From Concept to Market in Four Months

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Product development has come a long way since the days of industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893–1986). Developing a product back then meant investing thousands of dollars on tooling, finding distribution channels to sell your product, and having access to massive amounts of money that were simply not available to people without the right connections.

In this article, we discuss how to take your concept to market in four months or less.

Mechanical design on a CAD system.

Today’s tools empower not only product designers, but almost anyone with an idea to follow it through and launch it to massive markets without the infrastructure of a company or huge amounts of capital. There are ways to fund and launch products for almost every degree of complexity, and from any available work space, be it a small warehouse, an entrepreneur’s garage, or moonlighting sketches in a corner of an apartment.

The tools are here. Let’s streamline the process.

Launching a product within four months of its conception is a feasible timetable if followed thoroughly and fulfilling a few prerequisites. Not every product can — nor should! — be planned for such a tight timeline, but nevertheless, it is an interesting exercise for anyone who wants to learn about the whole product and marketing cycles.

So, let’s get to work. In this first article, we simply lay out the components in the recipe. In the following four articles, we will be diving head-first into the world of product creation.

The Idea

Good, excellent ideas are everywhere. What filters them out is execution. And that is precisely what this exercise is all about!

The Business Assets

• Brand / Logo — It is always a good idea to have an identity to associate our products with.
• Business Entity — Money is going to change hands frequently from now on, so be sure to choose the best business entity for your business model.
• Licenses — Even when selling online, your city, county, and/or state might require you to get a special license or permit.

The Tools

Machining an injection mold.

• Product Design Tools — These are the tools to help you devise your product. It can be a Moleskine sketchpad or advanced 3D software, it all depends on your product’s level of complexity and degree of communication you plan to have with third party manufacturers. If you run your own shop, a napkin sketch may suffice!
• Manufacturing Facility — If you are just getting started in the product development world, it might be best to stick to a limited number of manufacturing processes. More processes = more suppliers = more room for error and miscommunication.
• Logistics — Believe me: this one adds up quickly. How are you going to transport raw material and finished goods? How many trips are there until your product reaches the end user?
• Warehousing — Even if you sell online with services such as Amazon FBA, you might need some space to keep raw material or finished product.
• Selling Platform — Selling online is the easiest way to get started, but by no means the only one. And some products might be more difficult to sell online, such as heavy pieces of furniture, hazardous materials, perishables, or products related to tourist landmarks, to name a few. We will explore some online platforms in the following entries.

The Expertise

You will be doing a lot of this!

This is probably a good time to remind our audience that this is a hypothetical exercise, and does not constitute legal or professional advice. So, do not base your decisions or planning solely on what you read here. Always consult professionals when in doubt!

• Legal — Some reasons to get legal advice could be: patent filings, or if you think your product could be at odds with another one, or if there could be liabilities which you would want to protect you or your company from.
• Financial — It is always a good idea to have a solid understanding of what this undertaking will look like from an economic perspective.
• Taxes — You might not be counting your beans, but the IRS is counting theirs! Make sure everything is by the book.
• Manufacturing — There are many ways to make things. Are we sure the method we are using is the most efficient one?
• Regulatory — If you are just getting started in the business, play it safe and steer away from products with lots of regulations.

Long list? Many of these assets are not critical to product development. But we will need them sooner or later, and we do not want our product launch to be delayed because of last minute requirements.

I am not trying in any way to trivialize the challenges of creating useful, meaningful, and responsible products. I am a great believer that we should question a product’s right to exist, and developing complex products involves specialized teams, a lot of manufacturing processes and merciless timelines.

In our next article we will be beginning to design our project. Exciting!