Bluprint Home

July 2020 - March 2022

I initially discovered an opportunity when I returned to my parent’s home at the start of COVID and found their existing coffee maker to be mediocre and also quite ugly. As I typically buy my coffee at a local coffee shop or from my office, I was new to the at-home market. In searching for a new coffee maker that met my needs, I went on Amazon and was surprised by the negative reviews . I conducted customer interviews to understand what consumers wanted in a home appliance. After extensive research, I come up with the idea of what would become Bluprint Home: a design-forward, smartphone-connected, direct-to-consumer coffee maker.

I hired a freelance industrial designer to create renderings and tested those designs through Facebook and Instagram ads. The feedback was positive, yielding over 300 email signups at less than $3.30 per signup. I offered a $5 Amazon gift card to people who were willing to have a 15 minute phone call to provide feedback. After conducting over 100 interviews, I learned that customers were looking for a coffee maker they could be proud to leave out on their kitchen counter and something they could control with their phone. So, I went to work building out the concept.

$45,000 (bootstrapped)

Instead of doing custom injection molding which can cost $200K+, I worked with a factory in China who had pre-existing models that could be adapted. I hired a freelance industrial designer to create renderings and an electrical engineer to produce the circuit board. Based on these renderings, I was able to get a working prototype built in China that I could test for functionality and design before committing to a production order.

With rising costs, I needed to calculate my margins to see if Bluprint could be profitable: financial models said I could sell the product for between $220 with a fully landed cost of goods at $69.00. Gross margin would be $140. I estimated CAC to be $20-$25 and total SG&A $55, putting operating margins at a sizeable 38%. Further pricing ads experiments and signups confirmed customers willingness to pay for the coffee maker at $200-220.

Ultimately, I realized that I had no real recurring revenue model, as a coffee subscription was out of the question because of low margins. With high supply chain costs and other challenges, I made the painful but strategic decision to not launch the product. And although Bluprint Home never saw the market, I continue to be proud of all the work I put in. Over the course of 13 months, I learned volumes about all the facets of consumer insights, product development, market research, supply chain and logistics.

-Putting together the video shoot for the Kickstarter campaign. I have a whole new respect for Spielberg.
-Shipping container costs going from $2,500 to $18,000 in 4 weeks.
-The factory sourcing agent (a former well-known D2C water bottle company CEO) turned out to be a fraud.