lot of great comments already but I'll add my opinion on search volume for 'toasters made in usa'. My feel is that a bulk of it is people looking for old fashioned toasters like showcased in this link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

Yes, you should do this. Will you add your contact info to your profile, or contact me from mine?

I've been thinking the exact same thing about toasters. Here was my recent comment in the "Generation Junk" thread a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796570

^F Solar

No matches (yet) ??!!

This is your niche, a bespoke toasting fork and a foldaway reflective parabolic trench, all stamped with a discreet Americab flag.

* nuclear will take too long.

* HVDS (High Vis Direct Sunlight) reflective tubes can pipe in sunlight from Australia during winter.

* Rapid Early Scale Up Marketing - essential to get the volume before the bubble bursts.

( DM me for VC terms and assorted quotes from The Tibetian Book of the Dead )

https://a.co/d/2g7cOrc folding Camp stove toaster

Improve these so they will work on kitchen stoves and toast a custom logo or message on the bread.

With a decent marketing campaign you could probably buy these Wholesale, modify them slightly and resell for 2 to 3 times the price.

I know very little about toasters but I am rooting for you. Don't see much of these types of businesses on hackernews

There's always a market for a toaster that looks like a printer with infrared laser head for toasting and costs 100 dollars.

Check out Rotimatic:https://rotimatic.com/

I don't own one but it seems to be on the wishlist of every Indian living abroad.

Why not try getting toasters from the reuse centres that divert such things from the landfill? Most times it's just a thermal fuse that pops due to a jammed piece of toast. That's a very cheap and easy repair and if you can't fix it, you can resell the heating elements for a good price.

A related old art project: Making a toaster from scratch by Thomas Thwaites

https://www.dezeen.com/2009/06/27/the-toaster-project-by-tho...

So...

It sounds that you're up for a meander. Do it. I suspect that both the public interest in domestically manufactured toasters and your interest are related.

There's something basic about a toaster. The basic consumer electronic appliances.

Also... just an idea... How about a Non-electric toaster? Lighter gas. Ethanol. Just an idea.

Add a voice assistant that only talks about toast. It can answer any question as long as it's about toast.

First thing that came to mind was an ImpulseLabs Toaster, powered by their high-output battery. Maybe you should reach out to the leadership and introduce yourself?

https://www.impulselabs.com/faqs

In my experience and not that I have tried every model but enough to say I am guessing they all suck as badly as the ones I have had.

Space to improve exist, heating elements need fresh designs and more consistant heat distribution, should also be simple, I dont want options I want toast quick and easy.

I just know every kickstarter involving consumer electronics takes 3-5x more time and money than they had anticipated. Coffee makers come to mind. So be ready for tons of costly iteration and surprises. Maybe do it for a hobby and if you have zero interest in turning a profit.

How much do you think people would be willing to pay for this toaster? How many people like that are there?

What will it cost you to make?

For toasters or similar, what is the typical ratio of manufacturing cost to retail price? Is this enough to pay for distribution, marketing, logistics and returns?

You could move to Argentina. If Milei survives you might be able to start a business there.

edit: or approach this as DIY kit where you are not selling the toaster but the components as separate items and a set of instructions. less regulations and better repairability.

There is an ace ted talk about a guy making a toaster from scratch...

only ~11 mins.. recommended

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw

As long as you keep it simple.

Here’s an old joke on the topic: http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/TheParableOfTheToaster.html

Just call your company something like "Teenage Engineering" and you can then charge an arm and a leg for basic product designs running bad software in a nice, clean, totally-not-ripped-off-from-Braun case.

I'd love to buy a hand mixer that doesn't have plastic gearing, which is approximately 100% of the market. Those just keep breaking.

I'd buy one with durable metal parts even if it costs 2-3x normal price level.

Love it, I've considered doing toasters. I run a space startup in Australia making hardware for satellites. Would love to chat. I've been a long time lurker but made an account for this ha ha.

two pieces of advice:

First, you don’t need anyone’s permission here. If you want to build American made toasters, go do it!

Second, before you dive into this I’d recommend a little more due diligence. Around requirements sure (there was a good post in comments on different certs youd need). But more around validating demand: why doesn’t this exist already? As someone mentioned, are there enough consumers that would pay a premium for American made appliance? Or like the article you linked mentioned: no one is going to buy a $300 toaster. So how would you get the costs down?

The absolute best toasting toaster I've ever used is basically a couple of resistors in a sheet metal case with a spring timer: Dualit Classic.

It's comically overpriced but it does one thing and does it well.

Related and relevant read https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/.

Okay, I see a lot of people discouraging you, so I'll try to be positive. I say go for it!

However, your motivations don't seem very clear to me. What exactly are you trying to achieve with this venture?

Are the dynamics of the toaster market more like coffee machines (where a high-end play absolutely can work) or like microwaves (where there seems to be limited evidence that it would).

I'd hop on if it was kitchen storage. Kitchens are getting smaller, the appliance list is getting longer but the only storage you get is a few drawers and a stupid cabinet.

This is the kind of thing Kickstarter is for. It gives you a way to both raise funds and reliably establish that demand exists. And if the campaign fails then no harm no foul.

I think "Made in the USA" has tremendous cachet. However, I do not think people will pay up for it unless there is something unique being offered.

I see so much stuff like bespoke bicycles and clothes made by 'craftsmen' in the USA. Maybe something like that industry but for kitchen appliances would be cool.

Why not set your sights a bit higher? In Europe there's a few companies making locally sourced and more sustainable wind turbines the seem to be doing quite well.

Check out the Fastlane Forum to get info on the areas you are lacking. There are some people there can help you find info in the areas you lacking.

I think it’s a great idea. I would do the opposite of what most of the comments on here do and build the speed queen of toasters.

Historical background:

http://www.toastermuseum.com/

i'm sure this has been posted in thread before (if so i didn't see it) but here is a review of an insane toaster presented by the lovely sarah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ-KZzVUV7U

If you do, please film and document everything -- I would enjoy watching a Netflix documentary on your journey.

Aren't the best toasters in Japan ?

I also like buying things made locally, restricting the aperture of a product's origin to its absolute smallest possible in relation to my residence. I've even found tools made in my state!

Whether or not you should try is up to you.

But it is possible. Companies CAN compete with low-wage low-regulation areas but usually only on the high end.

You can buy toasters from Ritter that are made in Germany and they retail for around $200.

After a very cursory search I found a 1939 Sears catalog that listed an old-fashioned (a heating element surrounded by A-frame to hold the toast) toaster for $0.89 and a "Deluxe Automatic Toaster" for $8.95. A "Deluxe Automatic Toaster" is the kind that everyone buys today with adjustable toasting and automatic pop-up.

$8.95 in 1939 is... $200.

So you might want to start by doing some research into what people might want in a product once the price trends towards the high end of the market. My gut tells me, just based my desires and products that are still successfully being manufactured in the US that simplicity, robustness, and repairability are all extremely high, and wifi-enabled smartshit is very, VERY low on the "want" scale.

Products like Vornado air circulators (dumb), Bunn coffee makers (dumb), and Red Wing boots (dumb) are all made domestically and have all been on the market for decades and cheap imports haven't killed them off yet-- and they are all simple, robust, and repairable.

So DO NOT TRY TO MAKE THE JUICERO OF TOASTERS.

Make a residential version of the Waring commercial toasters, something with good industrial design, simplicity, and repairability, made domestically (Waring moved production of their 4-slice toasters overseas long ago).

Someone who spends $350 on Red Wing boots is willing to spend that much because they WILL get them resoled.

Someone willing to spend $200 on a toaster probably attempts to estimate how long it will last, and is smart enough to know that a wifi chip or microcontroller is an unnecessary complication.

I work in a field that makes physical things, but not mass-produced things. One pitfall I have observed with software folks moving in to manufacturing, such as programmers getting an MBA and PMP and moving into management is that the amount of time and money it takes to actually make a real physical object is almost incomprehensible to them.

Also incomprehensible are the very real and very important quality control and safety components to manufacturing.

Of course, if you worked on software in a safety-critical field this is old news.

Good idea here is a catchy brand name which you’ll need . . Call it ‘Your Toast!’

making the toaster is the easy part; getting anyone to buy the toaster is the hard part. The demand is gatekept by companies like Google and Amazon and they will extract almost all of your profit

Toasters cook food so be aware of the many regulations in that area.

Would selling in kit form change liabilities significantly?

years ago I went to the local fete in a town of some 200 people about an hour from the main city in our state (Australia) and I bought what I think is the best toaster I have ever seen, no moving parts.

It was sort of like a little metal toast cave with a single rod like element running along the back. It used reflectance from that heating element to toast - you put the toast in horizontally and it was like a very small toaster oven with no door, but more stylish.

And I wish I could fully remember but there may have been some kind of auto off device and some nuances for toasting one side more than the other, but because it was like a frog mouth opening you could fit fat bread, buns, rolls, you could do toasted cheese and so on.

I could see why maybe some safety factors could be a problem in a modern world, but there were grills and guards to protect against accidental contact, it was double skinned to prevent external temps getting to hot to touch or ignite things, and it was about 50 years old when I got it and still working perfectly.

If I ever see another one I am buying it regardless of price.

I feel that success would only be likely if you presented a new (or old) paradigm on what a toaster is.

I mean, you can always just break out the heat gun, it's loud, inefficient, maybe a little dangerous, but you can get your toast exactly how you want it.

Second last toaster I bought I decided to lash out on a fancy $150 one - it lasted no longer than the $20 and toasted no better, so now I just go with low end ones.\

tbh I'd buy your toaster if you made it

How about air poppers for popcorn? I have cycled through literally a dozen and all modern incarnations are totally shit, with improper designs that lead to way too many unpopped kernels. This is a market that could use the Dyson touch…

If it makes you feel warm and crunchy...

obligatory: http://www.thetoasterproject.org

Great idea!