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Umbrellievable was a deep dive into the business aspects of product design. After competitive benchmarking and writing user personas to identify the utility of different features, we designed our own umbrella. This included an engineering model for the joints, a manufacturing cost model, and a business strategy including market analysis, growth projections based on consumer surveys, and a profit and loss model.
Umbrellievable is a high-end umbrella designed for users who want good production quality and more sustainable option. Unlike other umbrellas that are assembled with permanent fixtures and no replacement parts, Umbrellievable incorporates compliant joints into the ribs. If a part breaks, instead of throwing away the entire umbrella, the user can instead snap apart the joints and easily replace the part.
The snap joints and ribs will be injection molded with ABS plastic, a material that can be easily recycled in most plants. The molds will be $12,000 for a one time cost. Additional manufacturing processes involved will be in textiles (canopy), sheet metal forming (shaft), assembly, and packaging. We plan to manufacture in the US which has a median hourly wage of $22 for manufacturing jobs, a large share of the predicted the total manufacturing cost per unit of $26.57. After factoring in costs of warehousing, distribution, and Amazon referral fee, our cost per unit will be an estimated $35.34.
We tested for the optimal mating force of the joints with the goal of creating joints that would not require an unreasonable amount of force for a person to disassemble while still being strong enough to hold up during use. We tested for this value by 3D printing multiple geometries based on a Taguchi table and using measured weights to determine the required force. After analyzing our data we decided to optimize for the time and force to release the snap fit. From here we adjusted the dimensions of the snap joints to ensure the optimal mating force.
After surveying 57 users, we factored our CBC attributes into our marketing model and found that with a single competitor, we would capture 27% of the market and sell an estimated 10.2 million units in our first year.
Given the single-competitor assumption, our expected costs for our first year will be 362 million USD and our revenue will be 518 million USD. Our estimated NPV yearly profits over the next five years total 2.1 billion USD. We will also save on labor costs as we will be conducting sales entirely through online platforms, reducing the need for as many employees.