Ryan’s been thinking… maybe a new product?
If I have had to do anything proactive throughout the process of assisting Ryan as he has started up his Work Builders company and building block business, it has been to keep the reigns pulled in a bit. You see, building blocks are not his vision for Work Builders. Not by a long shot.
The trick so far has been to keep him focused on a product simple enough that we can reasonably make it by hand, with a somewhat sketchy selection of tools to work with. His plans for product offerings are extensive and in some cases rather involved. But here is one we may be able to work on without too much in the way of retooling, or breaking the bank.
Ryan’s brother Collin has a birthday on January 5. This year he turned 4 years old and boy was he looking forward to that! You see, when you are four years old “everything’s fun!” as he puts it. In any case, Ryan decided to make a present for Collin’s birthday and that is what you see pictured here. Ryan’s bus. Some time ago Ryan had been playing around with some building blocks one day and it struck him that they looked like a bus. He’s been pondering that idea ever since.
The bus is made from materials we already had on hand, Easy Builder building blocks! I admire his resourcefulness using materials we already had. The only thing we had to get specifically for this bus was the wheels. His plan was to glue the blocks together paint them yellow (paint we also already had on hand) and draw on the details that would make the bus look good. Collin’s birthday was a perfect chance to build his prototype and give it a test run. I think he did a great job!
If he does decide to go ahead with this as a new product for Work Builders there will be some details to work on for sure. As you can see from the second photo, all four wheels don’t sit nicely on the ground and that is a detail not lost on Ryan. So we’ll need to do a better job with that. Also it adds some time and expense to be gluing the blocks together and such. We might find ourselves discussing other options for building materials. But these are things you learn when you build your first prototype, right?
So for now Ryan is pondering this bus as a new product offering. For the future, he has been writing down other ideas in a planning notebook. One he had me get at the store expressly for this purpose. In his planning notebook… All I can say is that he has the book broken down into sections each one containing a list of other products he is considering for production, soon.
As for me? I’m still holding the reigns, a little.
If it were gray it would look like an armored truck. If it were white it might look like a bakery truck. If it were red it might be an ambulance or a fire department’s rescue van.
I like it. I’ll mention these ideas to Ryan! Thanks Bruce.