Where to look for factories for your startup?

Question

Iron

I thought about making my own designer headphones, but when it came to manufacturing, problems began. I was looking for in Ukraine, but it turned out that the factories that I need are not very many. I know that in China you can make spare parts, but here you can already assemble them, but I can’t find factories. For example, I found the sale of machines for creating windings, but I did not find companies that deal with them, and so on. Where to look for such companies, where is it better to contact? Thanks in advance)

Answer 1

Look for the product you need (which is the most suitable for yours) on Alibaba.com and contact the manufacturer.
for example here
https://picun.en.alibaba.com/company_profile.html

Answer 2

Searched in Ukraine

Funny. You should also look in the USA.
All factories in China.

Where to look for such companies, where is it better to contact?

On Alibaba of course. They are all there. Apply there as well. This is if something simple and uncomplicated. And so it is better to have a representative in China, and puzzle him.

Answer 3

I'll intervene now so that you won't be very sad later. Sori, but you have a classic startup syndrome: "now I will do it and I will sell it" or "now I will buy it and I will sell it." And it is necessary on the contrary, first to sell, then to make / buy a product.
So you have formed a demand to make headphones? Found your audience? Why the hell would a major retailer buy from you? Or why should the end customer buy your headphones and not hundreds of others? Even a large manufacturer or retailer goes into production very carefully, and believe me, there is a crowd of analysts who have calculated everything in advance, and they are ready to bury millions if they don’t take off.
Remember the axiom, first demand, then supply . You now have 2 options:
1. Find or make a demand, but you do not have an offer - you will simply lose the first 10-100-1000 customers while you are making a product for them or purchasing goods, but you will not lose money.
2. You make an offer for a couple of months / years, but then there is no demand - you will lose a lot of money, time, effort, motivation and faith in humanity, but your entire balcony is littered with boxes of goods. I have already gone through this, and you still have a chance to avoid =)
The choice is yours.
PS If you have a cool feature that no one, even a conditional Sennheiser knows about, go to all sorts of kickstarters / boomstarters, at least, and collect an audience of prepaid customers there.

Answer 4

Oh friend, I would not want to bring you down from heaven, it is not a thankful task. But I'll ask a couple of questions:
1) Did you do market analysis? Not among friends or acquaintances, but let's take a poll in social networks or instagram. Squeeze in there a couple of really beautiful headphones (preferably the ones you like) + your sample. It is desirable to have one price category and see what comes out. Don't be too lazy to spend a couple of thousand rubles/hryvnias/hundreds of dollars on market analysis. This will save you nerves, money and time when it turns out that only you need your dream. It's sad, but such crap unfortunately happens in 95% of cases. (((
2) Do you want to collect everything yourself? Or do you have a team? Do you have experience in sales? Perhaps there are sooo good friends in retail or advertising? If not, then you have a direct road to all sorts of accelerators. Since with a probability of 150% you will not pull all the stages from production to implementation in one person. But accelerators are very helpful. Because they have specialists in all areas. Yes, they want a share (well, there are many different options), there is nothing wrong with that. If your ideas are good and you don’t think that these particular headphones are the business of your whole life, then it’s worth launching the first few projects with the support of professionals. And when you understand everything yourself, you get to know a bunch of people from the industry, then they sang completely their product.
Eventually:
Market analysis. VERY important stage, it should be the first. Comprehensive and high quality. 90% of startups that didn't take off had exactly this mistake, they were simply not needed!
Team. If you're alone, it's bad. You cannot be a good engineer, accountant, manager, economist all rolled into one. Find a business angel, an accelerator, anyone with experience and try to implement the product. Don't be greedy, it's not time for that yet :)