Making stuff is really hard. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. Exhibit C. The screwdriver that took us
three years to make and then the clear version of it that took us another two years. And believe it
or not, those are the success stories. Want to see some failures? Will YouTube Shopping sponsor
this video today for us to show off some of our failed products and to give you an opportunity
to buy one of our new Prismagic colored collection of colored transparent screwdrivers
for 20% off using the YouTube Shopping feature down below. But move fast because the promo
is only on for five days. This is going to be a lot of fun for the LTT fans and probably even
more fun for the hate watchers. Hi guys. Because we have tried to make pretty much everything
from wallets to cashmere hoodies to DIY acoustic paneling to even a fully tinker friendly gaming
mouse that got so far into development that we bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of
mouse ICs and then just never used them. Anyone want to buy some mouse processors? Anyone? Bueller?
For those who haven't met them, this is Tynan, Tom and Kyle from the engineering team
and this is one of the stupidest projects that we ever began work on and also did four iterations
of. In fairness to me, it was at the peak of the RGB craze and an RGB welcome mat for the door
of the discerning gamer is not the dumbest RGB item idea that I've ever come up with. However,
as dumb as the idea was, I think the design might be even worse. Kyle, you want to walk us through
this? I feel like I have to frame the backstory of this before explaining what it does. Linus's
exact instructions where I want to stand on it and it lights up with RGB. That was all the
instruction I got. No, no. That was all the instruction I got. I wanted the battery life to
be so good that you didn't have to like deal with it very often. I wanted it to be smart home
connectable. I wanted the RGB to be addressable and in a perfect world, I wanted it to solar charge.
What Linus is glossing over is the fact that these instructions came on consecutive iterations.
This prototype was the start of our fail fast mentality because Linus needs something physical
in order to roast or bring out his ideas to say it more nicely. All I remember is that it had to be
this thick so that we could put giant batteries in it and it was going to cost like $250. It had to
be that tall because Hall Effect needs space to spring, but the second prototypes changed from
I need to stand on it to I need to approach it and it needs to light up. Oh yeah, I forgot about
that one. I didn't because I had to then re-engineer it to have LiDAR. I don't think there's any
point talking about this any more than we already have. Clearly stupid, glad it never got made.
Keeping with our theme of RGB items that everyone absolutely everyone needs,
the staff of hydration. Okay, it doesn't look like much right now, but think of the vision of this.
Okay, an RGB water bottle with wireless induction charging at the bottom so you just put it on your
coaster to charge it up. Okay, RGB lighting here and here and and a modular system where you could
actually have the RGB power interface integrated into the threads and you could create a dual male
threaded middle piece so you could create a modular hydration staff. All somewhat insulated. If we
could have created such a product, I think we could have sold it pretty well, but it turns out that
due to patents and also it being kind of stupid, it was not possible. Any other gaps you guys want
to fill in here? This project just somehow keeps coming back to haunt me. I more inherited this
project from Kyle because he actually designed a PCB for this project. Originally, the PCB was
supposed to be in the lid and it was supposed to measure like the water level, right? Yeah, you
actually so to give some history of what Tom inherited. Originally, we're going to put the
the actual RGB inside the lid and have it compatible with all our water bottles, but that was either
too fire for Linus or too fire for patents and we had to change it. It was the latter. Moving on to
another colossal waste of engineering's time, our customizable gaming mouse. Okay, again, in fairness
to me, the vision for this was pretty cool. Replaceable switches, user customizable firmware.
I wanted a power outlet on board so you could like add lighting or you could add a fan. No,
you got to remember that. Yeah, a power output. We wanted to build like a modular kind of sled
for it so that you could put your own ergonomics on top of it. That would allow you to make it,
you know, right-handed or self-paw or whatever you want it to be. Did we throw around the idea
of selling just the PCB as a kit and you could use your own mouse that you like but had newer
mouse sensors? I think we determined that that was impossible and the idea was that we'd use
our IC and upgraded sensor to build boards that would go in your old favorite mouse.
Yeah. How close did we get on this? Well, we got close enough that we bought about $100,000 worth
of ICs because we saw that the market was about to go crazy and then... Oh yeah, we were doing all
this during the... COVID crisis. There was no silicon chips so we knew that the lead time was
going to be 52 weeks and we had planned a 52-week development cycle so they're going to coincide
really good. So we put the order in for the MCUs and the power management ICs that we needed
which we're trying to sell to reclaim some of the lost money but in theory it would have worked
really well had we released the product but now we're just sitting on boxes of ICs.
What ultimately killed it? Time molding complexity. We were planning on trying to do a bunch of
different sizes of grips and right-handed and southpaw with a bunch of customization and yeah,
it just... Priorities as well. We had other priorities and then by the time it became
relevant other companies would do the same thing. There's no question that the overlap
with our audience would have been great but timing in the market, timing of the production,
anyone want to buy some mouse parts? Our next one is a product that's actually
finally coming to in fact we finally got our bit case which uh oh yeah no it doesn't have the
same thing as the other thing. No it does not. This was removable at one point kind of like our
precision screwdriver set. The point is it has a little key ring thing on the back so you can
put one of our magnetic cable management things on it and then you can magnetically stick your
bits to wherever it is that you want to put them and we have new posidrive bits to go inside them
but that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about failures. Ah yes.
Oh my god. How about our heaviest failure? The all metal keycap. This one bounced around a fair
bit too. It was both design and us. At one point we were thinking about taking the zinc housings
that we have and trying to cast them into this. For context there was a failed production run from
our first hundred thousand screwdrivers of the zinc housings for the ratchet. We are the proud
owners of all of that zinc scrap metal now. Turns out we could not make cast keycaps out of them
for reasons. Would have been way more expensive and way harder to deal with. This was even out of
billet aluminum and it was still a nightmare and also very difficult to ship a giant block of aluminum.
Especially without it being scuffed or damaged in any way and you know that anyone who's buying a
desk ornament is going to want it to be absolutely perfect. So what killed it? Shipping difficulty
and complete lack of an addressable market that it was. I mean we would have sold some.
Now for another project that was in development for literal years. The kind of DIY-ish acoustic
panels which in fairness to me is actually a pretty neat idea. And one that I had nothing to do with.
Cool. Before we get to the later stages of it though why don't we start at the beginning.
The cool thing about it is that it was meant to be a flat pack that you would receive like this
of these outer segments that would be put together with corner segments at various angles depending
on what kind of geometric shape you wanted to form it into. Then all you got to do is head to
home depot and just buy some kind of foam to put in it. And you get to choose whatever is local
because shipping stuff like that's expensive. And also just so wasteful. The other thing that
makes it complicated is making them aesthetically pleasing. So we wanted to sit in between the
just DIY jigsawed piece of sauna pan that's screwed into the wall and then the artisan freaking
architectural acoustic paneling that you can buy for your cathedral or whatever. That is where the
covers came in and to talk about those we're going to need Matthew from the fashion team.
Hey there he is. This was one of our first I think collaborative projects between fashion
and engineering. It was definitely an adventure of a project. There was a lot of design constraints.
Yeah I guess there are constraints. Challenges that I was given for this project but yeah I think
we basically wanted to also sell a cover for the acoustic panels. That's easy to like remove and
put on in case we have like different stuff with like different colors, different graphics so you
can kind of easy for you guys to switch it around. We also wanted it to not be wrinkly. We also wanted
to not cover up the back of this to make it easier to mount to the wall. We wanted manufacturing
tolerances that were like spot on otherwise. Entirely unreasonable. Yeah otherwise it's not
going to fit on perfectly. We essentially nailed it down to three shapes just due to the geometry
we're working with. We had a hexagon, a diamond, and then a triangle. And that you could test
to lay a full plane if you wanted to and get enough customization that you could. Come on that's
kind of cool right? We were trying to use as much re-ground material as possible because we didn't
love the idea of just like shipping plastic all over the world even if we weren't shipping the
foam that went with it. Like screwdrivers? Well no I mean that's but that's something that has
ongoing utility. This just I'd rather something like this was made of wood if it could be. Yay.
And we did explore that possibility. More expensive, less consistent, more likely to
crack and break. Also humidity is a thing and shipping lumber in certain countries is very
difficult. If we could have brought this to market at a reasonable price, dude this would have been
sick. It's looking at all the failed children. It's five years of pent-up pain that we're just
bringing back. I think it's time for us to welcome the rest of the fashion team. Bye. Bye.
Now it's time to revisit the trauma of another CW department. The fashion team. Welcome fashion team.
You guys can say stuff if you want or we can just jump right into
the first fashion failure of the day. Socks and sandals. Just sandals. Just sandals. Yes. Oh well
okay yes we're making socks which you do know I would have worn with these if we'd made them.
Sure. Right. Okay it is no secret that I became kind of known for the dad sandal with socks. So
obviously I had some thoughts on things that could be improved. However we did run into some
challenges trying to create a sandal. Yeah developing footwear is a big investment up front
because you have to make molds then you have to make those molds for each size. There's like
interior and exterior is a huge upfront cost to get into something for potentially one product.
Right so the very first thing you say today is Linus was too cheap and that's why we didn't make
them. That's another way to say that. Yeah and you with the shoes we got as far as requesting
some samples because I did have ideas about things that we could fix. The usual failure points are
right here where the Velcro strap fails over. The Velcro tends to be low quality. They can fail
here. They can fail here. In an ideal world we might have collaborated with Echo to do a color
way or something. Matthew actually did up some designs for what something like that might look
like. There's a version that uses like magnetic vid block buckles so that he doesn't have to
keep ripping the Velcro. So they're like silence you know. These are another Matthew innovation.
Why don't we talk about our other attempts at a belt. First we started with a vegan leather belt.
Yeah it sucked. Yep then we did a cow leather belt. It got sucked too. Then we tried a silicone
belt which is this one the only sample that we have left and it sucks. So we're kind of back at
the drawing board. Both of the leather versions had like a ceiling on top and when Linus wore it for
like a week or two it started to crack. Yeah. Which is very common also happens on the belt that you
normally wear and it's just not something we've been able to solve for yet. This just
occurred to me and we've never really talked about this but working at a real job like for like
an actual real clothing company. I mean we are but I would imagine it doesn't come up much that
you're sort of like having regular meetings with the customer kind of thing right. Like
is it a weird dynamic that we have here. It's a different dynamic but apparel is always pretty
personal. It always gets pulled into like what you like and what you wear. Because I feel like such
a bitch sometimes when I'm like this and this and this and also this. No no it's not. I mean you're
not like there are people that are very mean when they say it so you're not mean when you say it.
Oh okay cool. Yeah constructive criticism is always appreciated. Yeah. Why don't we constructively
criticize why we never managed to make a wallet. Matthew this was your project. Oh yes these are
little like folder wallets. Have you been dailying this one. No that's my X's. You took it back. I
mean it looks well used. Yeah you took it. We need it for the video so ask for it back. Really.
Yeah this is the one I daily. Yeah it's it's pretty cool. It's like supposed to be like the
Windows folder Mac folder. I'm still hung up on that you got in touch with your X to get this
wallet back. Yeah it's for the video you know. Do we want to talk about why these didn't happen.
Sure we can. I think after we came up with the idea we found out that there was someone already
doing it so we didn't want to seem like we were ripping somebody off. Yeah but I like our version
better. Sometimes products fail because the team can't find a practical way to bring them to market.
Sometimes products fail because they were a really stupid idea in the first place.
This is this one on me. I think so. I was on mat leave when this happened so. It was it was
Linus's idea. Right yeah okay on the surface okay not that crazy. I had just started regularly
gaming on a PC handheld and it's not always practical to carry around a backpack or like a
sling with you so I had this idea of like okay what if I had a hoodie that had a game console
pocket. Now initial idea was like it could slide in back here or something but then if you're like
riding the bus or sitting on an airplane and you have a game console on the small ear back
I think most people would not like that. So this I'm blaming Matthew for came up with the idea of
we could put the pocket on the front uh not bad. Yeah and then I well okay yeah you kind of ruined
the punchline. But let's say if I was more of the feminine persuasion I would have ended up with
an inverted nipple just now because it just punched me in the chest. So yeah why would you say this
one never made it to market. Functionality wise it wasn't very good. One of the other challenges
we have with pocket being placed in the midriff area is getting the right spot on different
body sizes and as you all know most people have torso lengths that are different. Some people
are shorter some people are longer which means where the pocket sits on their body can be good
or bad. Right so it could like end up punching some people in the bottom of the rib and some
people right in the nipple and some people like in the neck potentially if we don't get the pocket
placement just right. Yes. Let's pivot from the ones that I sucked at. I don't like where that's
going. I know. It was a good idea. We wanted to make a super premium hoodie. I think this was
intended to be the very first luxe product right? I think so. It's a cashmere line of some sort.
It's cotton cashmere blend. Right. It manages to be so soft without having that like oh too warm
of like a synthetic fleece kind of thing and like little details like golden zip the little
LTT's on the drop cords. It was actually never intended for public consumption because we thought
the price would be just completely unpalatable. What would retail on this be? Oh I can't remember.
It's like a couple hundred dollars or something. Yeah probably high 100. So we had intended to do
it just for staff with like your subscriber number like we've done internal products before
like a couple of times. Your subscriber number is how many subscribers the channel had on your
start day. The point is we couldn't get the fit right. How many samples we end up doing this?
Eight. This one's eight. Yeah. How does sampling typically work? At an average company you'd
probably want to be doing two to three samples. And they do that for free or? It depends on the
vendor. Many vendors will do it for free if you work for them for a long time and your developments
aren't super complicated. Once you start sampling eight samples they start to charge you. And how
much would a sample of something like this cost? 300 probably. So it's a funny thing. I actually
end up wearing a lot of our samples in the longer term. You might have noticed that my phone doesn't
actually go into this pocket on my cargo shorts. That's because this is an early sample of this
color where the pockets taper for some reason. You'd be amazed how much a little detail can change
the way a garment fits and feels. Like this one started with just the same block as I think our
stealth hoodie way back in the day. Yeah that makes sense. But it never fit right because? This is a
heavier weight material so it needs to have a looser fit to function properly. Back in 2022 we
didn't want that so it was never going to work with this fabric in that fit. I think now with like
super soft fit and the way we're moving we could probably do it. Do you think we could do this again?
I mean we've learned a lot. We wouldn't try to make it like this again. Yes. Oh yeah. I know we
could do it. Let's talk about one that's more of a Tatiana project. This was what did we call this?
Archie B. Woolen hoodie jacket? We're so good at product naming.
Yeah. Marketing team takes it over. We have this long drawn out name that's very technical and they're
just like we're gonna call it Archie B. Hoodie. We're like okay. This thing is super cool. Way
cooler than you probably realized. It's like a like a wool outer layer and then it has what do
you what do you call it? Yeah like reflective dots that are built in in order to give it that
woolen Archie B. Rainbow effect. Yeah it kind of looks like a trout. Yeah a rainbow trout. Yeah
yeah exactly. Like can you see it at all in the A-roll? So depending on how the light catches it
it either just looks like kind of a nice clean looking jacket or it's like damn like it's off.
It's so cool and we had a hat too and you will never buy one. Exactly. The reason why is because
unfortunately once you wash it it starts to peel away where you can actually see it come apart.
So unfortunately it has a terrible effect and the adhesive that they use is not good so it's
not something that we would develop until we can get a supplier who's able to get us something that
is machine washable. Yeah never say never for this we just need a mill that can do it a little better.
Yeah oh I'd love to make this one. I think this would be just killer. Yeah I think so too.
Now let's talk about a product that I was really excited about until I saw the first sample of it.
This product came about by accident. I was showing Linus a 3D render of a different design
and then I had like the outlines turned on so you can see I wanted to show the different design
details more clearly. He saw it as like cel shading and was just like hey I want a cel shade jacket.
Yeah that's what we tried to do with this. It's a nice jacket. It is. Why did we kill it again?
I think maybe because you didn't maybe the cel shading effect wasn't as cel shade.
Oh yeah it doesn't look cel shady at all. The armholes also suck so we would have to do some
work on that. We'll let you guys be the judge maybe we should resurrect this one because I think
Elamidae could probably fix the armholes in like a sample or two and then we can find new fabric.
When I was looking at cel shading I was also looking at different fabrics that we could
potentially use so what's cool about some of these knits is that it actually will show the
different colors as you move. So you would have that. That's cool. I want to do something with that.
What's this for? For sure. A lot of people will use it for sportswear in order to have that increased
vent so maybe you'd want to have it as a panel on the back in order to have increased breathability
and you could also use it to get that cel shaded effect because as you move you're going to see
a little bit more of that color. Sometimes we set out to make a garment and then we find a material
for it. Other times we find a really cool material and we're like oh we should use that.
Why don't we talk about backpacks? You all know the OG backpack. This is the WAN variant. You all
know the commuter backpack but what about mini OG backpack? Looking at it from this angle they
both look the same size. Right? From here. Yeah you've skipped to why we didn't bother making it.
There were a couple of innovations over the original backpack. The total carry capacity is
surprisingly similar but because we moved the water bottle holder to the outside you end up
with a smaller overall bag. It has kind of all the same features. Same ID you know obviously some
of the pockets are a little bit smaller. Why do we ultimately not do it? Once we had the commuter
backpack it was hard for us to find a reason to have a bag that was both like larger and carried
everything and smaller and look sleeker. It was kind of neither here nor there. This is why the
engineering team kind of has it easy. You know screwdriver you don't need to worry about it
being tumble dryable. Yeah not not tumble dryable. Don't don't do that but what you should do is pick
up one of our new Prismagic transparent colored multi-bit ratcheting screwdrivers for 20% off
courtesy of YouTube at the link down below. If you guys enjoyed this video and you're looking for
something else to watch why not the journey of bringing the screwdriver to life in the first
place or since the fashion teams here do we have any videos that are more focused on fashion? Oh
you could go watch the time I tried on counterfeit merch to really show you guys why what these guys
do matters because if you just slap a logo or a picture on some crap product it turns out it's
not very good.