Product Development
Conceive and market with rapid prototypes. Then develop and manufacture.
Can you get your product to market with zero production time? Whether you are an aspiring inventor, or work for a fortune 500 company designing products, we all face the same challenge. Bringing a product to market is time consuming and can carry financial risks if it does not perform as expected. How can we cut our time to market and alleviate those traditional risks?
Steps to bringing a product to market:
- Develop the concept not the product
- Offer the product for sale prior to production
- Presales feedback pinpoints design changes in advance
The old method of asking “would you buy this” does not work. People have a tendency to either tell you what you want to hear, or simply don't know the answer until they are actually ready to buy. How do you overcome this hurdle to find out if your product will be successful?
The answer is simple; Offer your product for sale before ever going into production. This might seem impossible, but with online merchants like eBay, testing consumer interest in a product is easy. Simply prepare a product description and images like this one, and open an auction for your product.
As customers bid for your product you will get market results from consumers actually offering to buy your product. Once you are happy with the results, make sure to cancel the auction before its bidding time ends. Detailed instructions on canceling an eBay item can be found here.
Rapid Prototyping is perfect for this kind of market testing because you can refine your idea just enough to sell the concept, but manufacturing is not necessary to get real market feedback. Advanced finishing like painting or plating, can produce picture-perfect prototypes ideal for the images needed to market your product, all without ever going into production.
This kind of market testing can be repeated as you continue to refine your product, and can be duplicated with any number of online auction sites. With real market feedback you will be able to refine your concept and focus on what your customers want. Remember “you are not your customer”, so leverage real market reaction and rapid prototyping to bring the best product to market.
