Industrial Design, Manufacturing Barbells, and B2B Sales with Chris Michaud

Hacker Practice: GROWTH, SYSTEMS, and RISK for Startups and SMB

Building products from scratch is hard. Building a business is at least as difficult. A lot of young founders and entrepreneurs lose their minds trying to grapple with the interwoven complexities of these disciplines.

Chris Michaud has figured them both out.

Chris is a rising phenom in the world of industrial design and manufacturing. In 2015 he left a full-time gig and started First Summit Design, a product consulting group with a focus on industrial design for cool products. He's since become involved with a number of other design-focused companies that we discuss in some depth.

We had a great conversation about hardware design and manufacturing, serial entrepreneurship and work/life balance.

I hope you enjoy this episode of Hacker Practice with Chris Michaud

Notes

[01:30] Justus and Chris met when they came together to work on an IoT project for a somewhat obscure sport.

[04:30] What is industrial design?

[06:15] Why Chris focuses on the ideas behind design rather than influential design figures.

[07:30] How Chris designed his fiancee’s engagement ring.

• Research first: materials then user
• Sketching

[09:15] Is design easier for one person or for a group?

[11:00] How did Chris develop the skill of sketching products

• Education helped

[12:30] Chris’s first big product and how he went about designing it

[14:00] Good barbells vs GREAT barbells

[16:40] Why kettlebells might be an easier place to start designing for fitness equipment than a barbell

[17:45] Where is materials research important?

[18:45] Discussion on steel quality and impacting variables

• Tensile strength
• Yield strength
• • The weight at which steel will permanently
• Percent elongation

[23:12] Why it’s important to think about manufacturing and assembly concerns during the design phase of a product

• Design for Manufacturing
• Design for Assembly

[27:30] Domestic vs international manufacturing

• It depends on the thing you’re manufacturing
• Chris likes to design where he manufactures

[31:10] Chris goes to a wedding in China

[33:00] Different regions in China do different kinds of manufacturing

[35:00] How does Chris vet new manufacturing relationships

• Start with ten vendors
• Rate each vendor on various aspects (price, social responsibility, etc)

[36:00] How Chris got a local Chinese government to shut down a chrome plating facility for unsafe labor practices

[38:45] Chris is a partner in four businesses

• First Summit Design
• Pragmatc
  • Blue Sky design
• Cove Manufacturing
  • Interior Design for Retail
  • Working on the NBA Store on 5th Ave in New York
• Hash Product Development
  • Medical marijuana product development

[46:00] How does Chris get big clients

• Know your stuff
• Always be meeting people.
• “Word of mouth should be good enough, if you’re good enough.”

[50:00] Chris describes his sales process

• Get to know them, ask invasive questions
• Never tell them what you’re gonna do for them, tell them what you’re about

[52:00] Chris tells a horror story from a pitch that went wrong

[57:30] The future of the cannabis industry in Massachusetts

• Focus on auxilary market

[1:00:00] Chris reveals a cannabis product idea

[1:01:00] What does serial entrepreneurship mean to Chris

• Chris has a financial interest in 14 companies
• Diversity is fun and freeing
• Learn something new every day

[1:02:00] How does Chris prioritize?

• Stay organized
• Have a strong support team.
• What does that team look like?

[1:03:50] What does Chris’s next hire look like?

• A controller
• With culture fit
• Humility

[1:07:30] What’s the biggest challenge Chris deals with on a daily basis

• Working too long
• How the fiancee deals with Chris working late

[1:09:00] Chris’s biggest lesson learned in the last two years building several companies

• What he does in his free time

[1:11:00] Last requests and contact information

• [e-mail]
• “Don’t be afraid to do exactly what you want”