A Faraday bag is basically a magnetic field that blocks electromagnetic signals from interfering with electronic devices. Very cyberpunk accessory, provides a lot of digital security, and supposedly health benefits by preventing brainwave disruption blah blah. We’ve ben discussing this in Discord and seems like people are hype so I’ve done as much research as I can. I don’t know where to go from here so I’m posting all my research to see if core team has everything they need to move forward and then put it to community vote.
The two main options I’ve heard are: 1. Design and produce our own Faraday bag specifically for our fanny pack or 2. source a faraday bag from the market and attach it to our fanny pack. Option #1 is the “cheapest” but takes the most internal resource with unreliable results since Faraday bags have strict requirements. Option two is way more expensive, yet still profitable, and gives us more flexibility. After also consulting my fashion designer friend I think #2 because it also optimizes for MF core team’s time while.
We have to make sure that the sourced Faraday bag has the proper dimensions to fit in the fanny pocket (idk what that is) and probably add an instructional picture on the product page to show how you add the Faraday bag accessory to the fanny pack.
My unresearched opinion is that adding the Faraday cage as an option to the fanny we could add about ~$50 premium but this is +100% the current fanny price so we’ll have to discuss that.
Vendors:
DiskLabs seems to be the highest quality, and highest priced, option on the market. We can do bulk orders, get custom branding on bags, and they have various options if we want to expand the faraday product line. I’m still waiting on pricing sheets for bulk branded/unbranded bags from their North America distributors. Their sites list ~$20-40 per unit, I haven’t gotten confirmation if this is bulk pricing or not so we’ll just have to wait.
Distributors:
Latent Forensics - Prices as listed on site. 5% discount at 100 units, another 5% at 200+ units. $2 per bag to add branded label, minimum 1,000 labels paid upfront.
HL Dalis - Recommended by DiskLabs for LA distribution. Should be getting pricing on 05.10
China - various Amazon and Walmart products, obviously these are lower quality and no potential to add branding but way cheaper ($7-31 + shipping). All the ones on Alibaba looked sketch af but if none of the vendors I’ve listed look good I can look through there again. I know at least Amazon and maybe Walmart show different prices if you are signed into a business account so we might be able to get them cheaper than I’ve listed here.
Walmart - Size 19.5 x 11cm, $7. This one is super simple design and really cheap, assuming it actually works as a Faraday bag and fits the fanny, I think this is a great option.
Amazon - Size 8.5x 4.5in, $14. Seems rather large and has a non-Faraday pocket which people will definitely misuse but at ~$14 I think we can still make decent profit off it.
Amazon - Size 19.7cm x 10.7cm, $12. Another basic design, might actually be the same as the Walmart bag.
Amazon - Size 18.5cm x 10.5cm, $32. Obviously expensive but we if we create an Amazon business account we can see if there’s discounts. It actually matches MF branding I think although it is a bit discolored.
If the MF core team needs any other info to move forward with this before we put it to a vote, let me know and I’ll get it
Edit from community call on 01.10.2020:
None of the bags listed fit the small 16cm pocket in the fanny pack. Going to order them anyway and sell separately or just put in normal fanny pack pocket.
Nice ideas and research @kiba. I like the idea if this tech-forward product. However, I would highly prefer a this product to have full designs by MF community.
I would rather have a more expensive, custom MF designed version than say a black version with a MF tag on it.
Do you think that is possible? If it’s cool, I think many across the blockchain ecosystem would be interested.
I discussed that option with MF team and my designer friend and it is possible but the tradeoffs in quality, time, and energy don’t seem worth it. Also I’m not a designer so that would be offloading all the work onto MF core and I don’t think they have the time for that in the forseeable future so this is also the fastest way to get to market.
We also don’t know if there will be any interest in this product so this option risks the least amount of capital upfront on top of being easier to scale up later than a custom design. If we can get decent pricing from DiskLabs then we can add anything from their product line instantly instead of a 6+ month design and production timeline for each new Faraday bag idea we have.
I’m definitely in favor of a dank custom designed bag so if this works, the DAO can vote to allocate profits from these products to create a custom one.
One option we have if we want to do more customized ones is to get my brother or someone who’s an artist to mod the bags directly and paint on the design / logos or whatever. Will have a more handmade feel to it, will be reasonably cost effective, and hand painting isn’t a big issue for a smaller run of bags
That sounds like a great idea @METADREAMER. Especially because I assume we will order a small amount for the first batch so it would be cool to make them unique. If we go that route, could we make them NFTs? Would be cool as a game item as a “force field” or “magic shield” item.
Could probably bundle them with NFTs, but probably not worth embedding chips or anything. Could do a “presale/preorder” by selling them as NFTs up front that can be redeemed for the physical
Oh yes I forgot about the chip. I’m fine without it. We can or cannot do the pre-sale, it would help with gauging interest before hand but doesn’t really matter imo.
If we add the NFT I think we can charge way more to then order the custom branded bags for the next shipment was my main reasoning.
At the most basic level - just a digital copy with an image.
At best - Idk how NFT game items work but can we just add a field “invisibility: 100” or “shield: 30” to the NFT?
The physical Faraday bag itself is more about it’s effect (privacy, security) than the aesthetic so a wearable isn’t necessary. I guess you would still have to “wear” it in a game to get the bonus but again I don’t know how that works, you guys are the NFT/metaverse masters.
Nice! How many should we order? I’m thinking in the range of 42-50 to start. Will hit up brother to see if we can get him to customize them. Any ideas on the design? Just the various robot faces maybe?
I was thinking either 42 or 100 so I guess 42? It depends on what we want to price the final product at so we make a decent net profit so we know if this product line is worth continuing with after the first batch.
I’ll leave design/artistic stuff to you guys. It’s phone sized so not a ton of room. That’s why you guys redesigned the logo so this would be a good time to test it on a physical product that won’t be mass produced. You can describe faraday cages to your brother and see if he gets any inspiration for design concepts.
Separate question but when exactly do I hand this off to MF core team? Eventually you guys will have to handle ordering, logistics, etc.
This is awesome. I’d be curious to understand exactly what branding means? Logo print? Label? How big can we go? Double sided? I assume it’s something pretty standard, but we could consider a larger run with something simple and then a couple, custom designed editions + NFT.
Do we know that the phone cover would be the most popular vs. notebook cover, etc. ? Should we do a poll? Consider selling the whole collection?
Re: logistics, if you have an email conversation going with manufacturer, please CC ‘hello (at) metafactory.ai.’
I asked about branding but I think it got drowned out in the back and forth about pricing. I assumed you guys would want to go in-depth with them if we decided to use them as a vendor do I didn’t ask them again. Their catalog only shows different branded tags (maybe 1cm x 4cm) at predefined places on each product.
Initially we were looking for something that would fit the inner fanny pocket and phone cases were the only one with similar size. We can totally do one of the other options since we know the phone case won’t fit now. The phone case is the cheapest option and everyone has a phone but other than that I don’t see a huge reason why that has to be the only one we offer initially.
Cool sounds good. What should I introduce you guys? The design team? I have a @gmail and you have a @metafactory so want to make sure the transition goes as smooth as possible for the manufacturer.
I think we can do a small tag for the branding with metafactory logo on it, and then my brother said he is down to customize each piece by painting on it. In that case, we can put in an order for 42 units and ship them to me to get painted.
Lets go with the phone case for now, keep it simple. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t fit in the inner pocket of the fanny, its protected in the faraday bag so it will still fit in the fanny. Can keep inner pocket for other stuff. Dont think that’s an issue.
Just introduce us as the rest of the team I guess. It will mostly just be paying the invoice and giving them the shipping address.
Since we’re ordering the unbranded model, should we order some samples? I’ve seen aatifjutt’s work so I’m not worried about the art, but the composition/fabric of the cover itself may dictate how feasible / functional a custom paint job is.
Either way, sounds like we should put it to soft vote with the members.
@kiba - you can introduce us as design / distributor.
Ordering samples sounds like a smart idea. We should probably ask the manufacturer if whatever material we plan on using for the art will affect the faraday cage. Lead based paints are probably a no go, acrylic paint may or main’t distort the field idk.
Acrylic will be all g. Since there’s a minimum order of 100 for custom branding, lets order 5 of them to start and if they look all good and painting them works nicely we can make a bigger order. Can even put it up as a pre-order with discount for ROBOT holders
I’ve been thinking of an idea of an NFT wallet that is a physical wallet that you can send your nfts to… scan it with your phone, and you can show off all your nfts. My friend makes these custom leather wallets by @lostsailordesign on socials, and is super interested in doing this, but isn’t cryptonative. Has anyone done anything like this before?
Yea that should be possible with our chips but that would increase costs a lot, probably not for small items like a wallet unless you’re going luxe edition. @METADREAMER
