Thinking of getting into the parts manufacturing business

[hozzziii]

I'd love to give you some real-world advice, but it will just seem like I'm trying to "crush your dreams" and being rude.

Believe me, I'd rather learn from other people's experience. If you'd rather we can go in private messages and I'll tell you all about my situation and why I think it could work, and then you can tell me why it couldn't.

Or if you prefer, this thread is also open and I'm sure people would learn a lot more than me. So, I'm gonna shoot you a pm, you decide how you wanna tell it, deal?

[Vincenze]

Wow. I haven't heard of these guys before. Quick search on here and I didnt see any results, has anyone bought from them before?

They have dealers and sell on eBay.
For example, it's the only company that makes a replacement glass for E30 clusters. I see many companies start to sell it for approximately $70.
Blunttech and Schmiedmann offer it.

[hozzziii]

OP, coming from manufacturing, it's going to be really tough to get into manufacturing. It's crazy to see george graves pop up here! Of everyone in this thread, he have the best advice based on his experience, and I assume he would tell you to not even try.

In my opinion, you're going to run into two main issues. Price - Either you make stuff yourself or have it made in small batches to get very little profit, or send it to be made in China where the minimum order will be massive and you'll have to sink a ton of money into inventory that may not sell just to get a reasonable profit. Replicas - There are plenty of companies out there with deeper pockets that are willing to take a new product, value engineer it to make it easier to produce, and then sell for less than the original designer.

To be successful, you need something that is very difficult to copy or has low enough volume to not be worth the effort.

• There is a guy in CA that rebuilds gauge clusters and AFMs. That service is highly technical and cannot be copied and outsourced. You could collect cracked oil pans for cheap, repair them, and add a baffle before selling them for more. You could design the baffle and order the material from a place like send-cut-send. This would allow you to branch out across makes and models.
• I wanted to Podi gauge cluster for my e30 that would have 2 pods showing 4 readings. Podi stopped making them and I ultimately bought a reproduction of an Alpina gauge setup. You could design/assemble the brains of the system that could read/output a variety of sensor values, and then design unique housings for different platforms. Perhaps copy designs of NLA tuning companies for different platforms.

Here are some things that people are making. Maybe they give you an idea:

https://stim.tech/

https://zada-tech.com/

https://www.e30ig.com/

On thise two issues I do agree they will absolutely need to be addressed.
On price, I think I can make it work. As I said, I don't live in the US; minimum wage in my country is ~100$ a month. Now imagine how much cheaper it is to machine parts.

On replicas, I agree with you. The part has to be complicated enough that either it would be too expensive to copy or they outright couldn't do it.

For example I am familiar with E30IG, I'm interested in a buying a couple of their stuff for myself. But I sure as heck cannot copy their work. I don't know electronics, I can't write code. Now something like that maybe checks those boxes, at least for me I can't compete.

However, mudflaps are pretty simple and people can easily copy them. But still, I think it could be a simple enough starting point. Then again it might blow up in my face and I'd be left with many many products I can't sell

[E30 Wagen]

Jordan offered the factory to buy as many dashboards as they could produce.
There was no reply.

It doesn't look complicated from inside.

It's such a shame that BMW isn't producing new dashes any more, they really were extremely nice! It's crazy that back in the day you could buy them brand new for like $600, and I think were *only* $1200 before they were NLA. I bet if BMW did a big run of them and priced them at ~$2000 they would have no problem selling them all eventually. They're an essential piece of the interior and such an iconic part of the e30 in my opinion. Makes me wonder what BMW's biggest obstacle is, though I've worked in manufacturing so I understand it's no small task getting production going. A part might not look very complicated but nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Could be that they simply ran out of space to store all the tooling so it got recycled :( I wonder if old dashes themselves could be recycled somehow, like if somebody could make a mold/jig that utilized the dash core to mechanize the production of new units instead of rebuilding each dash by hand like justdashes does.

Another product idea would be exterior side moldings but not just a reproduction. I'd do a redesign to mimic the appearance of the e36 M3 style to flow better with the e30 bumper trim, which I saw somebody do a long time ago actually.

[digger]

Proper door seals for a 2D would be good

[Vincenze]

On price, I think I can make it work. As I said, I don't live in the US; minimum wage in my country is ~100$ a month. Now imagine how much cheaper it is to machine parts.

If salaries are $100, then get into the restoration business.

People may send under a press classic BMWs in pretty good conditions because body shops and mechanics want enormous money.

Watch this guy restoring a rusted BMW. He fabricates many parts.

Restoration of an old BMW from the 80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1lsz2elIAA