Who would I call?

So, say I wanted to take a forum members idea, and make it a business. What kind of machine would I buy or what kind of shop should I call to have say 1000 sockets made? Half "standard" and half "deep"? All the same size, or maybe 3 sizes.

I guess easy button would just be "get on the phone with a chinese manufacturing company" but I'd like them to be not garbage. Not necessarily Snap On or Mac quality, but better than HF.

I know where I can get boxes to put them in, and I can have a website up selling them in no time, but I don't know who or where I should be calling to source them.

Honestly, I could probably make my money back just selling them to you guys, but there's obviously a big open market of people out there that would buy them, they just aren't offered.

You may have to buy your own machinery. I would imagine the nation's 10mm equipment is already running around the clock.

I have no input in this other than to say I'm interested in what you're thinking of making.

Chinese manufacturers are not all garbage. You need to put the time in to finding a good manufacturer. Yes, this is work. The SEMA show is a good place to find them. That's actually what the SEMA show is for. PRI might be preferred these days, as it's not clogged by tourists.

I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "half standard and half deep". If you mean a mid-length socket, they exist.

Wall-e wrote: You may have to buy your own machinery. I would imagine the nation's 10mm equipment is already running around the clock.

What kind of fancy tool would I need to make sockets though? If round sockets weren't useless, I could see a drill press. Maybe a CNC machine?

Keith: Half regular short size, and half deep well.

I think he wants to make half of the sockets deep, and half of the normal.

I'm an engineer. I would draw up a print and some solid specs and send it everywhere.

Saying "hey Chinese dude, make me a socket" is what gives bad reputations to everyone. Specify properly and control the process (and/or use a foundry who cares about their work/reputation) and it's all good,

you need a forge. It's not easy or cheap to buy one. The capital outlay is big and over time you'll get money back, but there are some volume calculations you'll need to handle to figure out where that point is.

Keith Tanner wrote: Chinese manufacturers are not all garbage....

As noted. They can pretty much make stuff as nice as you like and want to pay for. The problem is most don't want to pay for it and they can go VERY cheap!

RevRico wrote:

Wall-e wrote: You may have to buy your own machinery. I would imagine the nation's 10mm equipment is already running around the clock.

What kind of fancy tool would I need to make sockets though? If round sockets weren't useless, I could see a drill press. Maybe a CNC machine? Keith: Half regular short size, and half deep well.

So, a normal socket set then. I don't get it. I'm missing something fundamental. Or are we talking about a different type of socket and not the depth?

You could sell it through Lowes. I don't think they have their revolutionary tool set for the 2017 shopping season :)

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Wall e kinda gave it away, selling boxes of JUST 10mm sockets. maybe 12 and 14 because I can never find a 14 when I need it either.

I figure a box of 20, 10 standard sized, 10 deepwell, for a fair to be determined price. So people can lose a whole box at once instead of just a single socket.

Tuna has me thinking and researching casting them now. I used to drink with a guy that has a small foundry in his shop, guess I gotta get in touch with him to at least make a few tests. If they don't fall apart at first use, might even be able to go full production.

I gotta say, this forum on top of giving me terrible ideas for my vehicles, is forcing me to reach out to lots of old friends. Not a bad thing.

As Tuna mentions, I think for sockets you're talking forgings. Forget about investing in the manufacturing capacity to make the widgets yourself, that is going to be hugely expensive. You need to look at sourcing them from a contract manufacturer, whether in China or domestically. There is still likely going to be some (possibly significant) hard tooling investment up front to build the dies or whatever (I'm honestly not terribly familiar with forgings and associated tooling), but your break even is going to come at many fewer units sold.

Your first step should be getting a set of engineering drawings, tolerances, material specs, and some kind of a business plan together that estimates batch sizes and annual usage based off of your projected market in order to effectively shop your widgets around to manufacturers.

In reply to RevRico:

Forged not cast, big difference in strength.

RevRico wrote: In reply to Keith Tanner: Wall e kinda gave it away, selling boxes of JUST 10mm sockets. maybe 12 and 14 because I can never find a 14 when I need it either. I figure a box of 20, 10 standard sized, 10 deepwell, for a fair to be determined price. So people can lose a whole box at once instead of just a single socket. Tuna has me thinking and researching casting them now. I used to drink with a guy that has a small foundry in his shop, guess I gotta get in touch with him to at least make a few tests. If they don't fall apart at first use, might even be able to go full production. I gotta say, this forum on top of giving me terrible ideas for my vehicles, is forcing me to reach out to lots of old friends. Not a bad thing.

I'd go for a different solution. Contact Craftsman/Cobalt/Husky/SK/whoever and see if they'll sell you sockets in bulk in just one size. Then you let them take care of manufacturing and the warranty.

A "fair" price will always be less than your cost Which is what leads people to the lowest cost overseas supplier in the first place...

Or you sell socket rails. I have yet to lose a 10mm socket.

Hmm.. Things to look into. Maybe just start buying them from a producer and reselling them before getting all manufactury.

We were talking about it yesterday around the smoker, then while the priest was doing his thing this morning, I occupied myself thinking about how to make it work. It's been mentioned here before, and by pretty much every person I've known who works on cars at some point, but no one, that I'm aware of, has ever actually done anything with the idea. And with my longing desire to never punch a time clock again, I'm always open to new ways of trying to make money.

Even selling like a "stick" or socket bar or whatever they're called of just a single size would be nice in a pinch.

My first thought was buy 100 socket sets, and sell each size in the set in packs of 10, but that would take up a lot of space and probably cost more than calling Kobalt or Stanley or whoever and asking for 1000 of one size. Not to mention, who needs 10 6.5mm? I'd have lots of extra bits sitting around being wasted potential.

Yea, didn't see your last post before my first but Kieth is probably right. I think your upfront costs would be way less going that route.

Strangely enough, I too have yet to lose a 10mm socket. The rarely used 16mm seems to be my bugaboo, as I don't use them often but seem to have an extraordinary habit of breaking them whenever I do.

Your competition:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000NY7A10/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2/190-1515730-7501351?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_r=ZJAHMNBBDRGB276X57TQ&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1944687602&pf_rd_i=B000NY6RBY

It's been a long time but I don't think I've seen a set of dies go for less than $40K ever, so that's my bare probably-not-even-a-real-number min. So double it or so for the back of the napkin. You need to make $80K profit, account for marketing, shipping, handling, overhead and such before you break even. Even if you make two bucks on each socket, you're selling way more than the market can bear before you start making money.

So Keith probably has the right idea. Cann these guys and ask what type of discount they'll offer for buying bulk.

In reply to Brokeback:

Hmmm $4 each... I'm thinking a 10 pack for $20-25, depending on my cost obviously.

Amazon has a program I'm still unfamiliar with, where you can ship a pallet of goods to their warehouse, they list, ship, and sell in exchange for a small cut.

If I could send them boxes of 10 or 20, and let them handle the hard part, it add another mouth to feed along the way but cuts down a lot of bs.

Supposedly I missed the big drop ship sales money, but there are still plenty of people doing alright through this. I'm still researching it though, I think it's called "Amazon pba".

I was hoping for this to be some kind of Ghostbusters review thread. As far as sockets, now I'm on 17mm wrenches. It's always the oil drain plug size that vanishes.

With 1000 sockets, it's not worth the custom tooling costs - forging dies are expensive. I would simply go to an established socket manufacturer and put in a request for quote for off the shelf sockets. Most of the Chinese ones can be found on alibaba.com; US based ones are often best looked for directly.

You can 3D print metal these days. For production time it's not ideal, but for prototyping items to exact expectations of quality expected in final production, it's ideal.

captdownshift wrote: You can 3D print metal these days. For production time it's not ideal, but for prototyping items to exact expectations of quality expected in final production, it's ideal.

You would still need finish machining for the hex and drive, so you still have to have a couple of broaching operations.

Per my current experience, you can print with the strength of a casting but not a forging.

Also 3D metal printers of this caliber are way more expensive than a lot of forging dies.

Yea the metal 3d "printer" I was looking at is in the high 6 figures to start, but it does do great work. All lasers and powdered metal.

A little googling found a garagejournal thread from a few years ago with some places to contact. I'm not doing actual work today at all, between my hangover and the baby I just can't. Google just seems to think I want to buy bulk SOCKS, but should get me to sales departments.

I'm going to call a few places throughout the week and see if I can get 100 or 500 as a start, then figure it out from there.

$4 retail, I'm going to go out on a limb and say wholesale would be $3 or maybe less. I'm sure if I made a huge order I could get better prices, but between the concrete, the house maintenance, and this being my slow month, I'm stretched pretty thin money wise right now.

I'm wondering how my "exploit google rankings for ad money" background will tie to selling a legitimate product. A LOT has changed in page ranking, and I'm out of the loop, but a worthwhile product at a good price shouldn't be too difficult. Already have hosting, checkout apps, and all that fun stuff. Might knock a website out later once the baby goes to bed, just to have a base map to add pictures to.

In reply to RevRico:

Us this the bullet box of 10mm sockets that I mentioned in the Minor Rant thread?

Now I'm going to have to one-up you with a Pez dispenser of sockets.

I know that I'll be flamed for saying it, but the HF Pittsburgh-pro series 1/4" drive sockets are quite good for the price. I have yet to break one, loosing them is the problem.

Seems to me that your big competition would be the guys selling sockets at swap meets and yard sale. Generally I see new Craftsman sockets sold for $2-4 each. Used sockets of any name sell for $0.25 -2 each.

So many Craftsman sockets are sold loose that it seems Sears or the manufacturer of Craftsman knowingly sells in bulk to yard sale venders.