Manufacturing introduces incredible opportunities for players to introduce their own user generated content into Upland. You can design map assets (formerly outdoor decor), karts, or structure ornaments. You can even upload your own NFTs to sell in Upland and leverage their API to create unique experiences within the platform. The manufacturing process is broken down into several different stages. Becoming an effective manufacturer requires more than just a property in Upland and the spark resources to manufacture the items. This page starts with the preparation required for anyone who is interested in becoming a manufacturer, and below will detail the actual steps.
Before you can begin to manufacture anything, the first step is to define a property you wish to turn into a manufacturing plant. You should determine what you plan to produce – type of asset, relative size of the assets, who your customers are and the sales price. These are important details because they will likely have an impact on the size of the property that you will want to create your factory metaventure on. Not only will you need to place a large enough factory on the property, but you will also require adequate space on that property to hold inventory before transporting it to the showroom where it will be sold. This means the factory’s proximity to the show room is another important factor in both the manufacturing process and the final sales price of the items produced. The need to have vehicles transporting newly produced inventory to the showroom will lead to car depreciation, and spark fuel costs. If you don’t own the cars yourself, you will likely have to pay for using a transportation service as well. Check out the catalogue of different MV Motor vehicles to compare their abilities as they pertain to transportation of goods, and learn more about the car economy here.
Doing market research and understanding where your customers are located will help you to understand how much they will be willing to pay for the item, the quantity required and therefore the total costs to manufacture – factoring in land, structure, manufacturing, and transportation costs. Of course there are other costs such as design costs, marketing, and general overhead costs of running a business – in the real world, or virtually; these need to be factored in as well. Once the property has been selected and purchased you will need to construct the factory. This process will be similar to that of constructing a home using spark, and creating a metaventure. Here is a list of different factory sizes and spark requirements.
Manufacturing is more than just ensuring you have enough spark. One of the important key performance indicators (KPIs) for a manufacturing plant is downtime. The goal of a plant is ensure that products are being produced without any interruptions. If issues arise that stop the plant from manufacturing goods it is missing out on potential revenue and profit. Understanding the market, demand for products in showrooms, transportation availability, inventory lot size and spark availability all can cause potential bottlenecks in the process causing the plant to halt production. All these factors will have to be managed in tandem to ensure the plant and entire supply chain works efficiently. Learn more about managing spark and production planning here.
Manufacturing process
Note – this page is last updated on June 2024. As more feature begins to roll out across Upland, more information will be added to this page.
To create assets for a 3rd party experience. Developers can leverage Upland's API to create their own games and experiences. Manufacturing special items might be required for any 3rd party experience.
Earn - creators who manufacture their own 3D models are able to earn royalties on all sales in perpetuity.
What resources are required?
Spark for manufacturing - 5 spark minimum.
UPX to rent out spark from other players (optional)
UPX to setup and maintain a manufacturing metaventure by paying venture dues.
3D models of the asset design (not required for the registration process)
Recommended - Not required in order to own or register for a factory.
Showroom to sell your manufactured goods (you will be able to sell goods in other player's showrooms, but it might be advantageous for a manufacturer to also sell his own goods to provide more competitive prices, or to earn more profit)
Cars to transport manufactured items to showrooms. (future feature)
Employee to manage orders, production queues, finances, etc.
Not required for metaventure registration, but important nontheless:
Designers of 3D models
Upland players to rent spark from (optional)
Showroom owners (optional)
Car drivers to transport goods (optional andfuture feature)
What inputs are received?
In game property and a fully constructed factory built upon it. Learn about the different types of factories here. The factory property cannot be part of another Metaventure or Metaventure application. Property with factory may not be listed for sale or in offer. Upland will not be able to accommodate factory transfers if a player decides they want to upgrade to a larger factory.
The type of factory metaventure you are applying for:
A preliminary manufacturing plan. For each different item to be manufactured, you must define the following. Additional details can be supplied later, but an initial plan is required to register.
Model names and description
It's maximum supply in terms of the number of mints
The output of a manufactured asset is that asset (NFT) which is placed on the factory's inventory lot, ready to be shipped to a showroom metaventure for sale.
How is it done? - Metaventure registration
Travel to the city hall located in the city where you wish to open your metaventure. The city hall can easily identified on the map, as it is located at the property attached to this icon.
Fill out the required details.
You will be notified by email that your application has been successfully submitted.
Await notification via email regarding your shop acceptance, or further instructions from Upland
How is it done? manufacturing
Once your factory is set up as a metaventure, the following are the general steps required for manufacturing:
Define the maximum supply of the item. This is where understanding your customers plays an important role because this number can't be modified in the future. This is something that the designer or customer will likely want to define. Is the item going to be limited edition, or something general that everyone should be able to purchase? This will also likely have an influence on the final sale price of the item.
Define the amount of spark hours required to manufacture the item. (done by Upland)
This requires coordination with the showroom managers, shipping providers, spark stakers and customers placing orders. This task requires the manager to determine which items to produce, how to prioritize them, and how quickly to complete the jobs. The easy part of manufacturing is to add more spark to speed up manufacturing, but without proper coordination and planning, this could have a detrimental effect on the entire supply chain.
Shipping and distribute to showrooms (future feature)
The last step of the process is to transport the inventory to showroom metaventures. The showroom is where you will be able to display your items for sale. Customers can view your inventory and travel to the store to purchase these items. Its possible that as a manufacturer, you can distribute to different showrooms in order to get larger customer exposure or get closer to your customers. This added complexity will also be a factor when managing production batches and queues.
