The Comfy Cup Chronicle Part 4: Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Help. How We Found a Factory to Man
"If the original plan doesn't work, change the plan, but never the goal."
As luck would have it, my cousin's father-in-law, Tony, owns a company in California, Austin Enterprises Inc., that turns ideas into products. With resources in Newport Beach, Hong Kong, Sydney & Amsterdam, Tony and Austin Enterprises was able to meet our manufacturing needs. We emailed Tony the CAD of Kyler's comfortable cup invention and mailed him the prototype Kyler and I developed in our dining room. Tony took the items to China on his next business trip and met with factories and manufacturers to get quotes on production costs. He returned with some not-so-great news. Manufacturing Kyler's comfortable athletic cup would require the construction of a special machine with a hefty price tag costing tens of thousands of dollars. Ouch! We were deflated. All this work and money invested and we were stopped cold in our tracks.
Tony had some good news too: His contacts in China shared some new materials that could make Kyler's comfortable athletic cup easier and cheaper to manufacture while still maintaining the lightweight, flexible, force-distributing properties of his original design. Just before Halloween 2015, we met with Tony at my cousin's house and he shared the materials with us. We sat around my cousin's dining room table looking over the new materials...I could see Kyler's wheels spinning with new ideas. He was more willing to be adaptable than I was. I loved his original idea. I wanted to keep everything the same. Kyler (and his dad) were excited about the new materials and saw potential that I couldn't see.
I am beginning to think our best ideas happen around dining room tables.
