To Jake and others, the reality is that getting money up front is impractical, especially on a new part or a large part such as the floor mats. In order to make parts, you need molds, tooling and/or finishing jigs, etc depending on the actual part produced. Molds can run as high as $50,000 or more for floor mats and other large items, and about same for any fine detail shaped items because of the complexity of the part. Having been in that kind of business for over 6 years I know about it first hand. That's why the Manufacturing Fund carries the reserve balances it does.
The stuff is typically good for thousands of parts (or tens of thousands of parts). You either do it right and the tooling will outlive all of us, or you try to do it cheap (like going to some places in China for the stuff) only to find it's not correct & the supplier doesn't care to fix what they did wrong and you're out the money. Again, I was there so I know first hand.
