Parts like these start as a nest: shapes laid out on one sheet, then cut. The sheet costs what it costs whether four parts come off it or nine. Everything unused is scrap already paid for. So the real number in the business is not the price of plastic — it is yield, parts per sheet.
Only one design was funded. One design nests alone, and alone it leaves the sheet half empty. Two designs, tooled at the same time, nest into each other — the gaps one leaves are the shapes the other fills. Same sheet, same cost, far more parts off it.
That was never a design problem. It was a cash problem. Paying for both designs up front is what buys the higher yield, and it only works if they arrive together.
So if I had my two splitter designs yield on one sheet of ABS, 2 things would have happened, I would’ve dramatically increased my already huge margin and generated more cash up front since I was first to market.
Two effects, and the second one is the whole story. The margin climbs — that is the obvious half. The half that mattered is when the money shows up: more finished product to sell now, out of the same material spend, while the first-to-market window is still open.
And cash up front was the exact thing missing. The business did not fold because the product was wrong or the market said no. It ran out of runway to scale. Which is the point: the yield problem and the funding problem were one problem. Spending more at the start was what made the sheet pay for the scale — from the jump, not eventually. That spend was not made.
