Tips for producing custom kits

[jonwil]

I have received a number of inquiries from people interested in my Transperth Mercedes Benz OC500LE bus model (mostly from people who are in some way connected with Transperth such as drivers, former drivers, enthusiasts etc and who are not LEGO fans/dont know much about LEGO or Bricklink or etc)

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=394017

and am thinking of turning it into a custom kit.

Does anyone have any tips on doing this?

How can I figure out what price I should charge?

Should I buy parts for x number of kits first and then base the price on <total cost of the parts> / <number of kits>?

How can I avoid the need to spend 100s of dollars up front on parts (money I cant really afford to spend) and then having to wait to get money from the interested parties.

Should I buy sets to obtain the parts I need? (mostly I need lots of dark grey parts such as plates and bricks)

Should I buy from Shop @ Home PAB? (which has 90% of the parts I need on it)

[prateek]

You could look at this topic for advice.

As for price, I'd charge slightly more than what you bought the parts for, and if you make instructions, you could charge for those too. I'd advise you to buy parts from BL since they are way cheaper than PaB. As for waiting for orders, you could do a made to order type of service where you buy the parts as you get customers. Even though it would take longer, it would save you money.

Edited June 5, 2010 by prateek

[jonwil]

Thanks for the advice.

I am not in this to make a profit, the people I would be providing this to would simply be paying me what it costs to buy the parts.

I definatly agree that ordering parts without firm commitments is a bad idea.

[FelixTheCat]

I'd try to redesign the model slightly so that all parts were available from Lego.

Build the model in LDD and then you can buy them as a set with box and everything from the designbyme website.

http://designbyme.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx

[SlyOwl]

I'd build it in MLCAD/LDD first.

Then get a rough quote for the cost - LDD will give you one straight off, and using MLCAD in conjunction with Brickstore, you can easily get a quote using max/min/average Bricklink prices (does it all automatically). You can export from Brickstore directly into a Bricklink wanted list - and thus can order bricks relatively easily.

It really depends where you can get all the parts - you could modify the design so it's completely buildable from S@H, and thus you can set a fixed price (bricks plus P&P), without the variability of Bricklink pricing.

If I were you, I'd get the parts to build one more of the model (not necessarily every single one in the model - just the parts that you wouldn't want to lose from your collection short-term) and try and sell it. It'll reduce your collection short-term, but the bricks can be obtained again in the long run, using what profit you made from the original sale, via Bricklink - and thus reducing P&P costs - and also lets you get the best deal on parts as and when on Bricklink.