I want to start a small business selling my furniture designs - where to start?

[Nic83]

Okay so I have the idea and I've started a funding campaign for it here - The Disc Desk - Rotate your potential. -- Indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/discdesk?a=642099)
It's very bare bones right now, but I plan to make nice updates in the near future. I've talked to friends, family, and complete strangers about the idea and they all like it. I've done patent searches and even talked to a lawyer about it in a free consultation.
I'm trying to get $10,000 so I can have a local furniture company build a professional, but small scale model of the Disc Desk so I can show off something physical to friends and anyone who wants to see the idea. I'm not really worried about someone stealing the idea, well maybe a little.

Anyway, I'd like to find an investor or partner of some kind who could help me move forward with this idea and make it sell, getting it into the hands of other people across the world who want it.

Thanks for reading.

[huggytree]

apply for a patent and see if its truely 'special'

what type of job would a rotating desk be needed?

by having a worker so close to you wouldnt that make the worker 'less' productive?

why cant the worker just hand whatever it is over the top of the desk? why is rotating it easier?

its possible this is a great idea for a certain office situation..i dont know........from my experience (never working in an office) i dont see a need for it

sell me on it?

why get an investor when its only $10,000 your looking for....cant you do a 2nd mortgage on your home? sell your car? sell something of value you own? borrow from parents? cash in retirement? savings accounts?

$10k isnt much to have to come up with....it should be something you can easily handle yourself......get a part time job and in 6 months you'll have it

you could just patent your idea and sell it to a office furniture maker for $50k and move on to your next design....and this time you'd have $50k to work with to manufacture it yourself

make your example MOVE...i cant tell what part rotates....is it the whole top? so you'd have to tell everyone to step back and gets hands away from the table before you move it? can anyone control the movement? is there a lever that locks it in place? or if one person bumps it will it spin a bit and knock the other workers in the head?

there's alot to explain about your product and that photo doesnt explain it to me

[Nic83]

What type of job? Anyone who works with physical objects like papers or really anything that's not totally digital. I can't apply for a patent without money and I currently have no job or income. The idea of increasing productivity with a disc is that you can put one project or idea down or whatever you need then rotate the disc and get to more work. It's using a large desk space without having to stretch across the desk - the disc brings the work to you.

The blue disc part in the middle rotates on a central axis. It's not much more complicated than that.

[ArcSine]

Nic, I was intrigued at the "lazy susan" concept being applied to a desk. I'm perpetually with more stuff "in progress" on my desk than can all fit in the little bit of real estate immediately in front of me. Hence, I'm always rolling my chair back and forth in a little track along the desk, to position myself in front of whatever I need to be in front of at the moment. So the idea of moving the desktop instead of me is interesting.

Couple of engineering-ish questions come to mind: How do you keep objects on the desktop (pencil caddies, computer monitor, stapler, ....) from getting clobbered by the stationary, frame-like part of the desk (what appears to be shelving), as the rotation causes those objects to pass from one of the three sectors partitioned by the shelving, to another?

Also, how is wiring handled? For those wired devices (computer monitor, electric calculator, e.g.), how is the wiring prevented from tangling or twisting (or having a power cord yanked from the socket) during rotation? I can imaging that small rotations--no more than a radian or so--shouldn't pose much difficulty, but what about large (or cumulative small) rotations?

Anyway, to a dude who's always stretching, reaching, and/or rolling, it's an interesting idea. Cheers!

[Nic83]

Thanks for your interest ArcSine!
I plan to have the disc itself be adjustable both vertically and towards/away from the user on notched tracks of some kind ( not exactly sure about how to do this part yet ). Since it's adjustable on a central column you would be able to give yourself more or less room between the "arms" and the disc proper. All wiring would go down the hollow central rotation device and meet with the ground, presenting no twisting issues when rotation is in effect. I've made a couple of these desks in full scale before and, although crude in nature, they were very fun to play with. Electronic devices would be placed on the stationary shelves and the wiring fed down the central hollow shaft.

Here's an updated model with some electronics on it.
http://i.imgur.com/ph9zJ.jpg

[huggytree]

you shouldnt display your invention w/o a patent

if its worth stealing someone will do it

[turboguy]

This thread is over 4 years old and I have not seen everyone rushing to buy a rotating desk so I assume the idea died.