I am a stupid enough to be a genius (LOL)

[joko104]

A little bit of knowledge can be a good thing, because it may cause a person to think outside the box.

My Mrs. has a very successful online business - physical locations for operations, shipping and even production of products. A few years ago as a customer courtesy she added an obscure product used for sterilizing and sanitizing that is vastly more effective than alcohol, well recognized and legit, but rare as a consumer product including being very pricey and generally bleach is good enough anyway. The cost of wholesale was so high and so diluted there was no profit even possible. I won't mention the product/chemical since we are now the largest manufacturer on the retail and wholesale to retailers level in the USA. Nothing is shipped outside the USA of anything because who knows what all the laws of the world are for any chemical.

The way the product (a chemical solution) is made by others is thru complex mechanical and electrical means. That method produces very low volume that is highly diluted. But I remembered some random bits of information from something I had messed with prior and thought there might be another way to make it - a very risky way. Risky, meaning explosive potential. Could it be made by chemical reaction? So I toyed around with it on a small scale with dozens of gallon jars. The process was extremely slow, 95% would boil away or evaporate as it was just open jars. But, 3 months later for what little remained? Pure. And 2,000% more concentration. The chemical reaction is the only energy source - and in that massive amounts of energy (heat) is produced. It powers itself so-to-speak.

Could I build a production system? So I ordered lots of heavy stainless steel large tanks, pipes, fittings, and valves to build a small refinery system. Finally I had built the system - doing this at night when no one around. With this, I proceeded to blow the roof off the back of a warehouse. BOOM! Massive cloud of what looked like steam or white smoke bringing the fire department. No fire. Just a massive white cloud - basically steam. Most was gone, but of the little that remained in the final stage stainless steel tank? Perfect. Still 2000% more concentrated than anyone else makes. Most people would count an explosion as a failure. I counted it as success for the final chemical produced.

A $5000 test by the #1 testing lab in the USA used by both companies and the government certified its purity, content and concentration.

All need be done? Keep it from blowing up.

 

[Lutherf]

Just one guy's opinion here but explosions are awesome!

 

[joko104]

So... I built my refinery set up. Sort of cool really. It looks wicked. Dr. Demento looking. No electricity. No motors. One system blows under extreme pressure and heat into the next one and the next one and the next one - 20 stages - reducing in volatility and ultimately to the final product. Self regulating unless pushed it too fast. It'd blow up even if throwing open the emergency relief valves and there goes all the product - to start over. Don't push it? It could take years to reach the finished product. It can't be babied. Making it complicated is you can't know if you were pushing it enough but not too much for many hours after whatever you do because the heat and pressure makes more heat and pressure - it then can cascade out of control. THERE IS NO TURNING IT OFF. Trial and error. Other than blowing up one of the tanks (BOOM!) it went well. SLOW development, but well.

Within another year it was sorted out. Throwing an emergency relief valve is sometimes necessary losing some product and production time, but no explosions. Sales grew steadily. However, production time is over 2 months - 3 months if done without pushing it really hard. Basically, it is stretching out an explosion from a single instant to across 2 to 3 months. Think of a 500 pound bomb that you MUST set off all at the same time - BUT also must make the explosive force spread out across 2 months? Now think of rows and rows of those bombs - all going off and into each other. That was the challenge.

The virus scare has caused sales to skyrocket - beyond production capability. While I could try to expand the system, this sales increase likely will drop after the scare vanishes. But for now, we could not keep - until last weekend. Once again, my NOT knowing the "right" way to make this stuff forced finding another way - and I did - plus it is safe. While I can't shorten the 2 to 3 month production time directly - after it is made I can triple that quantity within 2 weeks - which is no longer strong enough to be volatile - by 300%. And found a way to double the initial product without expanding the system - an overall 600% production increase with the same system. How? Again by chemical reactions using other chemicals - not as volatile - though the initial production method is still necessary and the heart of it.

Chemicals, even liquid, are measured and sold generally by weight, not volume. Across now about 3 years, production expanded from the experimental 10 pounds a month to now 30 tons a month.
Simple principle. Mix certain chemicals and they violently react to each other at the molecular level. A quintrillion micro explosions continuously going off instant to instant - producing massive heat and pressure - changing the chemical content until 100% is changed and therefore no longer volatile - and that new chemical is the finished product. In terms of an instant total energy release? Only as a measure (not similar chemicals), about 20% of pure nitroglycerin - other than it doesn't flame. Rather, it is all about pressure. Neither the various chemicals nor the final product have any explosion, fire, corrosion, poisoning or any other danger. Rather, that is the potential force if the chemicals were all just slammed together at the same time in a closed system. The strength of the explosion would be defined by the strength of the container to resist bursting - so once a tank bursts that's about it in potential destructive force. Nothing of this is bomb making nor suitable to make bombs. Too unstable. Too pointlessly complex.

No one else may enter that area. Even I won't sometimes when I hear the tanks rumbling - like low pitch jet engines.

With this, the company can sell it 600% more concentrated than anyone else can even make - and at 1/3rd the cost that no one could possibly match, while still being quite profitable - selling it both retail and in bulk containers wholesale to other companies - and have nearly completely captured the retail market for an obscure niche market product. We've only got about 101 inquiries of "how do YOU make it?" and the answer is - of course - "nice try!" Hell no we won't tell. However, because of safety factors possibly no major company would risk it. Or maybe that's why no one ever tried since the convention method and low concentration is good enough. It's just not production volume and cost efficient.

Anyway, I'm bragging. No one thought it would work - NO ONE - but me. Being too ignorant to know how it is conventionally made or able to make such a system when I explored it, and having some random otherwise info just somehow lead to this. My ignorance, tendency to have random thoughts, and stubborn "never give up, I'm going to make this work" produced a moment of genius. LOL.

"Build a better mousetrap..." Highest volume manufacturer and seller in the country.

It took 3 years.

 

[JANFU]

Just one guy's opinion here but explosions are awesome!

Like real estate it is all about location

 

[HIP56948]

My first thought was perhaps potassium iodide but chemicals are not really my field.
Anyway, I admire your persistence on coming up with a new/better way to sell your/wife's products. Big thumbs up.

 

[joko104]

I'm not real big on personal safety, but am about others. So I'm one of those people who says "that could be dangerous, let me do it." The reason is that while I am not paranoid I also am not reckless. More important, it is not my nature to panic in a crisis. When things are going wrong or headed that way, it takes rapid but thoughtful actions and decisions devoid of fear and panic. I understand a person sometimes learns more by doing something the wrong way than the right way. Doing something the wrong way also can be how new discoveries are made.

Certain chemicals were dropped as safety considerations. Having and using nitromethane (an extreme oxidizer) was dropped because the facility also has extreme hydrocarbons. Those two in the same facility is the formula for a real disaster, particularly since no odors or alarms could detect fumes building from a leak. That decision was made after testing a small amount of nitromethane fumes and minute amount of one of the hydrocarbons in an ordinary 1 quart steel can. The power of the burst was enough to make the decision.

I had also tested the explosive (bursting) force of the process by deliberately blowing up a heavy gauge 55 gallon stainless steel drum. Within seconds the drum ends rounded out and then it blew off one end with significant force and a massive white chemical steam cloud. This provided a lot of info such as what warning signs are there and approximately how much of a pressure wall is produced by the "explosion." It is relatively low after a short distance.

This lead to building a system with weak points - that something will blow out before pressure builds so great to poise real destructive force - and to control what direct the pressure wall travels (up, not sideways or in all directions - why it blew off the roof, not a wall or the interior). Allowing a boil over to some degree is common, but slowly am reducing that being necessary. Trial and error.

 

[joko104]

Sales of that product continues to grow rapidly. We are down to less than 3 weeks of inventory - for something that takes at least 6 weeks to produce. So it's back to figuring out something new and literally pushing it past the safe point beyond the pressure and heat the setup can handle. That means allowing blow-off, which if managed costs 20 to 25% of the output and does have to be manages. That is a huge time demand.

Tonight I'll go to the facility to "push it." Been doing that now every day - morning, afternoon and night. I've done this long enough to at least have a feel for it, since everything happens on delayed reaction. If I push it past the system's capability to withstand, there is no way to know this for 6, 8, 14, 20 hours later - depending how much I pushed it too far. Then, even when it reaches that point it is guestimation as to how much it will continue to overload. There are ways I can stop or slow the excess, but that comes at a price of lowering concentration, ending the overloading defeating the purpose, or a lot of lost product.

It may be necessary to add a second refining setup, but I really don't want to and that has almost a 2 month lead time to a final product coming out of it - and by then the covid-19 scare may have subsided - or gone so crazy bad that 10 new setups wouldn't be enough.

As everyone else runs out, we could dramatically increase prices, but haven't. We don't exactly have competition in some ways. The USA is our market now. We do not sell our ship outside the continental USA. It's just too legally risky since other countries laws can change at any time.

 

[joko104]

DISASTER PRICE GOUGING? Or is it?

Sales on that product are going crazy, now nearly a 1000% increase and climbing fast - and likely to truly go off the charts because of the Internet and both prepper bloggers and bloggers panicking on covid-19 are promoting it. We are now supply nearly all merchants at wholesale and the general consumers are increasingly buying larger volume size orders - with some retailers and individuals placing BIG orders to stockpile it.

We are going to run out and probably within 3 to 4 weeks - less if sales keep climbing.

The business doesn't price gouge to seize upon panic or to shortages like most companies do. But the company has starting to raise prices not for the profit, but to encourage people to buy lower quantity so there is some for everyone to buy - rather than hoarders drying up all availability - and then they turn around and sell our stuff they stockpiles at massive markup.

It raising prices on a "disaster" product legitimate if it is to try to slow down hoarders eliminating availability and for their then price gouging as all legit outlets are out of stock? In a few of it's niche markets, the company used to totally dominate the market, with money raining down. However, economy of scale was coming into play, growing time demands, and growing interactions with government lead to significantly rolling the business back a few years ago - such as canceling all advertising (at one point the company was paying Google $100,000 a month for sponsored ads plus almost that much to Amazon, Ebay, Bing and other ad platforms - giving top of page one on all search engines, on Google, etc).

For the time demands, pressure, and overall burdens, at some point it just becomes being Scrooge, sacrificing your life and your family for endlessly pursuing more money. At some point, enough it enough. Ever greater sums of money also can lead a person in the wrong directions in many ways, plus starts to create a feeling of superiority and detachment from ordinary working people. There is a pecking order in the world of gathering money. An arrogance and feeling of superiority. That is very real.

There is a curious ethics to pricing if you become the only business to have a product some people want to the degree of panic. Even just a $1 price increase is a significant sum when that $1 markup is pure profit. What about $5? $10? $20? $50?

Is price gouging - clearly at profit - to stop hoarding and subsequent extreme price gouging by merchants who are hoarding - legit? Do we have some duty to give away the "gouging" extra income?

 

[joko104]

It can be uncomfortable. For example, one time just to do something we rode out on a transport boat to a small offshore casino boat. We were just driving down the road, coming from a fine restaurant, and decided to check it out. We were really dressed up - suit & tie, evening gown type dress. But this was a very blue collar crowd, apparently mostly seniors on fixed income and blue collar workers in jeans and T-shirts.

The small gambling boat had old coin slot machines that dropped nickles, dimes, quarters and silver dollars with all the clanging into the metal catch bin. At the front was the only big money slot machine - the only $5 machine. We usually don't even play $1 machines at casinos - nor play the big progressive machines because we already decided if we every hit a 5 figure or larger win we're going to just walk away rather than go thru the government reporting forms, which could lead to an audit - and how much cost and time would that cost us?

It seemed we could not lose that day - and had plastic buckets full of coins. I put in a $20 in the only $5 machine just for the hell of it, because there wasn't much to do on the small ship. And it hit pretty good: 360 big silver dollar banging into the metal bin - with a winner's alarm going off and big red flashing light on top. $360 was real money to most people there. All eyes were on us. We just wanted it to stop slowly dropping the big Einsenhower silver dollars one at a time for all the attention this was drawing to us. Again, this was a small, 1 story little gambling boat.

This was VERY uncomfortable. Dressed like rich people carrying buckets and buckets of coins to be cashed. How unjust. Other people probably NEEDED that money. It was just becoming annoying to us. Swell, now another bucket full of dime and quarters to carry or go cash in.

Since we didn't want to bother feeding coins, we had been using $20s, so had buckets of coins - more than both of us could carry. It just seemed "unjust" - and it was clear some people saw it that way. Dressed like a million bucks. Shoving in $20s not really caring if we win or not - while others are feeding their last quarters from this month's SS payment hoping against hope to win back the $200 they had already lost. We has spend more than that on lunch before getting on the boat.

It was so uncomfortable that we cashed in the coins and spent the rest of the time out hiding out on the back deck just waiting for the return trip. If you go to where rich people are in an old beater car, they assume you are hired help and look past you like you don't exist. If you go to where low income people are in a 6 figure car, you also aren't one of them to their minds.

 

[joko104]

OMG - Amazon put that product bannered across the top of the page, at the first listings on the top of the page, and as a Prime "preferred" product on the appropriate search term. for a previously obscure niche product we're now it. The ceiling is being blown off sales. We're not sure we can handle this volume both for production and even just shipping it. It business is no longer set up for hyper volume sales like it used to be.

I have tentatively found a way to still reduce production time, but it's still at least a month. That's as far as it can be accelerated. It would take 2 weeks to even build a second larger system - and then at least a month before it produced any product. Our only alternative appears to be to raise prices a lot to encourage people not to hoard it and merchants not to stockpile it for future price gouging if we run out. (We dare not warn we are running low or we'd be swamped with hoarder sales.)

Complicating this is the primary product line - a different chemical - also has relevancy to this virus panic - so sales across the board are blowing thru the ceiling. Ouch.

 

[joko104]

Oh ****, it's over. Some of the internet natural health gurus with millions of followers started yesterday advising people to buy this product. We are by far the largest manufacture in the USA - and it is not imported. It is likely we can't cover 1% if what is coming is what we think. It seemed thee was a chance to ramp up production, but with this we could be out in a couple of days - plus everyone is getting tired despite the 4 figure over time paychecks everyone will be getting.
This means the only people still selling it will be selling 100% fraud products that are falsely labeled as to contents. That is all to common. Nearly all legitimate merchants sold our product, many repackaging it into smaller containers with their own label. So when we go down all legit sales anywhere in the USA are gone.
Time to get ready to throw in the towel?

 

[Excon]

Sounds fishy.
Is this a colloidal silver or something similar?

 

[joko104]

No.

We got slammed over the weekend and today (Monday) will shut it down (remove it all from online). We don't need this. Not only the work, but the flooding of panicking phone calls and emails. Many people are truly terrified of covid-19 - exactly as the Democratic Party wants, being the party of hate and fear.

The market now for covid-19 will be nearly entirely scammers for which not only are their claims false, but whatever they are selling won't have any ingredient(s) they came. Home sellers filling capsules with grass clipping and calcium powder, and bottles with whatever liquid is cheapest - with diluted bleach with some flavoring being the most common. This company is FDA, USDA, even DHS registered and high ISO rated as well. But the business was cut back over 80+% and probably more a few years ago because it was too consuming and enough is enough. If this volume of sales was wanted, it wouldn't have been since the volume was dramatically larger in the past and a shell of it kept open mostly for long term employees.

So this is the end of the story. We threw in the towel.

 

[Odysseus]

Sorry, don't believe a word.

Yeah, I'm a trained biochemist.

 

[Excon]

No.

No what?

So this is the end of the story. We threw in the towel.

Then there should absolutely no issue with you revealing what the product is.

 

[joko104]

No what?

Then there should absolutely no issue with you revealing what the product is.

I don't see you posting your name, address, phone number(s), email address(es) and where you work on the forum. Don't expect me to either.

 

[joko104]

Sorry, don't believe a word.

Yeah, I'm a trained biochemist.

Good for you. :roll:

There is no reason to believe anything anyone posts on the forum.

 

[Excon]

I don't see you posting your name, address, phone number(s), email address(es) and where you work on the forum. Don't expect me to either.

No one asked you for that info. You were asked what the product was. You can reveal that without revealing anything about yourself.

 

[joko104]

No one asked you for that info. You were asked what the product was. You can reveal that without revealing anything about yourself.

Re-think that statement. Regardless, I'm done with this thread. It was just blowing off frustration, nothing else.

 

[Excon]

Re-think that statement. Regardless, I'm done with this thread. It was just blowing off frustration, nothing else.

Oh come on. I do not have to think about it.
Someone would have to go way out of their way to even attempt to tie the product you were speaking of with your claims about it's sales with your actual storefront (tying it to you) for something in which you threw in the towel.

 

[Threegoofs]

A little bit of knowledge can be a good thing, because it may cause a person to think outside the box.

My Mrs. has a very successful online business - physical locations for operations, shipping and even production of products. A few years ago as a customer courtesy she added an obscure product used for sterilizing and sanitizing that is vastly more effective than alcohol, well recognized and legit, but rare as a consumer product including being very pricey and generally bleach is good enough anyway. The cost of wholesale was so high and so diluted there was no profit even possible. I won't mention the product/chemical since we are now the largest manufacturer on the retail and wholesale to retailers level in the USA. Nothing is shipped outside the USA of anything because who knows what all the laws of the world are for any chemical.

The way the product (a chemical solution) is made by others is thru complex mechanical and electrical means. That method produces very low volume that is highly diluted. But I remembered some random bits of information from something I had messed with prior and thought there might be another way to make it - a very risky way. Risky, meaning explosive potential. Could it be made by chemical reaction? So I toyed around with it on a small scale with dozens of gallon jars. The process was extremely slow, 95% would boil away or evaporate as it was just open jars. But, 3 months later for what little remained? Pure. And 2,000% more concentration. The chemical reaction is the only energy source - and in that massive amounts of energy (heat) is produced. It powers itself so-to-speak.

Could I build a production system? So I ordered lots of heavy stainless steel large tanks, pipes, fittings, and valves to build a small refinery system. Finally I had built the system - doing this at night when no one around. With this, I proceeded to blow the roof off the back of a warehouse. BOOM! Massive cloud of what looked like steam or white smoke bringing the fire department. No fire. Just a massive white cloud - basically steam. Most was gone, but of the little that remained in the final stage stainless steel tank? Perfect. Still 2000% more concentrated than anyone else makes. Most people would count an explosion as a failure. I counted it as success for the final chemical produced.

A $5000 test by the #1 testing lab in the USA used by both companies and the government certified its purity, content and concentration.

All need be done? Keep it from blowing up.

You realize you can buy almost any chemical compound in virtually any scale you would need via commonly known chemical supply houses, like Sigma? And if you want to do it really cheap, you can get it from the source ( usually Asia) in bulk?

If not, I’d ditch the bathtub chemistry and go commercial.

 

[joko104]

Oh come on. I do not have to think about it.
Someone would have to go way out of their way to even attempt to tie the product you were speaking of with your claims about it's sales with your actual storefront (tying it to you) for something in which you threw in the towel.

No storefront. Couldn't have one if we wanted to. DHS regs. The facilities themselves have false signage. We have some bad-ass stuff, though mostly got away from that. But, as stated above, there is no reason to believe any of it anyway.

 

[Excon]

No storefront. Couldn't have one if we wanted to. DHS regs. The facilities themselves have false signage. We have some bad-ass stuff, though mostly got away from that. But, as stated above, there is no reason to believe any of it anyway.

Oy vey. :rollseyes&slapsforehead:

OMG - Amazon put that product bannered across the top of the page, at the first listings on the top of the page, and as a Prime "preferred" product on the appropriate search term. for a previously obscure niche product we're now it.

Really?
You actually think I needed to differentiate between a brick & mortar vs that of a storefront on Amazon? :doh

We got slammed over the weekend and today (Monday) will shut it down (remove it all from online).

Since you say you removed it, what was the product?

 

[joko104]

Deleted my response. You don't know what you're talking about. Sigma? :roll:

 

[joko104]

Oy vey. :rollseyes&slapsforehead:

​

Really?
You actually think I needed to differentiate between a brick & mortar vs that of a storefront on Amazon? :doh



Since you say you removed it, what was the product?

"Storefront on Amazon." :lol: