Your wholesale price should be at least twice your manufacturing cost. Hoeptner likes to set wholesale prices at more than twice the manufacturing cost so he can recover costs for products he works on that are never introduced. Manufacturing costs tell you whether to move ahead with an idea. Simplify the design. Most first working models have too many parts.
Extra parts mean extra money and more potential problems.
Hoeptner spent eight years simplifying his yard hydrant until it had only two moving parts. Simple designs typically perform better and are less expensive to build. Inventors who aren't engineers often have trouble doing this. Industrial designers, listed in the Yellow Pages, can help. Most people think designers specialize in the visual look of a product, but they also do engineering and can reduce the complexity of working models.