I Don’t Get Why People Keep Making These
Have you been making the same old signs, cutting boards, and coasters and not seeing the sales results you want? For me, I started my business making cutting boards. But let's be real, the cutting board Market is super saturated! And I know you want to make something different, because the number one question I get is, “What do I make to sell?”. So that's why today I'm sharing three fresh projects. And more importantly, the workflow that I've discovered and that I used to develop them, and that you can steal and develop your next bestselling projects.
So the first project of the three is a chair. Now this may seem weird, but I had a couple criteria that I was trying to follow for each product. One was it had to be functional, two it needed to look good, and three it would be really good if it was something I was passionate about making. I think that's really important too. So I've been playing around with AI lately and designing weird chairs, and I'm like you know what, I'd like to make one of these. So again, built-in demand, people need chairs.
The second idea is a baseball scoreboard. Now this was influenced by Eric, my content manager, and we were thinking about an idea of a vintage baseball scoreboard. Think like the green monster at Fenway Park, something along those lines. And I thought that was really intriguing! So we brainstormed different ways on how to make it functional, not just a wall decor piece, so that was the second idea that we were going to run with.
The third idea was a calendar. It's like a perpetual calendar, I think they call them. I've seen these around, they're really really cool, and this actually came from my wife. My wife's like,” Hey, I would like one of these.” These are really really cool. So one, it's functional, it looks cool as far as a piece of decor, and my wife wants it. Why not make something unique?
So those were the three project ideas that we brainstormed and came up with, all from different kinds of influences. They hit those three criteria of functionality, it looks good, and a personal interest or a passion behind it. So once I had the idea and the concept worked out for these three new products, I was able to get the designs done in less than 24 hours. That's right, let me tell you a little bit of a secret.
So utilizing Fiverr’s freelancers, super talented freelancers, to get your design. I literally just gave them the design concept, hey this is what I'm thinking, this is what I want, and they're able to work it up in CAD or Vectric for me. And within 24 hours I utilized three different designers, and they sent back those designs to me.
This is super powerful because you're able to speed up the entire process, and it saved me so much time! Where it normally would have taken me a week to do these three projects myself, I had them back and done and was able to analyze and tweak them in less than 24 hours. Having these projects drawn up in front of me in Vectric, I was really able to visualize and jump in to these actual designs, not just from a concept point of view, which was the first time around.
Now it's deciding what materials am I going to use. Is there painting involved? Is there any other finishing involved like sanding? What tool paths? Right, all those different indepth things. And ultimately, what is going to be the most profitable and have the most sales success?
So after this, I decided to move forward with the baseball scoreboard. I'm really excited to make that project, and this was one of the leading factors of it. I just think it is a cool, unique piece! Trying to create something that we're passionate about and is sellable, that's the ultimate goal, where those things cross. The other two projects are good, and I still have those files and plan on making them one day, but I'm going to run with the baseball scoreboard.
So next, let's break down what I've got into this project. So it took me about a day to make. Now I think that it can be done faster. One thing that would make it go a lot faster is a paint sprayer. I hand painted and rolled the entire thing, and making a bunch of these you definitely would want to invest in a nice paint sprayer setup. So material cost, I have a total of $85 into building this. That is $50 in plywood, $20 in paint, $10 in acrylic, and $5 into consumables. So those are my hard costs to actually create this.
So the question is, what would I sell this for? So doing a lot of market research that I mentioned before, the number that I've come to is $400.Now I know you're gasping right now, but here's the thing, this doesn't need to appeal to a mass market. This is a niche product that I don't need a ton of sales. Now I'd take a million sales on this item, but let's just think about it for a second. Selling a hundred of these at $400 a piece is $40,000 in revenue. We looked up a few statistics, there were 71 million people that attended a major league baseball game in 2024. 71 million people pulled money out of their pocket to attend an MLB game.
So if we sell this beautiful 7-year-old cutting board, my original, at a $40 price point how many would you have to sell if we sell that for $400? That is 10 times, so we would have to sell 10 of these to make the same amount of revenue to sell one of those. The interesting thing is when you start talking about the number of sales, it is harder to make 10 sales than it is one sale. Yeah, higher ticket items are harder to sell, but I would actually argue they're easier to sell in front of the right people. So cutting boards, it is a super saturated market. I'm not saying you can't make money with cutting boards, but I think the scoreboard is definitely a more efficient and profitable way to make money.
All right, I want to make sure I answer all the questions, because I'm sure you're thinking “who are we going to sell this to Andy, who is going to buy this?”. Well we can sell it to men who are passionate about baseball in their man cave, office decor they can hang in their office. The other thing is baby nurseries, older kids decor, there are so many possibilities with something like this! It is one of a kind and people are willing to spend that much money for something that is one of a kind. The other point that's really important here is that these scoreboards are completely customizable! They're personalizable, so you could put someone's name on top of it, you could model one after a ballpark, specifically maybe someone has a favorite ballpark. There are so many powerful ways to customize this to drive sales and drive profits, so don't sleep on this Fiverr workflow.
