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Last active April 18, 2018 21:03
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Cutlist Product Notes
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cutlist-product.notes.md

Cutlist Product Notes

The Pitch

The idea is to build a product that helps hobbyist woodworkers create a cut list for their work. A cut list is a diagram of how all the pieces of a woodworking project should be cut in order to use the least amount of material. Creating a cut list before a project starts is faster than calculating cuts during.

What Users Get

  • Spend less money
    • spend less on raw materials by optimizing packing
  • Save time
    • have the computer do the hard job of figuring out how to pack things
  • Make fewer mistakes
    • do more planning up front

Taglines

  • Save time and money on your next woodworking project.
  • Create a cut list and organize your next woodworking project.
  • Create a cut list to reduce waste
  • Plan your next woodworking project
  • Reduce waste and plan your next woodworking project
  • Build faster and spend less money on materials
  • Work faster with a cut list
  • Spend less with a cut list
  • Use technology to optomize your workflow

Features

Basic

  • Input raw material dimensions, a list of rectangular measurement pairs, and a blade kerf, and get out an optimized list of cuts
  • Ability to save optimized list of cuts
  • It's web based - no need to download and install anything
  • The UI is easy to use - no need to learn any complex systems

More-than-basic

Competitors

There don't appear to be many legitimate competitors in this space (hobby woodworkers looking for cutlist tools). I have only found one paid cut list generator - the rest are free. This product would be an improvement from spreadsheets as well.

Differentiators From Competitors

  • Cheap
    • Don't have to pay $90 up front
  • Easy to use
    • It's in your web browser - no program to download or install
    • Your projects are available anywhere (does a hobbiest woodworker care about this? They've probably got one computer at home)
    • Well designed and resonable interface

SketchUp Plugins

Badly Designed Hobby Products

Mobile Apps

Professional Software

Questions

  • How many hobbyist woodworkers use some kind of CAD tool like sketchup?
  • What do hobbyist woodworkers use for cutlist software?
  • How many hobbyist woodworkers don't use any cut list software?

Ideas

  • Sit at Denver Tool Library and ask people questions
  • Talk with Arlee's Dad (he's a carpenter)
  • Talk with Arlee about digital marketing
  • Since the target audience is hobbyest woodworkers, do they know how to get the most out of a cutlist? Perhaps some simple documentation, tips, or videos telling them how to use one well in their next project.

Advertising

I have figured out that it's possible to create ads that will run next to videos only on certain youtube channels.

hobbyist Woodworking Channels

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