@QuestionMarc this seems to me like a compelling and sustainable roadmap… great idea! it “encodes” some of the principles of my initial post in this thread in a useful and concrete way; thankyou for that!
personally, i agree that your list of 5 improvements are vital to improving market uptake for MOD; there’s certainly a good deal of work in making those improvements, so careful planning and roadmapping would be needed to make it all viable (and attractive to any investors). laying off the hardware for some period, while these other things are addressed also seems like a great idea – take that pressure off for the time being! then improved new sales along with backer fulfillments can work to fill the bank accounts - great!
i believe the DuoX can still be an important “second prong” in the MOD offering, but would need, again, careful planning to make it’s unique capabilities really attractive to it’s potential market; it does have the potential advantage of leveraging a largely alternate user base from the Dwarf. but, yes, no rush to revive it… do it down the road, when things are already well in hand.
the Control Chain protocol seems to me like a really valuable company asset, but was under-developed and under-promoted. personally, i’d vote for putting the Control Chain Arduino Shield back up for sale – surely it’s not too expensive to produce, and could be sold for somewhat more than it was originally? if there was a concurrent effort to promote and maintain the CC library (yes, i know that takes resources!), such that it had the potential to generate more community and third-party engagement which would really highlight its capabilities, then that could help with public awareness/involvement/support as well. then, eventually, it might make sense to jump into the fray with the Expression Pedal and/or other CC hardware, as the market became more clear.
…anyways, thanks again for your thoughts… my ramblings feel like “spitballs on the wall” compared to your concrete ideas!!
And how would you fund all of this development and running the company in the mean time?
I don’t see how an investor would see this as a viable business plan. “we will not generate a single dime of income but will have huge expenses for at least 6 months”
As a DuoX owner I agree that it’s a fantastic device (although it has a couple hardware flaws). However the fact is that currently it’s literally impossible (or at least completely unfeasible) to produce any units. A v3 design was drafted (but not finished) and certain component prices have literally went up 10-fold. You’d have to sell it for well over €1k to make even a slight profit (if you can even obtain the components).
Only after the Dwarf (for which the design is simpler and easier to produce) is well running in wholesale does it make sense to return to DuoX production.
yep… agree about the DuoX! …and thanks for the “reality check” cost numbers! i knew that there were significant cost increases, but didn’t realize the magnitude.
Guys, I think the issue is that you think there isn’t demand for the Dwarf. There definitely is. There are sales ready to be made and no improvements need to be made to the product in order to do that.
The company just needs to be revived with some initial funding to manufacture and get the cloud back online.
I didn’t specify a timeline because that’s part of the business plan that will be brokered. Mod Devices needs cash now to fulfill commitments and pay debtors, but the new entity doesn’t necessarily need revenue now. An investment is made with proper planning for the release of an improved product. That’s standard practice in the market. Before the pandemic hit I was entering a contract that would yield a product in January of 2023. Ero sales and revenue until then.
Most certainly, this initial development phase would take ar least 6 months. Plus restarting production. Plus re-settimg a distributor network. Plus finalising and sending advance units to future resellers, magazines and internet gear video folks. Then – and only then – the commercial release.
Until then, zero revenue. In the business world, you often work with projected revenues.
While there might still be traction for the Mod in the market (Mod folks can weigh on this one), I would be against just sending units out with considerable issues pending improvement.
Moreover, you want to avoid the Osbourne effect: promising that V2 will be better kills V1 today.
That’s an operation paradigm that differs wildly from OSS development, where the sooner an update is published plays to the advantage of users. Updates always are advantageous for users, but a business must time them correctly.
i’m sure there are lots of things i don’t know about and/or don’t understand, but that seems to beg the question of why things “went south” to begin with. the investors at the time surely knew about the existing potential for sales?? so i guess the implication is that they simply weren’t sufficiently convinced about the long-term viability of that sales stream.
so, what we’re trying to do here is come up with new ideas that might yield more long-term confidence? to me, personally, it seems like the ideas from @QuestionMarc do exactly that.
i can’t speak to whether or not any potential new investors might be encouraged or dissuaded by any particularly aspect of his ideas.
I think you already stated multiple times on this thread that you do not believe in the company. So please, let the discussion continue with everybody else because there are different people here with different opinions.
Although I can understand where you’re coming from, I think you should stop and listen to yourself. You’re simply bringing a lot of negativity to the conversation and not helping. Yes, I get it; you don’t agree with a bunch of stuff. Your point has been taken. You have to realize that your words have the power to influence the outcome. You can continue to complain and help bring the party crashing down (even worse than it already is) or you can rethink your attitude and maybe provide some help. It’s all about the attitude. It’s not about your opinion.
I really don’t like the overall attitude you’re showing here in this forum. It’s disrespectful in a lot of ways (not just because you’re frustrated). You have to put in perspective that it’s not just you. People have families that depended on this business and lost everything because of it. Show some respect, will you?
If you have new ideas and something that you can contribute on top of what you already said; by all means, please do it.
“If you have the choice between being right and being kind, choose being kind” (Dr. Wayne W. Dyer)
I’ll preface this by saying that I’m speculating here
There are a lot of factors. I think Gian explained it mostly pretty well in the main updates. Prices, timing, investments falling through, the list goes on. A lack of features is definitely not the culprit though. Understanding and marketing the current features yes. There is definitely room better documentation and usability improvements which would be probably on the near future agenda as they were before.
Also many factors, as Gian stated, open source brought doubt too. In general a lot of people are cautious about hardware right now
Sure, but these are things that have been on the agenda for a long time. I don’t necessarily think investors want to see a bunch of promises of new things to come that might not be achievable. I think more likely what they want now is to narrow the focus and deliver
…total side-note: i might just stop "like"ing things here… it’s a shame that there’s this binary metric attached to people’s genuine attempts to contribute. it has that dangerous combination of being so easy, so blunt, and so lacking in true responsiveness and nuance.
let’s hear each other.
let’s keep discussing.
let’s be expressive and try to learn from each other.
i wish we were all in one room!!
…ok, back to the “previously scheduled programming”… lol
but i also think this bit is a really key new thing in @QuestionMarc 's ideas:
…again, i don’t know enough about business in general, or MOD in particular, but that (along with his ideas about how those develop together) strikes me as more than “a bunch of promises”.
That is exactly how product development works in the real world. Be a new shoe or a new aircraft, you put money in to have gains later on.
To have a continued revenue during this development push period – taking into account that there’s inventory out there, you need to figure out one small thing first: will the new owners want the name and brand Mod Devices in the first place?
The reputation of the business is not exactly shiny right now. The device itself has a name and fame (good or bad), but a corporate takeover must evaluate the risk of undertaking the brand.
The technology is very promising and tried and tested to some extent, but it sits over OSS software that is in dire need of improvement PLUS it lacks a welcoming experience for new users. With that come also IP concerns.
I’m sure that, if someone buys MOD as a whole – including inventory, selling ready units would be a great thing. But if that generates bad reps and decreased demand, investing in further development will go to waste.
In 6 months the new company can sort out production issues AND invest in the one thing that can be fixed right now. Putting money into production tomorrow does nothing to fix Mod.
Therefore, this hiatus makes sense economically, from a marketing standpoint, and can set in motion other revenue generating sources (store) in short time.
Absolutely! But that begs the question as to why it never came to fruition. If the idea was already there and was feasible, why did investors back down? (Aside from the OSS situation?)
If they want to narrow the focus on the Dwarf – understandable and I’d do the same – then they need to provide a Dwarf to the market. How soon can you get 1000 of them out? At what expense?
BUT
You can sit, find component purchases at a good price (it was mentioned by Andreas elseshere) and in the meantime improve the life of current users and make them buy plugins from you for their improved units.
The cloud’s been down for month (?) now. What would you rather hear: “The cloud is under maintenance and will return 1st October (or November) 2022” or not have an idea as to when or if it will come back?
So, investors need to feel they can sell 10000 units in the next 3 years, not only 500 this month.
I am not aware of the inner workings of Mod Devices and how production could be restarted, all I am posting here are IDEAS in the spirit of trying to figure out a way toi reboot the company and make it attractive for users and stakeholders alike.
I’m not sure a survey will answer all the questions, but I did submit my answers. Selling any product is tricky. There is always a price vs. units sold relationship. As the price goes up, fewer people are willing to buy the product. Of course, there is also a dependency on other things, but you can bet that a big company like Boss has dialed in where the optimum price point is for a given product. And given that they can build a huge quantity at once, they are going to achieve the best price points for the product. If their product doesn’t do “X”, they don’t care. Ultimately, they just want to hit their anticipated profits.
On the other end of the spectrum, Looperlative looks to build the best possible products and tries to add in features even 17 years later on the original product. I don’t care if I achieve the best price point. In fact, I know that I can’t. I don’t have the money to invest in building 10k units at a time. I strive to set my prices to avoid taking a loss. People may not believe it, but I don’t usually show a significant profit every year. Fine for a one man business, but not good for a typical small business.
I don’t want to be MOD, I don’t have the time to create a business like that, but I would probably focus on a single platform that is well distinguished from the competition. Can’t beat Boss on price. So, look where you are unique and offer something that people are willing to pay a bit more for. BTW, I have seen this work in other markets and the lesson that I learned is that there are customers out there looking for the best and are willing to pay for it. There is much good in the MOD units. There are things that I would change, but honestly it is a very good product and there just needs to be a focus on creating one good product that works well and offers something much better than the other multieffects units out there. Personally, I would like to see some changes that would better suit looping. In fact, I’d actually be willing to create software that would actually compete with my hardware products, but that is a discussion for after everything is resolved.
Thanks for your inputs @looperlative. I think you touch on a lot of good points based on your experience. I agree with you regarding how the price vs units sold relationship is trickier to get right than it looks. The effects of ±50 bucks are well understood by the big players but really hard to tackle when you’re small. We learned a lot of lessons the hard way, unfortunately.
Although I’m part of the company I’m not really at the forefront of the “new business model” process, that’s up to @gianfranco more than me.
But personally, and I really speak for myself here, I think being a small business that depends on new sales to invest back in more engineering and software releases is not doable unless you’re lucky to create a product that hits some sort of repressed demand which leads to exponential growth. I think it’s already clear that we’re not that lucky. What I think will work is to pivot the business and monetize part of the platform under a subscription model so the numbers add up and the basic expenses of the team are taken care of. That could give the company enough room to grow over time as the user base grows.
Some people will drop ship if you do that, for sure. I listened to a podcast about Noom and how they pivot from a “free for most” to a “pay me first” model and the thinking process they went through. Really interesting. In the end, the founders came to realize that you better off having a product with few users paying a good price for value than one with a lot of users not paying at all.
Personally I can’t imagine what kind of MOD-based prescription I’d care about paying for. There honestly isn’t a single software platform that offers something like this that I’m interested in. In most cases these kind of schemes are a total rip-off for customers.
More so when buying a device that then only holds real value when you subscribe to additional services … is not a fair model to users imo.
I hear you @dreamer, I don’t believe it’s an easy pivot either. The monthly or annual subscription would have to be tied to something that can provide value on a constant basis. There are a few candidates like:
Access to new plugins
Curated pedalboards
Specialized content (lessons / tutorials)
A more user-oriented community portal that enables sharing in some way?
I like those suggestions for the fact that they don’t negatively impact my day-to-day usage of my Dwarf, but if I want some of those things, I’d be willing to pay for them.
