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Turning Your Product Idea Into A Reality: Tips For Success

– Contributed content –

Man with light bulb

(Pxhere.com)

10 April 2018. Every product on our store shelves started in one place: inside the inventor’s head. From computers to vacuum cleaners, somebody somewhere had a great idea and worked hard to see their product idea become a reality. Despite the challenges and setbacks, these inventors had the patience and diligence to see their ideas come to fruition. In most cases, fame and fortune were the rewards. But what about you? Do you have a great idea for a product? If so, you may be wondering how to get your idea out of your head and into reality. The following are the two areas you need to focus on.

Commit to research

Don’t spend your time and money creating something without doing some research first. Find out the answers to the following questions:

Are there products similar to your idea already on the market?  

If your idea isn’t completely original, it does need to have some significant differences to make it stand out from the competition. Go to your local store and head online to find out more. You should also hire a specialist attorney to ensure it doesn’t infringe on somebody else’s IP, as you don’t want to run into any costly legal battles if your idea is too similar to something already on the market.

Who is going to buy your product?

If your product doesn’t meet any practical needs, it is unlikely to sell. Therefore, you need to have an idea that is going to meet the needs of the consumer. Commit to market research to assess the viability of your idea, and then begin the production phase if there is a tangible consumer base.

Develop your product

For starters, you need to work out if you are going to manufacture your idea yourself, perhaps in your own warehouse space, or if you are going to sell your product idea to an outside company. Let’s consider both options.

Manufacturing and selling on your own

If you are going down this route, you will have tighter control over your idea. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the technical know how to create your product, as you can bring in a third-party design engineering company to help you create the product based on your ideas. They know what components will make your product work, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t know one end of a Piezo transducer from another if your product needs to generate sound, and it’s okay if you don’t know anything about the durability of the types of product material available. The design engineers will get the work done from any blueprints you may have drawn up with them, and they will advise you on development time and costings. Once work has been completed, you will need to commit to product testing to ensure the safety and reliability of the product, and if successful, begin to market your invention yourself.

Licensing your invention to somebody else

By assigning the rights to your product to another company, you will cut out a lot of the hard work in getting your product to the shelves, as they will manufacture and market the product with their own resources. However, you may lose some control over your original idea, as you are effectively giving them the right to stamp their name on the product instead of yours. If you are going down this route, you do need to protect your idea with a non-disclosure agreement to make sure you get a share of any royalties once the product is finally put on sale. Then, having passed the hard work over to somebody else, you can sit at home and wait for the royalty cheques to arrive.

Final thoughts

Don’t let your good idea go to waste. Commit to further research if you have something to offer the world, and then get the ball rolling to get your invention onto the market and into the hands of the consumer. You may well be the next Steve Jobs!

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