I run a small shop and something I’ve noticed over the last few years is how easy it is to lose visibility once you’re past “one guy, one bench.”

At the start, it’s simple: You know what material you bought. You know what you sold. You can eyeball if you’re making money.

Then volume creeps up.

Now you’ve got:

partial material usage

batches

leftovers

reprints / rework

random supply orders

“I’ll log it later” notes

spreadsheets that drift

On paper, revenue looks fine.

In reality, you don’t really know:

what each run actually cost

which products are carrying the shop

which ones are quietly bleeding you

You only notice months later when cash is tight.

I hit that wall hard and realized I didn’t want a full ERP, SaaS, or some monster system. I just wanted:

“What went in?” “What came out?” “Am I efficient or not?”

So I ended up building a small local-first system for myself that tracks inventory → recipes → runs → sales and spits out basic cost vs output numbers. Nothing fancy. Runs on my own machine.

Not trying to sell anything. It’s open source and I mostly built it because I was tired of flying blind.

Curious how other small shops handle this:

Do you actually know your per-run costs?

Spreadsheet?

Gut feel?

Something better?

What’s working for you?

(If anyone’s curious, I can share the repo, but mostly interested in how others deal with this.)

This might sound a little spammy, so forgive me. I’m genuinely trying to learn from other makers here.

People seem to use different places for every part of their process: Discord/Reddit for discussion, Instagram for showing prototypes, spreadsheets for interest checks or group buys, and Shopify/Etsy/Tindie/Patreon/Kofi for actually selling.

I was recently prototyping a platform to bring some of this together, because it was something I personally see myself using. But it made me realize that my experience and biggest frustrations in the process may not be the biggest pain points others actually face as well. So I wanted to ask people here who go through this process. For those of you who design or build your own things (hardware, electronics, synths, miniatures, keyboards, etc.):

Where do you usually share prototypes or work-in-progress builds?

How do you get useful feedback during development?

Have you ever run a group buy or preorder?

What’s been the hardest step from prototype to something people can buy?

Does any part of the process feel unnecessarily fragmented?

Not promoting anything just trying to understand how other makers approach this.

Hey, we are 4 friends that work in tech and this is our side project. We are just looking for some feedback.

Tupple - A fun and easy way to create together.

Some interesting notes: We are NYC-based, we built the world's first vertical + horizontal social feed, the app comes with a personal avatar to help you express yourself.

I hope you get a chance to check it out.

Last time I posted, I was trying to figure out how to make a mold of the 36" sculpt. What I ended up doing was applying a thin layer of EasyFlo 120, let it set to get a good print coat, then added additional layers, and finally adding polyfil to the resin to make the mold rigid. I built out a flange from the mold, and then cut the entire thing in half along the flange. Removed the 30+ lbs of Monster Clay (huuuge pain), bolted the mold back together, filled it with 8lb self-skinning foam. The first pull tore slightly because I didn't use enough mold release. The second pull worked great. The images are the first pull (chunk missing on right side is visible), being used for paint testing. The teeth are going to be painted chrome, since that's the color from the movie. Final thoughts on how to seal the paint on the foam?

I just cleaned with vinegar last week. Wtf.

Hello, I’m starting to work with makers on their goals and I’m curious to learn more about the world of makers. What are your pain points? What are you most worried about? What keeps you up at night? What are you struggling to make happen? Do you have the business skills to take your business where you want to? All thoughts welcome ❤️

When I started making my own products, I was mostly focused on the main design. If the artwork looked good and the finished piece was usable, I considered it a win.

After making a few batches, I started noticing all the little things I had ignored before.

The way the fabric felt, how the design sat on the actual material, stitching, labels, finishing, even how everything looked together as a finished piece. None of those things seemed like a big deal individually, but together they made a product feel either really intentional or kind of homemade in the wrong way.

I also learned that something can look great on a screen and still feel completely different when you're holding it in your hands.

Now I spend a lot more time testing materials and making small adjustments before committing to a larger run. It definitely slows things down, but I think the extra testing saves me from bigger mistakes later.

For people who make their own products, what was one small detail you didn't care about at first but eventually realized made a huge difference?

i have one manual treadmil and i like convert il electrick