When an entrepreneur wants to create a product to sell at a profit (why else?) what are some of the things they consider?
Let us try some logical thinking.
To make a profit you have to sell your product for more than it takes to manufacture that product.
(Brilliant insight there, please hold down the applause)
You have to consider material, production costs, taxes, fees, energy, water, workforce availability.
Here are some things you need to address before you start your business.
You need to:
Make a product everyone wants or needs.
Make a product that can be used anywhere at any time.
Make a better product than anyone else.
Sell it for less than anyone else.
Determine the best way to make that product.
Use as few components (parts) as possible.
Use as little material as possible.
Make it durable.
Make it versatile.
Make it safe to use.
Make it operable over a wide temperature range and useable in as many areas and weather conditions as possible.
Make it repairable or easily disposable.
Avoid moving parts because that is where most breakdowns occur.
Plan past step one to avoid any unintended costs or consequences.
Buy parts and materials directly from their sources whenever possible.
Locate in the lowest tax area. Any taxes, or fees, will raise your production costs and thereby raise the retail price of your product. When price goes up demand goes down. Look for the least interference from local, state, and federal government, including zoning regulations. Consider the local cost of energy and water.
Deal directly with retail outlets or the end user; middlemen make prices go up and sales go down.
The following is a comparison of a simple product and a complex product.
The Incandescent light bulb compared to a Compact Florescent light bulb.
A basic incandescent light bulb is made from tungsten, glass, plastic, and conductors (four components).
Some incandescent light bulbs contain an inert gas to extend the life of the tungsten filament.
Incandescent light bulbs used as headlights on trucks and cars experience physical shock, adverse weather, and extreme temperatures, yet they last for many years. (The headlights on my 21 year old truck still work and they are the original light bulbs)
Incandescent bulbs are used inside and outside from pole to pole, from submarines underwater to airplanes at tens of thousands of feet altitude, in lighthouses and flashlights. They can be tiny, large, or anywhere in between. They can be designed to function on 1 volt or thousands of volts. They can be used for heat and light in incubators or used just for heat in a kid’s Easy-Bake oven. I used a trouble light with a 100 Watt bulb under the hood next to the carburetor of my vehicle to keep the carburetor warm, which greatly helped it start on cold mornings in South Dakota. This was common in North and South Dakota to my personal knowledge; I expect it was common anywhere it was really cold. Any heat from light bulbs is very welcome in cold rooms.
Incandescent light bulbs do not contain any hazardous materials and they are easy to dispose of.
A Compact Florescent Lamp (CFL) is made from glass, fluorescent gas, phosphors, mercury, conductors, plastic, diodes, transistors, resistors, transformers (inductors), capacitors, and a printed circuit board (twelve components).
All of the materials that go into a CFL require mines, transportation, smelters and/or refineries, transportation, manufacturing, transportation, assembly, transportation. CFL’s that are made in China require a lot of transportation to be sold in the USA. All of these require energy.
Anytime you add a stage, or a process, to the manufacturing of your product you raise the cost of that product. At every stage someone makes money and the end consumer pays for it.
CFL’s have a limited temperature range. They do not work well at 45 degrees and are useless at freezing temperatures; and like your computer they can not stand much heat; you can not use a CFL in your oven or clothes dryer. This limits the use of CFL’s in both indoor and outdoor applications; and precludes their use in adverse or extreme weather conditions.
CFL’s generate RFI (radio frequency interference). Place one next to an AM radio and you can easily hear it for yourself.
The electronic ballast circuitry can fail catastrophically, emit toxic fumes, explode and/or cause fires.
CFL’s may be a problem for health when operating normally.
CFL’s contain hazardous materials and are not easily, or safely, disposed of. Some of these hazardous materials are mercury, phosphors, silicone, electrolyte, and varnish.
Any “savings” the consumer gets does not equal or justify the energy used to manufacture the CFL.
In a free market the CFL’s would have a rough time staying in business. If they were not being pushed by the government and further aided by government banning of incandescent light bulbs they would have only a very small share of the lighting market. This is an example of government interference in the market place.
The local price of a 60 watt incandescent light bulb is $0.30 with a rated life of 1000 hours.
The CFL equivalent “60 watt” is $6.00 with a rated life of 10000 hours.
That looks like a life factor of 10 to 1, but for the difference in price, I can buy a second incandescent light bulb and run it for 1000 hours.
Want some numbers?
A 60 watt bulb will use 0.06 KW per hour. 1000 hours times 0.06 KW is 60 KW. 60KW at $0.09 per KWH is a cost of $5.40.
A CFL 13 watt (60 watt equivalent) will use 0.013 KW per hour. 1000 hours times 0.013 KW is 13 KW. 13 KW at 0.09 per KWH is a cost of $1.17.
With a price difference of, $6.00 CFL minus $0.30 Incandescent equaling $5.70; I can buy a second incandescent bulb and run it for 1000 hours.
That means the CFL has to last more than 2000 hours to reach the break even point.
Often incandescent light bulbs will last way past their life expectancy. There are several rooms in my home whose incandescent light bulbs have gone past 10 years, two of those rooms are bathrooms which experience many on/offs a day.
No CFL’s for me.
CFL’s suck — when they first came out w/o the government pushing — I bought a few — they would get dimmer and dimmer over time so that in less than a year the light output was about half what it was new — also they were failing in about a year or so — none have ever lasted over two years either by failing or getting so dim that I replaced them — I have been stocking up on incandescents — the toxic business is what really pee’s me off at the government — Fed and local — if they were truly being put up by an American inventer or entrepreneur and made in USA — they would be regulated out of the market — most likely to the point of being banned “to save the children” — I think that the incandescent bulb is a major target because it is one of Edison’s greattest inventions and fabulous illustration of what was possible in the real America instead of the tower of babble cesspool they are trying to turn us into.
The cost factor means little to me, if they are close. However, proper disposal is a problem, given the mercury in the CFL’s. How long will it be before angry homeowners losing their mortgage will break cfl’s upon their exit?
We now see listings on ebay with items touted to be “from a smoke free home” I predict that within 5 years we might see listings touted as being “from a CFL free home.”
@Gary Kukis:
They would be quickly rounded up and find themselves in a gulag — probably get chased down by a multi-jurisdictional swat team – including ATF and FBI as well as locals.
I was in the Home Depot t’other day and a woman was doing a demo for Phillips about their LED bulbs. The had a side by side comparison of a 60w incandescent and the 12.5w LED equivalent. Both looked about as bright, but the power difference was significant. Of course, that LED bulb was about 40 bucks. Over the claimed lifetime of 15 years, they say you’d save $142 in power costs.
They also had a 300W twisty CFL demoed as a grow light. I never saw one that big… looked like something from a moonshiner’s still. 😉
One part of Obama’s planned ”civilian defense force” was going to be an army of inspectors who would make sure your home was up to Obama snuff before you could sell it.
What I had read was that all toilets had to be low flow, all faucets and shower heads, too.
(None of that whole body multi-shower heads that feel so good.)
All light bulbs had to be CFL.
All windows had to be double-paned.
All water heaters had to be lashed against earthquakes and insulated.
No carpets could include a long list of chemicals.
No paint could include lead.
Asbestos would all have to be removed.
And so on and so on and so on.
But, if you had posters of Obama in more than two rooms, you might get the ”wink and nod” treatment.
LOL!
Thank goodness none of this happened.
I have a large drawer filled with now illegal incandescents.
Yes, as Al Cooper notes, many times our bulbs, too, have long out-lived their expected lifespan.
CFL’s are out LED’s are in.
@Nan G:
Like this one perhaps? Been burning for 110 years.
http://www.centennialbulb.org/
A little known fact is that a broken CFL in your home would generate levels of mercury that would exceed the OSHA mercury (Hg) levels for a dental clinic. http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html What the EPA doesn’t say is that is is difficult to remove mercury from carpeting.
How does Hg affect people? Remember the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland? Hatters used Hg in their hat making process.
@jim s:
That is very cool.
Ah!
For the days before anyone thought of building in obsolescence!
In 1956 my dad bought an old business building.
In 1986 he had a man in who realized he (also) had one of those very old bulbs.
They got in touch with the local news and the bulb was featured on TV and in the newspaper.
Unfortunately, as a result, someone broke in and stole it (along with a lot of dad’s tools).
But it was neat to see it when I came in as a youth.
The CFLs made in China don’t tend to last that long. In fact, I’ve had incandescents last longer!
Randy, you are correct, but the hatters had at least their hands submerged in the stuff for hours at a time. Over time it damaged the CNS eventually resulting in mad hatters.
@Hard Right, #11:
I’ve gradually replaced most of my incandescent bulbs with CFLs. My experience has been that the average CFL lasts for several years. I had one defective CFL that didn’t. (It turned into a high-frequency strobe light moments before popping.) They sell for more than incandescents but prices have dropped. They do save a lot of electricity. They also produce a lot less heat. (Running a 100 watt bulb produces as much heat as running a 100 watt electric heater. If you have air conditioning it will run more in the summer to offset that heat source, adding even more cost to the inefficient lighting.)
The biggest source of environmental mercury is coal-fired power plants. CFLs reduce electrical demand and he mercury released in the course of generation to a greater degree than they put mercury into the environment.
malize is correct in observing that LEDs will eliminate most CFLs over the next few years. They’re still way too expensive and the color temperature isn’t what it should be yet.
@Greg: Of course, in the winter that heating from incandescent lamps takes load off your main heating system. Around here, we use more heat than A/C, so I think we’d be ahead of the game. I don’t care for the color of florescent lights of any kind. The LED lamps are a lot better than those too-blue cheap LED flashlights. The side-by-side demo I saw looked pretty good. It was hard to tell the LED from the incandescent, color wise. Point taken about the cost though.
Lights do add to the warmth. In December I hang lots and lots of colored tree lights from everywhere but the tree. Amazing how much warmth it adds to you heating the house. Warm and pretty, I always hate to turn them off.
@ Jim S
Depending on the design of the lamp and fixture, you can get around the color temperature by picking up the proper “correction” color of theatrical gel material. (Available at most stage lighting suppliers.) The colors vary so pick up a swatch book and see what looks best for the look you want. With scissors and a few staples, you can make cylinders out of the gel to place around the lamp. (Avoid direct contact between the gel and the lamp.) Gel works really good with recessed fixtures if you cut the proper size disc.
I don’t know if its justification for keeping incandescents or not, but as has been mentioned here before, they are a great, portable, small source of heat. Even here in extreme southern South Carolina it often gets into the low 20s at night in the winter. I have for a long time used a 50 or 75 watt bulb in a drop light under the oil tank on my tarp covered scooter out in the unheated barn. Normal thickness oil allows one kick starts when dressed like the Pillsbury Doughboy for a frigid 30 mile commute. That makes me want to see them stick around.
Shut the fuck up. Idiot.