Job Destoyer

Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is the process by which an item—anything from a mousetrap to a combat jet fighter—can be taken apart and designed from the pieces so as to end up with a replica without the need for design and testing. When I was a little kid, I liked to take things apart to see how they work. Clocks, wind-up toys, and—one time—a toy dump truck. It was when I took apart the toy dump truck that I learned something about Post-World War II reconstruction in Japan. The truck was made in Japan from tin that had been a Folgers Coffee can, evident from what I found printed inside the shell of the truck.

This was not as much an example of reverse engineering as it was a blend of that and a lesson in economic development. The lesson was that if there is a market for, say, toy tin dump trucks and you have a supply of empty coffee cans and willing hands, you can provide jobs and income from the customers for toys. Japanese families could not, at that time, afford to buy their kids toys like this, but the Americans could, and we know that the effort to restore the Japanese economy was successful. I was one of the lucky American kids who, in 1947, at age 6, got the toy.

The story continued in a way because today I am able to think through the events that gave me the toy truck and I experienced the desire to take it apart, see how it was assembled (I still remember the little tin tabs and slots that made it easy to take apart and put back together). Also, I remember my surprise at seeing the Folgers label—the same tin can that was on our kitchen shelf—inside the truck. Of course, the truck was “Made in Japan” and although I didn’t know anything about postwar reconstruction, the tin can had come full circle with an economic benefit for the Japanese and Americans both.

How to destroy jobs

We need jobs in the USA for Americans, according to what I hear and see on TV from many sources. We need job creation. And when people think that jobs are being sent overseas, then we think this is wrong because we need people to be employed here—not abroad. Of course, every country wants policies that help its people do meaningful and profitable work so we have education programs, training and sustainability measures.

Job creation is an interesting idea—to make a job where one did not exist before. For example, I have a job. But as I do my job I know that I am putting someone out of work because it is a job that anyone can do. This morning, when this concept of destroying jobs came into my head, I was gluing a label on a box. It’s something anyone could do—from an average 8-year old kid to an older person with some disability that made this task a reasonable one.

The problem with hiring someone is that I had only four boxes to paste labels on; besides, after training the person (which would take about 15 minutes followed up by some checking for quality) they would be done in less than a half hour. The other problem is that only one person, at this moment, is ready to buy the box and its contents, and the hourly labor would take about 12% of the gross net—just for this label! This does not include the cost of printing the label or, working back to my earlier work, the design of the label.

The cost of research and development for this box is a factor to consider in this job, for if it had not been for the ten years of product development that preceded the labeling of this box, then there would be no job.

I am at fault for not developing the business so that labeling boxes for, say, one-thousand boxes is a job that no person—young, old, handicapped or any person at all—will get to execute for a salary or contract. Instead, I struggle every day, as I have for years, trying to find a co-founder who is the business person in this venture. And when I am not searching, I am doing menial tasks—job destroying as I go.

There are at least 1,000 people in the USA alone who would buy this box for its contents, a Do-It-Yourself etching press for under $1,000. But, for lack of capital to contract for preparing the boxes at a price commensurate with the retail price, the job of labeling the box is not created.

Reverse engineer this

To apply the process of reverse engineering, take the size of the market and determine what the value of job creation is. The press that goes in the box is only one of six presses in the line of presses that I designed and sold to 130 people to date, for prices ranging from $500 in 2004 for the smallest, introductory models to a high of $4,500 today for the largest model we make.

Find the size of the market by sampling the demographics—the people who bought the presses. There is the former pilot, a woman, who is active as an artist and in her community. There is the retired police chief from Chicago, who paid an added amount of money for his press so he could have Number 100. There is the publisher of a national paper on fine art printmaking who, despite that she already has a $5,000 etching press, wanted a small one and exchange an advertisement in her paper and will write a review of the press. There is the man who flew from England to Seattle to learn how to make the press himself, and then went back to establish a workshop like mine to make and sell presses in the UK. A woman bought a used press and is exploring an “experience” type of service of Printmaking Birthday parties. In Canada, a woman is studying the feasibility of being the Canadian distributor and providing hands-on press making workshops based on my kit.

From the demographic, I estimated, in 2008, the potential number of people who would buy our presses to about 400,000 in the USA alone. I have sold presses in 12 foreign countries, too, in countries such as Singapore (2 presses), with a large population and high incomes.

The presses two attractive aspects: Its looks and its functionality. It won an international design competition in Italy last year in the “Unexpected Design” category for its design and also for its inclusion of an online educational feature.

This is why, whenever I find myself responding to an order for a press, I feel like I am destroying jobs for people who, if a business person developed this enterprise to the scale to which it can grow, would work for this company in Seattle.