Okay. We heard you. Let's give this Lock-Top a chance to
make a difference in an indifferent world full of creamer theft. In this post,
I am going to break down what we have learned, what we are doing now, what we
are thinking about doing in the future, and what you can do to stop unjust
creamer theft.
Let me start out by saying thanks to everyone that responded
to our first blog post with your stories of creamer theft. And a special thanks
to the lucky three winners of the prototypes. There was more family-on-family
creamer theft than I would have expected. Some stories were just crazy. What we
learned was that there are some serious creamer-thieving jerks out there! This
all started as a little tongue-and-cheek. I just wanted to get rid of my three
prototypes without having to throw them away and thought it would get a few
laughs. The Coffee Mate Creamer Lock-Top pages quickly became the most visited
on this site. I can't believe the response we got.
And then there was Heather. I think Heather is dead y'all!
Seriously, her own mother was poisoning her (read the responses on the other
post). I responded to her personally and offered to make her just one Lock-Top
given her urgent situation and never heard anything back. After writing her, I
decided to dig back though my old design files and bins of hardware to see what
I could find from this old project. Lo and behold, I found almost everything I
needed to make another one. I also found some guilt deep in that bin of nut and
bolts. Guilt from knowing I could have saved poor Heather’s life had I only
made more of these Lock-Tops. So, for a limited time, we are making more. And
maybe saving a few lives in the process.
To answer one question that we kept getting: Will we
share/sell the STL or design files so that others can just print them at home?
The short answer is: No. I am not keen on giving away something that took me
hundreds of hours designing. I also pay for premium CAD software and hardware
to make this stuff, which cost in excess of $10k. It’s just not smart for us to
give away the design files (or sell them cheap). And once the design files get
out, they will surely spread across the internet. Last point on this: You won’t
save any money making these yourself even if you have a 3D printer. These
require some stainless hardware for the hinge (two washers, a bolt, and a nut),
all of which you will have to buy in packs of 25 or 50pcs, and the lock. We
also put red Loctite on the hardware so it doesn’t back out and use super glue
to hold on a security cap so nobody can take out the hinge bolt with an Allen
wrench (creamer thieves are clever and determined). So, by the time you purchase
all the materials and lock needed to make a single Lock-Top and pay for
separate shipping and handling, you will be spending more than $50 just to make
one!
The Lock-Top was initially designed for my own use, and as
such, I didn’t care how long it took to print or how much it cost. I just
needed to stop the creamer theft! But making these takes a long time and isn’t
practical as-is. Also, after getting great feedback on the survey, it looked
like people were only willing to pay around $20 for these (thanks for all that
submitted responses). On the upside, everyone was cool with these being 3D
printed! Given all that, I set to work to take some cost and labor out of
these. I did a little redesign and added some scallops around the perimeter to
take out some material and speed up the printing, which still takes nearly 14-hours
just to make one! Then I had to do some tricky work designing better support
structures to improve the finish quality and cut down on post-processing labor.
I was placing an order for some other materials and added on three nice little
Master Lock 646D locks on there to get free shipping (Master Lock is an
American company but these are made in China- sorry!). Next, I jumped on the
amazing sale that Atomic Filament runs every once in a while, to get a “mystery
box” of random short spools of printer material. Lastly, we have setup an
account with the US Postal Service to offer a more affordable shipping option.
We can’t control the cost of shipping and don’t get any sort of discount given
our paltry volume. And the cost to ship this UPS can be almost $20! All of
these things got things close enough to make these at a price I hope people
will pay to stymie their creamer thieves.
It had been years since I printed the last ones. And since
then, we have acquired new printer, software, and materials. So, the first few
we printed were terrible and got tossed right into the trash. I am still
working on refining some things to make the printed clamshell look better. As I
work on these refinements, we are making some less than perfect ones that are
just okay, but perfectly functional. For a limited time, we are going to
sell these “less and perfect” prints at a discount for those that can tolerate
a little imperfection and just want to lock down their creamer. The colors will
also be varying as we go through the mystery box and we can’t guarantee what
color you will be getting. This first test batch is a lovely “Sweet” color,
which looks like a creamy light pink and kinda makes you want to drink coffee
with creamer.
Let me be honest here, we are partly doing this because we
need reviews! We don’t have a single product review on our website. And the
Lock-Top seems like the best way to get a few reviews. If people aren’t happy
with these 3D printed Lock-Tops, and we get negative reviews, we will stop making
and selling them. And we are making these at a loss. So, please be reasonable
with your expectations on cost! We are only selling three to start with to see
how it goes (that is all the locks we have anyway). If we get some good
reviews, and people keep the funny (but also infuriating and sometimes
troubling) blog responses coming, we will order more locks and keep making
more. We will be sending out an email to everyone that responded to initial
blog post to give them first dibs on this limited time offer.
We are only going to make these as-is until we run out of materials or our printer dies, whichever comes first. In the future, we need to figure out how to make these more economically. If they are going to remain a 3D printed product, they will need to be redesigned to make the print time faster and the finish quality better. If we are going to pony up for tooling and make them injection molded, we need to do a serious redesign for manufacturing. No matter what, it is going to take a big investment in time and maybe money to keep this going beyond this current limited time offer. We also can’t control the design of Coffee Mate’s container, which could change at any time. So, no guarantees that these will stick around and you should get yours today!
Copyright Hidgit, Inc. All Rights Reserved.