EEVBlog BM235 Multimeter Dilemma

[idpromnut]

Why not simply post a question in the forum (Buy & Sell perhaps?) asking people to vote if they are interested in buying a meter. At the least it will give you an order of magnitude on how many you should be thinking of buying.

[Errmy]

Why not simply post a question in the forum (Buy & Sell perhaps?) asking people to vote if they are interested in buying a meter. At the least it will give you an order of magnitude on how many you should be thinking of buying.

This is a great idea. I would order this scope, even with high shipping costs, just cause of the EEVblog logo. 

[rsjsouza]

Dave, do you have any details on how the battery life was determined? Did you put it through a mixed use of capacitance, backlight, regular functions (V/A/R), continuity or did an estimate of the average power consumption versus a specific battery charge?

I left it running in MIN/MAX mode until the low battery indicator came on.
I used the backlight and various functions a few times.

Thank you, Dave. And thanks for the clarification on the video as well.

I am SHOCKED that you did not included the battery life specification with and without the batterizer, though. 

[Brumby]

I am SHOCKED that you did not included the battery life specification with and without the batterizer, though. 

I might have been disappointed too - if the darned things had been shipped.

[EEVblog]

Why not simply post a question in the forum (Buy & Sell perhaps?) asking people to vote if they are interested in buying a meter. At the least it will give you an order of magnitude on how many you should be thinking of buying.

Because that only gets the forum people (and the ones that see the thread, a relatively small percentage of my audience.

[ataradov]

Because that only gets the forum people (and the ones that see the thread, a relatively small percentage of my audience.

But creating a short video and pointing to that poll will cover most of the people? You would have to conduct it using some external service with no registration required, of course.

[zaoka]

Preorders first, then teardown   

[billfernandez]

Hi Dave, I've been thinking about your initial questions and would like to share some thoughts:

1. Is your custom EEVBlog meter will be coming out in a couple of months, or is that just when you want to start a crowdfunding campaign?  If the former, will people want to buy that instead of the Bryman?  If the latter, are people likely to hold off on buying a new meter until the custom EEVBlog meter comes out?

2. A crowdfunding campaign is something you participate because you want something that doesn't exist to be brought into existence.  The Bryman meter already exists, and you have some you could sell, so it doesn't seem right as a crowdfunding project.  It seems more like a group buy with a really long lead-time.  Is *this* meter something that lots of people would wait that long for?  I kind of doubt it, since there are so many similar meters on the market that can be obtained quickly and easily.

3. Is this something you want to offer long term as a product on your sales site?  If so, then maybe you should order some more, do a video when they come in, and in the meantime sell only to customers you reach via the forum (or who browse your website).  If it's not really something you want to offer long term, then why order any more than the 175 you have?

[Brumby]

With the effort that Dave has put into getting this meter together, it would seem only natural to maximise the benefit of that effort.  More sales means more benefit - that bit is simple.

The difficulty, as I see it, is to match the supply to the demand.  Oversupply leads to too much capital tied up in stock that you either have to ride out over time or take a cut in profits in order to reclaim capital, not to mention the opportunity cost.  Undersupply could lead to loss of interest due to long lead times.  Finding the balance is the magic trick of any distribution channel.

The idea of the crowd funding approach - as I understood it - was to reduce the capital outlay risk and to determine some concrete idea of demand by getting people to commit some real money up front.  Asking people if they'd be interested will get a lot more hands put up than will actually be digging into their wallets.  It may not be the traditional style of campaign in the purist sense - but if you consider that this would bring a product to a larger range of customers than might otherwise be viable, then I feel there is some merit.


Whether this is the best way to go is, as I see it, Dave's question.

The alternative is to take a punt on how much capital you want to commit and pray you're somewhere in the right zone of the supply/demand equation.

One element that complicates this equation is the fact that it is an EEVblog branded product which will create a lot of interest in itself - but the question is: "What increase in demand will that bring?"

[crispy_tofu]

Because that only gets the forum people (and the ones that see the thread, a relatively small percentage of my audience.

But creating a short video and pointing to that poll will cover most of the people? You would have to conduct it using some external service with no registration required, of course.

Strawpoll, maybe? 

[alex89]

Hey Dave, please add the shipment option to Italy !   

[Monkeh]

Hey Dave, please add the shipment option to Italy !   

You should probably complain to your local postal service instead.

http://auspost.com.au/parcels-mail/pack-and-track-international.html

[samgab]

Is the hold button a sort of "touch hold" or is it just a screen freeze? (I tried downloading the PDF manual linked in the original post, but it was just a title page, lots of blank pages in the middle, then a couple of photos of the internals and the warranty page at the end.)

Edit: Scratch that question. I found the answer myself in the updated version of the manual in which the contents are actually populated: http://www.eevblog.com/files/BM235-Manual-EEVblog.pdf
It's a screen freeze only. Pity.
Interesting to see that all the protection circuitry is on a separate daughter board.

[rollatorwieltje]

Came across another great branding idea:

http://www.ehx.com/products/9v-battery

Seems like a no-brainer, this multimeter needs to be shipped with a Dave branded battery. Could even ship a few of them to Batterizer for their promo videos

[Muxr]

I support this idea!

[nctnico]

I think I should get another batch under way now so I'm not caught short, but how many?
Obviously I have to pay for them now, so I can't just buy a thousand, that's very serious cash up front on my part  and a big risk.

What say you?

How well would it work if you use the sales volume of the uCurrent to determine how quick your product sell and base ordering new batches of the multimeter on that? You have to start somewhere so turn it into a math problem and use the information you have to solve it. You'll need to keep a few on hand for replacements anyway (parcels lost, DOA units, etc).

[Dragon88]

Dave, where are the price breaks for order quantities? 160 will sell out almost instantly but 1000 sure sounds like a lot. Probably about $60k up front for you? Several months to sell them out and recoup...

Would Brymen be willing to take half now, half later for a large shipment? Surely this is good PR for them, I didn't even know about Brymen until you talked about their meters on your blog. The same must be true for many of your audience.

[Tim F]

Perhaps a pre-ordering system where the buyers pay a refundable deposit inversely proportional to how long it takes to backorder?

I.e. people pay 30% deposit for the opportunity to buy one in 2 months time or a 15% deposit to buy one in 4 months time, etc. If buyers want to back out of the purchase between pre-ordering and the stock arriving from Brymen then you just use the excess stock in the next shipment and reduce your next order size from Brymen.

[Bud]

I'd say do not buy large quantity right now, sell what you got and see if any complains/bugs pop up. You said this is a new model, this is a risk.

[envisionelec]

There's the distribution model which might do well if you send a bulk shipment to a willing participant in the USA.

[mos6502]

Seems like a nice meter. Is the backlight auto-off really 10 minutes and not 10 seconds? If so, that is a really great feature! Virtually every other meter annoyingly shuts the light off after 1 minute at the most.

[Spamlobster]

Shipping to just 26 countries? What the bloody.

We need a fail-button equivalent of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2qQIR1jZxw&feature=youtu.be&t=12

[PedroDaGr8]

Shipping to just 26 countries? What the bloody.

We need a fail-button equivalent of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2qQIR1jZxw&feature=youtu.be&t=12

Remember, this is not technically live yet for the general forum. Even though the link leaked out, it is not intended for the general publix, only the supporter forum. He is still debugging and testing international shipping.

[crispy_tofu]

Shipping to just 26 countries? What the bloody.

We need a fail-button equivalent of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2qQIR1jZxw&feature=youtu.be&t=12

Remember, this is not technically live yet for the general forum. Even though the link leaked out, it is not intended for the general publix, only the supporter forum. He is still debugging and testing international shipping.

IIRC it's on the EEVBlog shop now.

[QuantumLogic]

Yup, it's in the shop and I just bought one to support Dave. 

I agree with most of the rest of the people here to not crowd fund.  Get them in batches (of 100 or 200) and ship out when they come. 
Even back-orders can get to be a PITA because some people don't READ and lose their sh#t when they "discover" the meter they ordered isn't in stock and won't be shipped for 60 days (then 14+ days more to wait for shipping to them).
Hopefully once the 1st batch sells out the profit from those can be used to help buy the next batch and so on.  At some point, the money used to buy the next batch of 100-200 won't feel like as much of a strain on the bank account.
Yes, some people will be angry, but if anything happens to the supply (factory explodes, whatever), you aren't caught with back-orders needing refunds.