In the summer of 2017, a toy so-called fidget spinner or hand spinner suddenly became popular all over the world. As the world’s factory, China, all different kinds of designs of fidget spinners emerged to the market. My cousin Jingzhao and I were so obsessed with the beauty and creativity of fidget spinners that we decided to design and make our own fidget spinners. As a mechanical engineering student, I had the background knowledge of how to design a machine, soon we got started. First, I drew the 2D and 3D models with AutoCAD and Solidworks to have a first image of the design. Except for the non-standard components that were not available on the market, we purchased every single component (e.g., crews, steel balls, bearings, etc.) from the online marketplace Taobao to minimize the manufacturing cost. For those unavailable components (e.g., holders (caps), the main body of the spinner (the two triangle steel boards)), I sent my 2D and 3D drawings to the manufacturers for manufacturing.
My cousin was good at artistic designing, therefore he designed the logo of our product and the box.
Eventually, we managed to make 1000+ of the Rotoops and sold hundreds of them to costumers (mostly in China, except for one in Singapore). Unfortunately, we didn’t make profit but paid out ~2000 Yuan. On one hand, it was because people’s passion for fidget spinners didn’t last long, on the other hand, I left China for the US to start my Ph.D. journey. However, it was a fun and meaningful practice for both my expertise and business! Who knows, this experience might have planted some seeds in my mind that would ground into a big tree for something in the future. 🙂
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