Have you seen the latest rage for kids? Tree Blocks! A short piece of a tree limb with the bark still on. 22 pieces going for like $25.00.
http://www.treeblocks.com/TB21.html
http://www.essentialmother.com/treeblocks.html
PlaneWood by Mike_in_Katy (maker of fine sawdust!)
PlaneWood
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something tells me that its not really much of a "rage" for kids.
Man, did I miss an opportunity!!
When we had lots of small kids in the neighborhood, I let them rumage through my scrap pile and carry off all the "blocks" they could carry. Little did I know that a bit of sanding and a coat of poly could have made my fortune.
pt barnum underestimated...
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I had a bunch of those fall on my roof during the thunderstorm last night. Any takers? Buyer to pay shipping costs.
Why not give it a try? You'd need a supply of brush cut in the fall or winter so the bark would stay on. Cut the pieces to length, sand the ends and deburr the other surfaces. You'd want some fairly durable finish. No finish at all would be cheapest, but the ones on the web sites looked like they had some kind of finish. Then figure out what would be a useful assortment of sizes to package together.
You've already got a setup to do retail sales over the net, so you could avoid the cost of setting that up. Then marketing. I imagine you could sell some to your current customers, for their grandchildren, but even if all of your current customers bought blocks, that's not a very big market, so you'd need to advertise to reach the parents of young children, or the children themselves. And salesmen, to try to hit all the toy stores. Or you could get in touch with the importer and try to beat the Poles' price.
My guess is that if you set your prices low enough to actually make any sales, you'd lose money on every block. Or if the prices were at or above the break even point, you would sell few or none. There's a reason these are being imported from Eastern Europe, and it's not the vast tracts of virgin timber.
It is kind of a neat idea - something I might put together for the grandson. He has a pretty good time right now just playing with the scraps but I can see some value to putting a little extra time in cutting up some limbs in "unit" sizes so that they're easy to build with!
Robin
"Well-behaved women rarely make history."from the Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love
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