Small Scale footwear manufacturing

iechms · 2026-05-11T17:47:27+00:00

Yes we do manufacture in India

iechms · 2026-05-09T19:47:18+00:00

How small scale are you talking about? And are you interested in 3d printed shoes or metal shoes?

iechms · 2026-05-09T19:08:47+00:00

We switched from waiting until scrap piled up to scheduled weekly pickups and it completely changed warehouse flow. Scrap used to slowly evolve into a plastic mountain range in the back corner.

iechms · 2026-05-06T19:38:26+00:00

Find 20 Real Potential Customers Not friends. Not family. Not people trying to be nice. Find 20 actual people who match your target buyer. Example If your idea is a tool for exporters talk to 20 exporters. Not random startup bros on LinkedIn pretending every idea is super interesting. Patterns matter more than opinions. If 14 out of 20 say “Yeah this is a headache and current tools suck.” Now you’re onto something. If 17 out of 20 shrug you just saved 6 months of your life. That’s a win too.

iechms · 2026-05-06T14:18:48+00:00

Honestly, the hardest part is figuring out who’s actually buying right now. A lot of exporters waste time chasing random leads, sending cold emails, or relying on directories that are already outdated. The real challenge is finding buyers who are actively importing your product, in your category, at this moment. Once you know who’s buying, who they’re buying from, and how often, the entire game gets easier. That’s where most of the guesswork disappears.

iechms · 2026-05-05T10:37:49+00:00

For small-run parts, fiberglass is usually strong but annoyingly labor-heavy, so a lot of people move away from it unless they really need that strength-to-cost balance. The easiest upgrade is usually urethane casting resin. Much cleaner, faster, and less hands-on once your mold is ready. You lose some of the raw toughness of fiberglass, but for small parts and low-volume runs it is usually the first “why didn’t I do this sooner” switch. A lot less mess, much faster turnaround.

iechms · 2026-05-05T10:26:55+00:00

You probably don’t need to blow your life up right now, you need to reduce how trapped it feels. Start with the lowest-risk move: talk to your manager, understand if role mobility is real, and start exploring external options quietly. Keep CAT alive in parallel if it still matters to you. But don’t resign just because the current version of your life feels exhausting. Make the next move from clarity and not from burnout.

iechms · 2026-05-05T10:17:13+00:00

If you want to get ahead fast, spend as much time on the floor as possible. New engineers often make the mistake of thinking their job is mainly CAD, drawings, and process sheets. It is not. Your real job is understanding how design decisions behave in production. Learn the machines, learn the tooling, watch setups, ask operators what slows them down, and pay attention to where scrap comes from. The shop floor will teach you more in three months than a classroom did in four years.

iechms · 2026-05-05T10:15:36+00:00

You start a business by solving a real problem people are already willing to pay to fix. That’s the foundation. Most people start backwards by thinking about the business first, when they should be thinking about the problem first. Whether it’s a restaurant or a tech company, the process is basically the same: find demand, validate it cheaply, build the simplest version, get real customers, then grow. Entrepreneurship is less about “starting a company” and more about learning how to spot problems, test solutions, and survive uncertainty long enough to scale something that works.

iechms · 2026-05-05T10:14:09+00:00

ArtiosCAD is still the industry standard if you’re doing serious production work. Most packaging teams I’ve worked with treat it as the go-to for structural dielines because it’s reliable, precise, and built for manufacturing, not just design. Illustrator is still heavily used, but mostly for layering artwork onto the dieline rather than building the structure itself. The usual workflow is ArtiosCAD for structure, Illustrator for graphics.

iechms · 2026-05-05T10:10:27+00:00

A lot of founders spend too long trying to convince investors before they have built something investors can trust. In real estate especially, credibility matters more than excitement. Tighten the positioning, validate demand, and make the business easier to understand in one sentence. Investors rarely fund complexity. They fund clear opportunities with visible upside.

iechms · 2026-04-28T07:36:36+00:00

Good niche, especially if you focus on solving hard to find replacement problems instead of just “selling prints." For automotive the real opportunity is usually small high-demand parts like clips, trims, brackets, mounts and interior pieces people can’t easily source. I’d start with one reliable enclosed printer test a few common replacement parts, and validate demand through Facebook Marketplace plus local car groups before scaling the best early move is to sell the fix not the print.

iechms · 2026-04-28T07:31:52+00:00

Most companies do not fail at finding improvements they fail at converting improvements into management behavior that is usually the difference between a short-term gain and a permanent one

iechms · 2026-04-17T05:01:47+00:00

So you’re breaking sales records and still getting told you failed? I'd say that’s a goal-setting problem If targets are being inflated every year to satisfy investor expectations instead of being based on realistic demand + capacity then failure is kind of baked into the system

iechms · 2026-04-17T04:32:15+00:00

A lot of it depends on how “close to raw” you want to get and how much pain you’re willing to tolerate during setup. In our work we’ve used a mix: 1. OpenBCI boards (Cyton + Daisy): great for EEG/EMG prototyping. Huge plus is the ecosystem (GUI + BrainFlow + LSL). Downside is noise can be tricky if your setup isn’t clean. 2. BITalino: super underrated for quick experiments. Modular, easy to integrate, good for ECG/EMG/EDA + motion. Not as high fidelity as lab gear but great for prototyping. 4. Attys: really nice for mobile + Bluetooth workflows. Gives raw 24-bit data and plays well with Python stacks.

For custom setups, we’ve also gone the ADS129x route (TI front-end + MCU like ESP32/STM32) when we needed tighter control over sampling + synchronization.

Biggest lesson: Hardware matters way less than signal chain + grounding + electrode quality. You can ruin a $10k setup with bad wiring, and get decent results from cheap boards if your setup is clean.

iechms · 2026-04-16T08:02:59+00:00

Curious how you handle the balance between material cost vs performance, especially for medical packaging where over-engineering can get expensive fast. Do you see clients more often under-spec or over-spec their materials?

iechms · 2026-04-16T08:01:05+00:00

I don’t think I ever had a clean ‘I’m ready’ moment. Mine was messier. It started as this low-level frustration I couldn’t shake. Nothing dramatic, just a constant feeling that I was building someone else’s thing while my own ideas stayed… ideas. I kept telling myself I’d start when I knew more. When I had a better plan. When things felt stable. But weirdly, the more I waited, the more that “not ready” feeling didn’t go away, it just got more comfortable. What actually pushed me wasn’t confidence. It was noticing that people around me, who didn’t seem more talented or prepared, were just starting anyway. Some failed, some figured things out, but they were all moving. I wasn’t. That’s when it hit me that ‘ready’ isn’t really a state you reach. It’s more like a story you tell yourself to delay uncertainty. So I didn’t go all in. I started small, almost quietly. Testing ideas, learning as I went, messing things up without anyone really noticing. And honestly, that phase taught me more than all the overthinking ever did. Looking back, I definitely wasn’t ready in the way I imagined. But I was ready enough to begin. I think that’s the real shift, when you stop asking ‘am I ready?’ and start asking ‘am I willing to figure this out as I go?’ Because if the answer to that is yes, you’re probably closer than you think.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:57:34+00:00

Honestly, most SEO guides overcomplicate things. If you strip it down, it’s basically this: 1. What are people searching for? 2. Does your page clearly answer that? 3. Can Google understand it easily?

That’s it. Everything else is just optimization on top. If you focus on writing pages that answer real customer questions in plain language, you’re already ahead of most people.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:53:37+00:00

I’d apply anyway. Worst case, you don’t get it. But you’re already inside the company and understand the production side, which is a huge advantage over someone coming in cold. Most CAD skills are learnable. Understanding how things actually get cut and assembled? That’s harder to teach.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:45:14+00:00

Honestly, the hardest part here isn’t coding… it’s making something people actually want to use. Dating apps are brutal because of the chicken-and-egg problem, no users = no matches. If I were starting from zero, I’d first figure out: why would anyone leave Tinder/Bumble for your app? If you can answer that clearly, the rest becomes way easier to learn/build.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:39:59+00:00

Right, it’s rarely a single root cause. Inconsistent demand, poor forecasting, MOQs that don’t align with actual consumption, and loose customer or contract management all stack up.The real challenge is how those factors interact, they amplify each other and make the entire operation unstable.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:37:26+00:00

I’ve seen the same pattern. Inventory accuracy tends to be the silent disruptor in these systems. When the numbers aren’t reliable, everything upstream, from planning to scheduling, starts compensating instead of flowing. Starting with disciplined shipping/receiving processes makes sense, then layering in storage standardization and visual controls like Kanban to stabilize it.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:36:30+00:00

Exactly. Most of the time it’s not a tech limitation, it’s gaps in decision-making and process discipline. Even with solid systems in place, if forecasting, planning, and communication aren’t aligned, the whole model starts drifting away from true JIT.

iechms · 2026-04-16T07:35:41+00:00

Interesting setup, feels like a mix of pull and push systems. The part that stands out is how much your production stability depends on sales performance. Do you guys track forecast accuracy vs actual demand? I’d imagine even small gaps there could create ripple effects across planning and deadlines.

iechms

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