I've been playing around with designing ceramic chips which I enjoy doing whenever I'm not busy. I received mostly positive feedback on several designs I have and I'm considering investing some savings to order about a thousand chips. I've been playing poker for about a decade but I'm fairly new to chips. PCF has been helpful so far, but I'd like to gather some more information and opinion before I proceed. Here are some questions I have in mind:
- Is it at all profitable to design customs, order from SunFly for example, and resell?
- I found some custom ceramic chips on Etsy and was wondering if someone on PCF does something similar? There are plenty of reviews on Etsy, but I'd like to know your opinion on demand.
- Do you think my designs are good enough or should be improved? One, two, and three. I'd appreciate both design suggestions or any general suggestions regarding the subject.
- Any suggestions on designing something besides ceramics? I assume ceramic chips are not the most desirable?
Just wanted to note that I'm a web developer and I used to work in a marketing company; I'm not as much concerned about creating a brand and a business. I'm primarily interested in figuring out if there's demand and if anyone would be interested in my designs. Graphic design has been an interest of mine for about a decade and I'd be happy to spend some time creating something people might like
1) Probably not. You might be able to make it work if you cut out the middle men by purchasing an inventory of blanks and doing the printing yourself... but that's likely to be a sizable investment.
BR Pro (
@ABC Gifts and Awards) gets around ~$1 a chip for custom ceramics - so that's probably a good benchmark of where your price-point needs to be as a state-side manufacturer. The problem is most people around here are familiar with and/or have experience ordering from Chinese producers, which can be as low as $.32/chip landed*. You theoretically could order from them and apply a markup but it seems like a stretch to think that many people would pay more for something they could easily do themselves.
*Correct me if I'm mistaken.
2) I'm not aware of any PCFers selling on Etsy. I looked at Etsy briefly... ABC's designs are much better and basically the same price.
3) Design tastes are subjective so ask 20 people and you'll get 20 conflicting opinions. But since you asked for feedback:
Design one: Too busy with all the random shapes and lines and such... and the denomination text is too small.
Design two: Color combos are mostly good. The design is kind of mesmerizing and distracting, like those
mind-warp-images you see floating around the web. Also would be better with a denomination.
Design three: Elegant and pretty decent. The spade might be better to be replaced with a denomination - most people around here don't like non-denominated chips. Also a shaped 'inlay' like the Empress Joliet chips might be a nice feature.
4) Ceramics are popular because they're relatively inexpensive compared to custom clays from
CPC. They're more comparable in price to murdering/milling existing chips and applying new inlays... but can be a preferable option since ceramics are 100% customizable and it's a lot less work for roughly the same money.
The trick to starting pretty much any business is that you need to either find an underserved segment of a marketplace - or figure out a way to serve the marketplace better than the current service providers. Since you really can't compete on price, what other competitive advantages can you offer? IMO, those areas might be superior customer service and offering awesome designs that are better than that of your competitors.
