Techcrunch: Going It Alone, Part III: Inside the Factory Walls
Posted by on under sba loan program, gourmet stores, kitchen timer, cornell university, digital kitchen, twitter, prior knowledge, working knowledge, mechanical engineering, facets, entrepreneur, us government, mba, bs, third party, creati, boxes, perspective, audience, chi | 
Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government's SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam's writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here. Part III of the Going It Alone series will answer the question: What is a factory and how can I tell one from another? I will answer the question from a consumer electronics perspective and I will assume an audience that has little or no prior knowledge of manufacturing. The purpose of this article will be to try to introduce the burgeoning entrepreneur to the basic components of electronics manufacturing in China. I will do this in the context of manufacturing the simple electronic product shown below - a digital kitchen timer that we call the Klip! This is an item that we sell at The Container Store chain and at gourmet stores across the United States. I chose this product because, while relatively simple, it still encompasses all of the major facets (noted in the white boxes) of manufacturing a mass-produced electronic item of greater complexity. I'll start with a little background, then I'll give a very basic overview of each manufacturing sub-process and I'll conclude with a summary that will serve to make your first visit to a third-party manufacturing facility more effective and productive. Armed with the knowledge from this post you should be able to walk into an Asian plant for the first time and have the basic working knowledge that you need to converse intelligently about the creation of your item.
Tagi: sba loan program, gourmet stores, kitchen timer, cornell university, digital kitchen, twitter, prior knowledge, working knowledge, mechanical engineering, facets, entrepreneur, us government, mba, bs, third party, creati, boxes, perspective, audience, chi
It's been an emotional journey, friends, but I think we've found that our attachment to these gadgets of yore is not merely a sentimental one. Indeed, many commenters have chimed in to let us know that some of these devices are still in use in their households. Admirable! We'll be adding to the series as time goes on and more of our tech lapses into "nostalgia" status, but here's a little summary of our memories so far.
We would like to take a minute to thank all of our amazing sponsors! Tickets are still available for our NYC event, 
I’ve long argued that great entrepreneurs are born not made. I emphasize the word "great" for a reason. A hot market can convince someone to become an entrepreneur but such fortune-seekers are rarely the ones who build lasting, billion-dollar companies. What about those who say they never intended to start a company but circumstances lead them to success? I’d argue that they may not have always realized they were entrepreneurs, but if you asked their friends, parents and siblings, they would describe them as having always been the kid with the lemonade stand, the kid working an angle, the kid creating something where there was nothing. Like a cylon, something just switched it on later. Seeing an idea through to become something huge is too hard. You simply have it or you don’t. One person has made me question this—a bit. I met him in Indonesia and like Madonna, he’s mostly known by one name—Ciputra.
Tomorrow Yahoo will announce a relaunch of Yahoo Profiles and their "all in" integration with Facebook Connect, including on the Yahoo home page. We've all known 