I understand where you’re comping from from a product design perspective. However if that’s the case then this is prohibitively expensive.I looked at making a simple pocket, like a magazine rack you see at a doctors office to put your scale in that's mounted just above the baseboard. I thought that was going to be the perfect solution for me. For some people it probably is, but I'll explain why it doesn't work for me.
I don't think this explanation is something I can quantify and show as a true benefit to the customer. It's all about degrees of freedom. Objects not attached to anything have 6 degrees of freedom they can rotate about the X, Y & Z axis. They can also be translated in each of those directions.
People don't realize how much coordination it takes to pick up a 5 pound scale, rotate it around and place it in that pocket attached to the wall. It takes coordination to get it out of the pocket, flipped around and placed on the floor. I'm not saying it's difficult. It's not. I don't think most people would do it with one hand. But, how many times do you need to repeat this motion before you accidentally bang it into the wall and chip your paint or crack a wall tile? Same goes when your putting it down. You're tired, it's first thing in the morning and you bang the corner of the scale into your tile floor when your setting it down. Maybe you didn't break a tile or crack your glass scale this time. But if you're older, a little shaky or if your kids want to weigh themselves. I'll bet an accident is likely to happen. This manual manipulation of a scale was more than I wanted to do every morning (I'll admit, I'm lazy).
Back to degrees of freedom. A hinge is a simple mechanism. Your bathroom door opens and closes with just the push of one finger. It goes to its fully open to fully closed position with great ease. This is because it only has 1 degree of freedom. Now, remove one of the hinges (or both) and try to open and close it. Not so easy, but it can be done. Too many degrees of freedom.
UpScale is not a hinge. It rotates your scale while guiding it above the baseboard. When you want to use your scale, Upscale rotates it, lowers it towards the floor and pushes it out from the wall (you can't use a scale that is tight to the wall). UpScale's greatest benefit is that it has 1 degree of freedom. This 1 degree of freedom means this entire motion can be done with 1 finger(with the biggest, heaviest scale you can find). It can't bang your scale into the wall and the control you have with only 1 finger allows your scale to be gently placed on the floor. Even when you're not fully awake.
People buy things that they think they're going to use (like a bathroom scale). But, if there's too much resistance to using it, it just sits unused. UpScale makes your scale very usable. I like to compare it to a coat hanger vs a coat hook. A coat hanger is very easy to use, but takes two hands. A coat hook is a one handed operation and is simple and fast. That pocket scale storage shelf is like a coat hanger. UpScale is like a coat hook.
As someone in your market I’m telling you I don’t care about any of that and am ok with the awkward situation of pulling it out and putting it back.
Also one of the problems you mention is paint chipping, and that can be solved with a larger backsplash around the caddy.
If you’re going to do B2C then this price is just too high for me.
I like the idea of B2B at this price point.
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