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Three essential tips for creating a successful tangible product
| Three essential tips for creating a successful tangible product
If you are bursting with creative ideas and know that this is the year to take your business to a new level, creating products may be the perfect business strategy for you. There are some wonderful benefits to this strategy in terms of branding and the possibility of passive income. There are two types of products; e-products like e-books or audio downloads and tangible products. Tangible products include just about anything that can be printed or manufactured; card decks, calendars, board games, DVD's plush toys, office toys and even props for team building activities. E-Products are often a great place to start because of the low initial investment. It's a great way to test ideas that you might want to convert into a tangible product later. For markets where e-products just aren't a fit, a tangible product is the only way to go. The cool thing about a tangible product is that it can go just about anywhere; schools, corporate training rooms, coffee shops, retreat centers even the beach. Through distribution like catalogs, specialty retail outlets or mass market venues like Target you can reach a lot of people. I'm partial to tangible products for their portability but also because they are so interactive. They can be part of an individual process or a group process, involve multiple senses, access different learning styles, engage someone on the spot and be given as gifts. I mentioned Target previously, one of the most exciting aspects of a tangible product is that it has the potential for mass market reach. Imagine having that kind of impact. If you are going down the tangible product path there are some important things to consider early in the process that will make a difference in the amount of success you experience. 1. Create from your passion. Creating a tangible product will require an investment, which for many is a big decision. My advice is to create from what is important to you. The thing that will sustain you through the bumps and the “big gulp” moments is passion. Your passion will attract the help you need and it will pave the way for synchronicity. Don't create for the sole purpose of generating a stream of income. Unless making money is your number one value, it won't sustain you. Create something that you know will make a difference and will give you great joy to introduce to people. Create a vision of the impact your product will have. The clearer you can make your vision, the more energy and an aliveness it will hold. It will help guide your decisions and become a source for motivation. Don't underestimate the power of passion as your ground of being in this process. 2. Let your idea evolve It is so easy when you come up with a great product idea to rush the process but slowing down to do a little research and testing can make a huge difference in success. Testing is best done with a prototype which is a mock up of the product. In the beginning a prototype can be very rough. The goal is to get your prototype out there and gather feedback. Find out what appeals to your market, what they like and don't like about your product. Test everything; usability, content, look, price etc then come back and redesign. Keep doing this funky prototype dance of gathering feedback and redesigning until you have the most irresistible product possible. Shift is a new game on the market and a great example. It is a psychologically based game and over the course of development they had 80 groups test play it. Early feedback was that the game was too serious and needed to be more fun. They took that feedback to heart and hired a stand up comic to increase the fun quotient. The valuable feedback they got allowed them to create a much more successful product. 3. Think retail If you want a big impact, broad reach and decent profit you need to be thinking of distribution channels beyond back of the room sales. You need to think retail. Retail includes specialty shops, specialty catalogs and mass market stores like Target or Wal-Mart. Thinking retail will have you investing enough to insure success. You will invest sufficiently in design and packaging so that your product will show well in a retail setting and you will take advantage of economies of scale which basically means the more you produce the lower your cost per individual item. This is so important. You want to get your cost per item low enough to make a profit at the wholesale level and have your retail price be competitive in the market place. This single factor opens up lots of distribution opportunities. For example, if you wanted to list your product in a nationally recognized catalogue with a large distribution they might require you to have a certain quantity on hand and ready to ship, say1200. They will also take 50% of the retail price. You want to be able to have the margin and quantity on hand to meet those requirements. Think of the visibility that would give your product. The larger the volume of sales, the greater the profit. If you produce with retail in mind you will have a well designed, quality product and sufficient margin for retail distribution, affiliate programs, joint ventures, strategic partnerships and anything else your creative brain can cook up. Summary Creating a tangible product can help build your brand, increase your reach, build visibility, open up opportunities for joint ventures, give you access to mass market distribution channels, generate additional revenue and they are fun. Creating from passion and having a clear vision will sustain the journey and get you past any bumps along the way. The more diligent you are in the initial research and planning, the greater the potential for profit. The financial investment to launch a tangible product holds many back or has them shortchange their idea. If you are going to walk down this path – you need to bite the bullet and make the necessary investment. Don't hold back on design and don't hold back on quantity. Take the time to let your product go through several iterations. You will have a better product for it and enjoy greater success.
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