| Why would you call it a good idea? Even your calculations are way too optimistic. Giving it little thought, I can say that NYC would have at best 10k sales of this item. In total... including any knockoffs. The product may have scaled to be able to sell to London, Paris, Tokyo, Soul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. But this is the total addressable market for this item. Let's say you have 2 engineers in US working on this full time - that's 500k in salaries(that includes all associated staff). In NYC you would be able to charge $300, but no other major metro area has that kind of disposable income. In London the max price would be $170, Paris and others - $150... And boom, you can't even make a product to cover development costs.(not to mention any operating costs) Cool art project and commercial viability clash perfectly here. This item is at best - an art piece, that should cost as such($3000+). |
That's 2 days of median disposable income.
For comparison:
San Francisco, U.S. - Disposable income after rent: $4,710
Zurich, Switzerland - Disposable income after rent: $4,626
Chicago, U.S. - Disposable income after rent: $3,298
Boston, U.S. - Disposable income after rent: $3,188
New York City, U.S. - Disposable income after rent: $3,157
Sydney, Australia - Disposable income after rent: $2,615
Melbourne, Australia - Disposable income after rent: $2,485
Oslo, Norway - Disposable income after rent: $2,342
Copenhagen, Denmark - Disposable income after rent: $2,285
Wellington, New Zealand - Disposable income after rent: $2,075
Depending on your list and method, New York could be 44th on global purchasing power index:
https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings.jsp?title=20...
Or 15th:
https://defence.pk/pdf/attachments/screen-shot-2019-11-27-at...
Anyway, "no other major metro area has that kind of disposable income" seems inaccurate.