Michael Satterlee / Solefully
At just 18 years old, Michael Satterlee created several businesses and earns more than 250 thousand euros per month
A young entrepreneur making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month explains how anyone can launch an e-commerce business with a 3D printer — and just a few hundred dollars.
The young man Michael Satterlee He understands what it means to launch a business on a very tight budget.
He was still in elementary school when he created his first company of e-commerce, which sold a sand repellent product which he created himself, with disinfectant gel and corn starch.
“At the time I didn’t have any moneyso I used a free application like Google Sites instead of Shopify — and, to pay, I had an Amazon Handmade account”, the entrepreneur, now 18 years old, tells r, referring to the Amazon market for handmade products, which waives the monthly sales fee to approved creators.
“That is, I had a free Amazon account, a free Google Sites accountand then my ‘buy button’ it was just a link to my store on Amazon. That’s how I started selling”, details the young entrepreneur.
The young man, who lives in the house where he grew up, on the outskirts of Albany, in the state of New York, who decided not to go to university to grow the Cruise Cup, explained how to start selling products online with a few hundred dollars.
1. Start by prototyping
A core element of the e-commerce business he launched was working with a supplier to turn a product into realitya process that can be time-consuming, especially if the manufacturer is abroad, and expensive, as there is usually a minimum quantity of orders.
Satterlee’s solution was create products with a 3D printer. The young man incorporated 3D printing and CAD (computer-aided design) modeling into a subject he took in the first year of secondary school, and argues that Anyone can start creating and testing products with a printer.
“You can get a 3D printer for about 100 dollars and a roll of filament costs about 20 dollars. Nowadays, modeling software is so easy; there is even AI where you just need to write a prompt and it generates a model ready to print in 3D”, explains Satterlee.
It will be necessary to do some adjustments Before arriving at a product that satisfies, he said: “As soon as I have the idea, I move it to CAD and start working — and it’s quite rare to get it right the first time.”
Even so, can progress much faster than if you were working with a manufacturer, sending samples back and forth. It took about three days to prototype the first version of its viral can holder and about a week to put the product on sale.
2. Test multiple product ideas
Satterlee believes in create a product quickly and improve from there, instead of spending months trying to perfect it. This is a big advantage of working with a 3D printer: you can create products in a few daysat low cost, and test the market before deciding to invest time, money and materials in scale production.
Solefully came about after trying several products on Etsy, until finally one of the products “got”: a snowplow-shaped accessory for clogs. Upon realizing that there was demand, he decided set up an entire store dedicated to accessories for clogs.
“Ensure that your idea exists first, and make it good later” says Satterlee. “People often said to me, ‘What’s the point of a can cooler being 3D printed? It is not isolated. It won’t keep the drink cold.’ But I didn’t want to know. I saw the potential. If you have an idea, bring it to life as quickly as possible and then we’ll see.”
3. Take advantage of free resources
In e-commerce, “many of the initial costs are free“, says Satterlee. Once we have the essential materials — the printer and filament — we can start create and publish content on social media without paying.
“Instagram and TikTok are the most important things when you’re starting out, because we want to gain followers and we want organic sales and organic traffic,” he explained. Instead of buying ads, he focused on creating content with viral potential.
As for the sales platform, “Shopify costs $1 per month for the first three months and then $35 a month after that.” Other initial expenses may include padded envelopes for sending orders and a label printer to create shipping labels.
Satterlee has outgrown her original workspace, the house where she grew up, and now operates from a nearby warehousewhich he rented. It currently has more than 130 3D printers working non-stop to produce Cruise Cup products, but this is not enough to keep up with demand.
The next step is to create a mold with a manufacturerwhich will cost between 20,000 and 30,000 dollars, but will save you time and money in the long run. “THE final product, in my headis when it is made of stainless steel”, he said.
We recently asked five Artificial Intelligence applications an interesting question: legally and without depending on luck. Almost everyone told us that One of the ways was to set up a business on our own — something that we considered, in the article, that depended on us already having some capital to begin with.
In the end, the AIs were rightand Michael Satterlee shows us that it is possible, with very little capital, set up a successful business.
