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Before we proceed, it’s important to understand that successful product development needs the fusion of two types of information: the need and solution.
The need
This is a company or individual that knows exactly what the market is missing. They might not understand how to develop or build it, but they know what the market needs. The best way to gather this information will be to engage with your customers and listen to their feedback.
The solution
This company or individual knows how to digest the need information and bring it to life. These are usually engineers, designers, developers or a factory that has the capability to understand what the need is and turn it into something physical.
To develop the perfect product, the need solution needs to provide a perfect description of their envision to the solution party. Remember that the solution doesn’t have a perfect understanding of your product so you need to be very thorough with your description and reasoning.
There is a myth that the development steps are long and demanding which often leaves you broke. However, if you follow the correct steps and have total transparency between the need and solution parties, the process will be smoother. When you get to the solution steps, you might not be the leader but you should understand the process.
Step 1: Product engineering and design
The first step the solution information needs to carry out will be engineering a product that is envisioned by the need of information. This first step provided by the solution information is also the most critical step. If the engineering is done incorrectly, the product will never be functional and will have poor reviews.
In order to eliminate failures, design the most critical part first and test it. Make samples of it to ensure that the product works as it’s supposed to. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.
Step 2: Prototypes
The purpose of a prototype is to verify that the engineering works as it’s intended. It’s great that you have the idea engineered and drawn out on CAD but you also need to make sure that it works as intended.
When you have a prototype, it really opens up many doors because you can start to market the product, you can take preorders, seek investment, start a Kickstarter campaign, etc.
Step 3: Tooling
For this article, we are assuming that you have built a relationship with your factory that will be building this product. If you got lucky, your factory also provided you with the resources to develop this product.
One great part of product trading is that you never need to worry about opening up new tools. However, if you are the sole seller of this project then opening up a tool is well worth the investment and well worth the short amount of time needed to make that tool.
Remember when negotiating with your supplier that the tool is yours and that the supplier is not able to use that tool for any other customer.
Step 4: Production
This is the moment that you have been waiting for. This is the last step for you to receive your product. The good news is that if the above steps were followed correctly, there will be no major issues. Keep in mind that with production there are some minor issues that occur but stay calm and handle those as they come up.
If you can follow these steps, you’ll see a healthy launch that will last for the life of the product.
There is a lot of talk about whether or not to patent your product. If this is your first product you might be overly excited to patent the product. However, the best way to keep the market share is by not patenting your product because those are simple to get around but by consistently developing and launching products. This is something that your competitors and factories looking to knock off products can’t keep up with because they are still selling products that are in the market already.
Product trading can be a great way to build experience to see whether or not it is a profession that you wish to pursue. However, developing your own product is the only way to the top of the line. While many people have failed to develop products efficiently, learn from their mistakes while going forward.
